The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation Read Free Page B

the view that the
gens de couleur
had become the agents of an abolitionist conspiracy orchestrated by perfidious Albion.Vincent Ogé, a colored merchant and goldsmith who owned part of a Saint-Domingue plantation, had been a leading spokesman for freedmen’s rights before becoming involved with Grégoire and especially Clarkson. The Club Massiac, which warned officials in Saint-Domingue that Ogé had embarked on a revolutionary mission, claimed that Clarkson had raised funds in England that enabled Ogé to purchase arms and munitions in the United States. The intentions of Ogé’s backers remain obscure but there is no evidence that they envisioned a racial war or slave insurrection. 48
    In March the Constituent Assembly had granted colonists the right to draft their own constitutions, subject to metropolitan approval, and had stipulated that the initial colonial assemblies should be elected by “all persons” over twenty-five who owned landed property or paid taxes. The ambiguous phrasing provoked sharp debate but was generally interpreted to mean that the existing colonial assemblies coulddefine “all persons” as they saw fit without requiring the National Assembly to sanction racial exclusion. Ogé, however, was determined to force the white authorities ofSaint-Domingue to accept a literal reading of the disputed article. Presenting himself as a spokesman forFrench law, he tried to negotiate with the authorities at Le Cap and pledged his support for the slave system. Although some free coloreds had already taken up arms to resist the growing racial tyranny, Ogé failed to consolidate this potentially rebellious mass. After his small force was defeated and dispersed, Ogé fled to Spanish Santo Domingo. He was then extradited, tried, broken on the wheel, and executed. For the freedmen and French abolitionists, Ogé had become a martyr to liberty. For white colonists, Ogé symbolized the danger of free colored subversion. When the Constituent Assembly ordered the dissolution of colonial legislatures, in response to continuing white rebellion and the collapse of French authority, it also promised, as a conciliatory gesture, that France would never intervene with respect to the status of persons unless requested to do so by thecolonies. 49
    In May 1791, when the Assembly debated a proposed constitution for the colonies, the West Indian deputies demanded a confirmation of this self-denying pledge. 50 By then, however, it was impossible to separate the colonial question from the theatrical politics of theFrench Revolution. In a flaming oration,Robespierre exposed the national disgrace of officially sanctioning slavery and ominously linked the enemies of freedmen’s rights with the enemies of the constitution. The Assembly now listened to the testimony of free colored colonists, who described the humiliations suffered by respectable planters, merchants, and professionals who were descended, however distantly, from a black slave.Julien Raimond, the freedmen’s leading spokesman and pamphleteer, assured the Assembly that only the free coloreds could keep the slaves subdued.
    On May 15, the Assembly finally adopted a compromise amendment pledging that France would enact no law on the status of “persons not free, other than those born of free mothers and fathers.” The decree sent to the colonies reaffirmed the colonists’ autonomy in defining the status of slaves and the vast majority of freedmen, but insisted that the children of two free parents, regardless of color, should enjoy the full rights of citizenship. The compromise betrayed the prevalent fear that the immediate descendants of slaves might in a crisis identify with slaves. For the colonial deputies, however, the May 15decree was a fatal breach in the color wall that opened the way to slave emancipation and racial war. The Assembly had set a precedent for direct intervention to enforce inalienable rights. The same reasoning could be used to defend the rights of