Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[474] well he knew himself. “I know Rigaud,” he said; “he drops the bridle when he gallops, he shows his arm when he strikes. For me, I gallop also, but know where to stop: when I strike I am felt, not seen. Rigaud works only by blood and massacre. I know how to put the people in movement: but when I appear, all must be calm.”

He said, therefore, to the envoys, “Where are your credentials?” “We have none.” “I will have nothing to do with you.” They then sought Franqois and Biassou, two other slaves of strong passions, considerable intellect, and great influence over their fellow-slaves, and said, “Arm, assist the government, put down the English on the one hand, and the Spanish on the other” ; and on the 21st of August, 1791, fifteen thousand blacks, led by Francois and Biassou, supplied with arms from the arsenal of the government, appeared in the midst of the colony. It is believed that Toussaint, unwilling himself to head the movement, was still desirous that it should go forward, trusting, as proved the case, that it would result in benefit to his race. He is supposed to have advised Francois in his course,--saving himself for a more momentous hour.

This is what Edward Everett calls the Insurrection of St. Domingo. It bore for its motto on one side of its banner, “Long live the King” ; and on the other, “We claim the old laws.” Singular mottoes for a rebellion! In fact, it was the posse comitatus; it was the only French army on the island; it was the only force that had a right to bear arms; and what it undertook, it achieved. It put Blanchelande in his seat; it put the island beneath his rule. When it was done, the blacks said to the Governor they had created, “Now, grant us one day in seven; give us one day's labor; we will buy another, and with the two buy a third,” --the favorite method of emancipation at that time. Like the Blanchelande of five years before, he refused. He said, “Disarm! Disperse!” and the