massacres and conflagrations which at that time made so frightful a
picture in the history of this unhappy island, occurred _in the days
of slavery,_ before the proclamation of Santhonax and Polverel, and
before the great conventional decree of the mother country was known.
They had been occasioned, too, _not originally by the slaves
themselves,_ but by quarrels between the _white_ and _colored_
planters, and between the _royalists_ and the _revolutionists,_ who,
for the purpose of wreaking their vengeance on each other, called in
the aid of their slaves; and as to the insurgent negroes of the
North, who filled that part of the colony in those years with terror
and dismay, they were originally put in motion, according to
Malenfant, _by the royalists themselves,_ to strengthen their own
cause, and to put down _the partisans of the French revolution._

When Jean Francois and Brasson commenced the insurrection, there
were many white royalists among them, and the negroes were made to
wear the white cockade.

I now come to the latter part of the year 1796, and we shall find
that there was no want of industry or of obedience in those who had
been emancipated. _"The colony,"_ says Malenfant, _"was flourishing
under Toussaint; the whites lived happily on their estates, and the
negroes continued to work for them."_ Now, Toussaint came into power,
being General-in-chief of the armies of St. Domingo, near the end of
the year 1796, and remained in power till the year 1802, or till the
invasion of the island by the French expedition by Bonaparte, under
Le Clerc. Malenfant, therefore, means to state that from 1796 to
1802, a period of six years, the planters and farmers kept possession
of their estates; that they lived on them peacefully, and without
interruption or disturbance; and that the negroes, though they had