Toussaint L’Ouverture

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE

Toussaint L'Ouverture

“Known to his contemporaries as “The Black Napoleon,” Toussaint L’Ouverture was a former slave who rose to become the leader of the only successful slave revolt in modern history that created an independent state, the Haitian Revolution.

Born into slavery on May 20, 1743 in the French colony of Saint Domingue, Haiti, L’Ouverture was the eldest son of Gaou Guinon, an African prince who was captured by slavers.  At a time when revisions to the French Code Noir (Black Code) legalized the harsh treatment of slaves as property, young L’ Overture instead inspired kindness from those in authority over him.  His godfather, the priest Simon Baptiste, for example, taught him to read and write.  Impressed by L’Ouverture, Bayon de Libertad, the manager of the Breda plantation on which L’Ouverture was born, allowed him unlimited access to his personal library.  By the time he was twenty, the well-read and tri-lingual L’Ouverture—he spoke French, Creole, and some Latin—had also gained a reputation as a skilled horseman and for his knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs.  More importantly, L’Ouverture had secured his freedom from de Libertad even as he continued to manage his former owner’s household personnel and to act as his coachman.  Over the course of the next 18 years, L’Ouverture settled into life on the Breda plantation marrying fellow Catholic Suzanne Simon and parenting two sons, Isaac and Saint-Jean.

The events of August 22, 1791, the “Night of Fire” in which slaves revolted by setting fire to plantation houses and fields and killing whites, convinced the 48-year-old L’Ouverture that he should join the growing insurgency, although not before securing the safety of his wife and children in the Spanish-controlled eastern half of the island (Santo Domingo) and assuring that Bayon de Libertad and his wife were safely onboard a ship bound for the United States.  

Inspired by French Revolutionary ideology and angered by generations of abuse at the hands of white planters, the initial slave uprising was quelled within several days, but ongoing fighting between the slaves, free blacks, and planters continued.  Although he was free, L’Ouverture joined the slave insurgency and quickly developed a reputation first as a capable soldier and then as military secretary to Georges Biassou, one of the insurgency’s leaders.  When the insurgency’s leadership chose to ally itself with Spain against France, L’Ouverture followed.  Threatened by Spain and Britain’s attempts to control the island, the French National Convention acted to preserve its colonial rule in 1794 by securing the loyalty of the black population; France granted citizenship rights and freedom to all blacks within the empire.  

Following France’s decision to emancipate the slaves, L’Ouverture allied with France against Spain, and from 1794 to 1802, he was the dominant political and military leader in the French colony.  Operating under the self-assumed title of General-in-Chief of the Army, L’Ouverture led the French in ousting the British and then in capturing the Spanish controlled half of the island.  By 1801, although Saint Dominque remained ostensibly a French colony, L’Ouverture was ruling it as an independent state.  He drafted a constitution in which he reiterated the 1794 abolition of slavery and appointed himself governor for “the rest of his glorious life.” 

Biography Source

Texts by L'OuvertureTexts about L'Ouverture
  • “The memoir of general Toussaint Louverture” (2014)

    Citation: Louverture, Toussaint. 2014.  The memoir of general Toussaint Louverture. Oxford University Press, USA, 2014.

  • “Free and French in the Caribbean: Toussaint Louverture, Aimé Césaire, and narratives of loyal opposition” (2013) by John P Walsh

    Citation: Walsh, John Patrick. Free and French in the Caribbean : Toussaint Louverture, Aimé Césaire, and Narratives of Loyal Opposition. Indiana University Press, 2013.
    Info: “In Free and French in the Caribbean, John Patrick Walsh studies the writings of Toussaint Louverture and Aimé Césaire to examine how they conceived of and narrated two defining events in the decolonializing of the French Caribbean: the revolution that freed the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1803 and the departmentalization of Martinique and other French colonies in 1946.

  • “Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts” (2012) by C.L.R James

    Citation: James, C. L. R, et al. Toussaint Louverture : The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History : A Play in Three Acts. Duke University Press, 2013.
    Info: “In 1934 C. L. R. James, the widely known Trinidadian intellectual, writer, and political activist, wrote the play Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History, which was presumed lost until the rediscovery of a draft copy in 2005″.

  • “The slaves who defeated Napoleon: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian war of independence” (2011) by Philippe Girard

    Citation: Girard, Philippe R. The Slaves Who Defeated Napoleon : Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian War of Independence, 1801-1804. University of Alabama Press, 2011.
    Info: In this ambitious monograph, Philippe Girard employs the latest tools of the historian’s craft, multi-archival research in particular, and applies them to the climactic yet poorly understood last years of the Haitian Revolution.

  • “Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution” (2012) by Matthew Clavin

    Citation: Clavin, Matthew J. Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War : The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.
    Info: Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War examines the significance of these competing narratives in American society on the eve of and during the Civil War. Clavin argues that, at the height of the longstanding conflict between North and South, Louverture and the Haitian Revolution were resonant, polarizing symbols, which antislavery and proslavery groups exploited both to provoke a violent confrontation and to determine the fate of slavery in the United States.