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

“ [482] think those men would change their opinions, if they changed their skins.” Colonel Vincent, who had been private secretary to Toussaint, wrote a letter to Napoleon, in which he said: “Sire, leave it alone; it is the happiest spot in your dominions; God raised this man to govern; races melt under his hand. He has saved you this island; for I know of my own knowledge that, when the Republic could not have lifted a finger to prevent it, George III. offered him any title and any revenue if he would hold the island under the British crown. He refused, and saved it for France.” Napoleon turned away from his Council, and is said to have remarked, “I have sixty thousand idle troops; I must find them something to do.” He meant to say, “I am about to seize the crown; I dare not do it in the faces of sixty thousand republican soldiers: I must give them work at a distance to do.” The gossip of Paris gives another reason for his expedition against St. Domingo. It is said that the satirists of Paris had christened Toussaint, the Black Napoleon; and Bonaparte hated his black shadow. Toussaint had unfortunately once addressed him a letter, “The first of the blacks to the first of the whites.” He did not like the comparison. You would think it too slight a motive. But let me remind you of the present Napoleon, that when the epigrammatists of Paris christened his wasteful and tasteless expense at Versailles, Soulouquerie, from the name of Soulouque, the Black Emperor, he deigned to issue a specific order forbidding the use of the word. The Napoleon blood is very sensitive. So Napoleon resolved to crush Toussaint from one motive or another, from the prompting of ambition, or dislike of this resemblance,--which was very close. If either imitated the other, it must have been the white, since the negro preceded him several years. They were very much alike, and they were very French,--French even in vanity, common to both. You remember