The negro question in the French revolution ...

Front matter

Class TIP \ S

Book.

2Il|f ImuFraUg of Qlljtragfl

Preface

This paper presents a study of the working of the three revolutionary assembUes and the development of revolutionary sentiment as illustrated by a single problem, the place of the negro in the new regime. It does not deal with the history of the French colonies during the revolution except as some account of events there is necessary for an understanding of the situation with which the assembhes had to deal.

The study was undertaken under the direction of Professor Ferdinand Schevill, whose suggestions and criticisms have placed me under deep obHgation. I wish also to express my appreciation of the unfaihng courtesy extended to me by Professor George Lincoln Burr, Librarian of the Andrew Dickson White Library of Cornell University. Most of all I am indebted to Professor Mitchell Bennett Garrett, author of "The French Colonial Problem, 1789-91," for innumerable contributions of bibhographical and historical data and suggestions concerning their interpretation.

CHAPTER I The Negro Problem in 1789

The slave-holding colonies of France at the outbreak of the Revolution were eight in number, San Domingo, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cayenne, Tabago, St. Lucie, the Isle of France, and the Isle of Bourbon. Of these, the five last mentioned may be neglected for the purposes of this study, as their combined population was less than 100,000 and they played an utterly insignificant role. Martinique and Guadeloupe, with a white population of about 25,000, contained about 150,000 slaves and a small number of free negroes. These two colonies were represented in the National Assemblies, and their problems played a subordinate part in the development of the attitude of France toward the negro question.

For the most part, however, the subject may be discussed with our attention fixed upon the flourishing colony of San Domingo. This comprised about one-third of the island of Santo Domingo, the remainder of which was a possession of Spain. Its population was variously estunated. Moreau de St. Mery, the best contemporary authority on colonial questions, quoted the official figures of 1790 as 30,826 whites, 24,262 free negroes and mulattoes, and 452,000 slaves.^

The condition of the slaves here and in the other French colonies was much the same as that of slaves in the tropical colonies of other nations, and needs no extended description. Legally, the status of the slave did not differ materially from that given him by the typical slave code of our own old south. In practice, however, the climate, the nature of the sugar-planting industry, the type of social organization, and the character of the slaves themselves, many of whom were fresh from Africa, combined to engender a state of misery and degradation far worse than any which ever characterized the cotton plantations of the United States. The evil conditions of this life are sufficiently indicated by the failure of the population to maintain itself by natural means, the annual excess of deaths over births amounting to about two and one-half per cent.^

' Speech in the National Assembly, May 14, 1791, Le Hodey, XXV, 501. See numerous other estimates collected in Deschamps, Les colonies pendant la revolution, 290. The figures must be used with care, however, as there are numerous errors in the table.

' Peytraud, L'Esclavage dans les Antilles franjiaises, 35.

Partly on account of this enormous death rate, and partly on account of the rapid growth of the sugar industry, there was a constant demand for new slaves from Africa, and a large profit in supplying them. The niunber of negroes exported to the French West Indies during the last decade before the Revolution is estimated, with probable accuracy, at from 30,000 to 35,000 per annum.^ The cruelty of the system by which cargoes of negroes were secured in Africa and the cold-blooded barbarity with which they were treated during the voyage to America have been described by others so fully that there is no need to repeat the story here. An average death rate of seven or eight per cent, often running up to twenty per cent, bears sufficient witness to the ruthlessness with which life was sacrificed to profits.^

Another aspect of the negro problem in the colonies, however, is less famihar, the question of the status of freedmen and their descendants. The free negroes and mulattoes, who were almost equal in number to the whites, formed a social class to which nothing in the history of our own slave system corresponds. The existence of this class was due to the peculiar custom of setting free the offspring of iUicit ujiions between slave women and their masters. Some relaxation of morals is inevitable under any system of servitude, but in the French Antilles the comparative fewness of white women, the isolation, the tropical climate, and the greater liberality of the Latin moral code all combined to make this result of slavery more pronounced than in the societies with which we are more familiar. In accordance with Roman law, a child of course followed the status of its mother, but it was the regular custom of the planters to emancipate their mulatto children on the attainment of their majority, and in many cases the mother was set free also. Thus it came about that the number of free mulattoes was almost equal to that of the whites. Most of these free negroes, of course, belonged to the poorest laboring class of the community, but there were among them a nmnber of wealthy and educated families, some of whom owned considerable numbers of slaves. It was claimed during the Revolution that they owned one-fourth of the property in the West Indian colonies.

The situation of this class had no parallel in continental life, and its legal position was ambiguous. According to the Code Noir of Louis XIV, the fundamental law of slavery, freedmen and their descendants

'Peytraud, op. ciL, 140.

* For the whole subject cf. Peytraud, op. ciL, Book 1; Vaissiere, La soci6t6 et la vie Creoles, 155-65.

were entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizens of France,^ but in defiance of the Code, race prejudice had built up during the eighteenth century a special body of customary rules for their control, and this custom was recogni^ed by numerous administrative edicts and royal ordinances. The mulattoes, for instance, were forbidden to carry arms except when in militia service, and their commissioned officers must be white.^ The slightest trace of negro blood was sufficient to debar one from attaining noble rank.'' Marriage with a mulatto, which seems to have been rather common, was also sufficient to prevent the attainment of nobihty.^ Special sumptuary laws prohibited the mulattoes from using carriages, and from wearing garments of a certain quality,^ In 1767 a free negro was sold into slavery for striking a white man, and in 1778 the execution of a mulatto in the East Indies for an injury done a white man was approved by the Minister of Marine and ordered advertised in San Domingo, "since it is necessary to keep the free negroes and slaves in subordination. "^^ Several trades and professions were forbidden to the negroes, including medicine and surgery and the jewelers' trade."

These laws and the social prejudice which inspired them were bittely resented by the free mulattoes, the more so as most of the laws were of comparatively recent origin.^^

" Code Noir, Arts. 57-59. (Peytraud, op. cit., 165-6.) « Moreau de Saint-Mery, Lois des colonies, V, 20, 166, 1 73, 824. ^ Ibid., V, 80. 8JW(f.,V,520.

^ Ihid.,\, 855; Gr^goire, M^moire en faveur des gens de couleur, 8. " Moreau de Saint-M6ry, op. cit., V, 84, 817.

" Raimond, Origine du prejug6 centre les hommes de couleur, 8; Gr^goire, op. cit., 6-7.

^* Raimond, op. cit., passim.

CHAPTER II Attitude or the Government and of Public Opinion Before the

Revolution

As is well known, by the close of the Middle ages chattel slavery had abnost disappeared in Western Europe. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, the discovery and settlement of America created a new and insistent demand for unskilled labor, a demand which voluntary migration could not be induced to supply. At the same time the discoveries in Africa furnished a new source of supply which the Spanish and Portuguese were quick to exploit. By the time the French entered the field of colonial enterprise in the early seventeenth century the African slave trade had become an estabhshed institution, and the French West Indian colonies were founded in every case on the basis of slave labor. The number of slaves increased very rapidly during the eighteenth century, and the business interests of France became deeply involved with the continuance of the African trade and the agricultural industries in America which were supposed to depend upon it for their existence. The government gave no attention to the moral and social aspects of the question,^ but attempted to regulate and encourage the trade upon mercantilist principles. Until 1767 the slave trade between Africa and the French colonies was a monopoly granted to favored companies. It was then thrown open to all Frenchmen, and in 1783 was opened to foreigners also. French vessels engaged in the trade received substantial bounties from the government.

Nor was the public much more interested in the human side of the question than was the government. Before the late eighteenth century there was nothing that can really be called an anti-slavery movement, and even after a few voices began to be raised in behalf of the negroes, the life of the "people of color," as the free mulattoes were called, was almost entirely unknown in Europe.^ The revival of slavery in the

' Louis XIII, it is said, had qualms of conscience regarding the morahty of the system, which were appeased by the consideration that transportation to Christian lands offered the pagans of Africa their only hope of conversion and eternal life.

^ The development of anti-slavery sentiment in the eighteenth century is traced briefly in Dunning, History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu, and in D^schamps, Histoire de la question coloniale en France, 318-28.

sixteenth century was approved by the moral and rehgious thought of the age, and hardly a single voice was raised in protest till the eighteenth century philosophical movement brought in a new sense of the value of human life. With the exception of Bodin^ the most eminent thinkers of the seventeenth century — Grotius, Hobbes, Bossuet — found slavery compatible with their various ideas of the right and wrong of human relationships. Religious optimism found the will of God in the thitigs that were, and Cartesian rationalism was as conservative in its results as Calvinistic theology. But with the eighteenth century there arose a rigorous logical iconoclasm which found everywhere opportunities for improvement. Locke* condemned slavery as contrary to natural law, but it was Montesquieu who delivered the first really effective blow. In the fifteenth book of the Spirit of the Laws be demohshed systematically and completely the current reasoning which justified slavery from the right of conquest, the right of the individual to sell himself, the right of the father to sell his child, and the right of the Christian to dominate over the heathen. Finally in a masterpiece of irony he summarized the only sound arguments which, he said, could be offered in defense of negro slavery:

"These creatures are all over black, and with such a flat nose that they can scarcely be pitied. "

"It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise Being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a black, ugly body. "

"The negroes prefer a glass necklace to that gold which polite nations so highly value; can there be a greater proof of their wanting common sense?"

"It is impossible to suppose these creatures to be men, because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we are not Christians. "^

Rousseau and Voltaire followed Locke, and the Encyclopedia followed Montesquieu. None of the thinkers of the middle of the century, however, were more than incidentally interested in the question, and it received no special attention till just before the Revolution. The institution of slavery was then attacked in earnest by the Abbe Raynal and by Condorcet. RaynaP did little more than to expand the arguments

' Les six livres de la republique, Book I, ch V.

* Two Treatises on Government, Book II, ch. 4.

' The Spirit of the Laws, Book XV, ch. V, (Nugent's translation). According to Condorcet, this chapter was accepted by an assembly in Jamaica as a serious defense of slavery. (Oeuvres de Condorcet, VII, 97, n. 2.)

already advanced by Montesquieu, but his wide knowledge of the colonies and the passion with which he urged the cause combined to put his contribution in a different class from those of his predecessors, and the immense popularity of his work transferred the contest from the philosopher's closet to the arena of public discussion.

Condorcet, at about the same time, issued the first detailed scientific treatment of the question in the French, or for that matter in any, language.^ With his usual acuteness of reasoning the philosopher analyzed and answered the current arguments, following in general the lines mapped out by predecessors, but developing many new points of minor importance and supportibg his theories with a substantial array of facts, the evident result of a tremendous amount of research.

Immediately after the appearance of these works the Revolution gave the first opportunity to attempt a practical application of the new theories. Here, as so often, France received her impulse from England. It is necessary, therefore, to review briefly the development of sentiment and the beginnings of activity in that country.^

There are scattered evidences of the existence in England of sentiment against negro slavery from the middle of the seventeenth century, but no effective opposition arose till after the middle of the eighteenth. The Quakers, whose founder had been a fearless critic of the institution, were foremost in the attack. As early as 1727 the Society of Friends passed a resolution of censure against the trade, and from about 1758 its influence was strongly exerted to keep its members from even an indirect connection with it. Others than the Quakers became interested. Granville Sharp began in 1765 to look after the interests of negroes who were claimed in British ports as slaves, and in 1772 was instrumental in securing the famous judicial decision that as soon as any slave set foot on British soil he became free. In 1783 the Society of Friends submitted to Parliament the first petition for the abolition of the slave trade. In 1785 the cause secured its greatest advocate. That year the subject assigned for a competition in Latin composition at Cambridge was, "Whether it is right to enslave others against their will," and the prize was won by a young churchman named Thomas Clarkson. The winning

• Philosophical History of the Indies, III, 421-66 (Justamond's translation).

' Pastor Schwartz (pseudonym), Reflexions sur I'esclavage des negres, Neuchatel 1781. Revised edition, Paris, I788,0euvresde Condorcet, VII, 63-140.

* The following account of the development of sentiment in England is based on Clarkson, History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, I, ch's III-XX.

essay immediately became a standard authority among opponents of the trade, and more important, the author was inspired to devote his hfe to the cause of the blacks. At about the same time Wilberforce, a member of Parliament and an intimate friend of Pitt, became actively interested.

Through a union of these forces there was organized in 1787 a "Committee for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, " composed chiefly of Quakers, but having Granville Sharp as President and Clarkson as its most prominent member. Wilberforce, who for some time was not a member, was to head the campaign in Parliament, while the Committee was to solicit funds, collect information, and arouse public sentiment. The campaign thus begun was waged without cessation till the British slave trade was abolished in 1806.

The beginning of political activity in France was a direct outgrowth of this work in England. The London Committee was formed on May 22d, 1787; on August 27th it received a letter from Brissot, requesting that he and Claviere might become associates of the Committee for the purpose of publishing French translations of its literature and collecting subscriptions to be remitted to London for the good of the common cause. The committee declined the offer of financial aid, but elected Brissot an honorary member and recommended that a society be formed in France.®

In accordance with this recommendation a society was formed in Paris in February, 1788, under the name of the Society of Friends of the Blacks, with Claviere as President. It adopted the same seal as the Committee in England, but was an entirely independent organization. Mirabeau was a charter member, and La Fayette and Condorcet were among the first additions to its membership. Other prominent members who came in later were Sieyes, Petion, Gregoire, Robespierre, and the Duke of La Rochefoucauld.^"

Mirabeau, who had secured an exemption from censorship for his journal, stretched his privilege to cover the early publications of the society by issuing them as supplements." At a later time Brissot's journal, the ''Patriote franjais, " became the organ of the society.

During Brissot's absence in America, in 1788, the society was dormant, but on his return it awoke to renewed activity. The hour was propitious. The National Assembly, which was to reform everything

' Clarkson, op. cit., 1,446-7.

*" Brissot, Memoires, II, 71 ff.; Cahen, La Societe des Amis des Noirs et Condorcet, R6v. fr., L, 481-511.

" Brissot, op. cit., 79-80.

vicious in the state, was about to meet. Deputies were being elected, cahiers were being written, and the watchword "hberty" was on every man's lips. What better opportunity could one anticipate to secure the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, the most flagrant violations of the principles of equality and liberty that the world had ever seen?

The Society of t he Friends of the Blacks set to work with enthusiasm. On February 3d, 1789, Condorcet, at that time the President, addressed a circular letter to all the bailiwicks of France, urging that there be inserted in the cahiers a demand that the Estates-General destroy the slave trade and make preparation for the ultimate abolition of slavery." Several similar pubUcations followed, and efforts were made to obtain the election of delegates favorable to the cause.

The results of this campaign were disappointing. Several leaders of the society were elected, but they were men of such prominence that it appears improbable that the efforts of the society were an important factor in their success, and there is no evidence of any influence in electing followers for these leaders.^^ The cahiers reflect a very slight interest. Of the thousands of these documents published in the Archives parlementaires, only thirty-seven formulate demands for any action in favor of the negroes. Of these, eleven demand the abolition of the slave trade, and fifteen the immediate or ultimate aboHtion of slavery. Twelve demand that the condition of the slaves be improved in some way, and several others are too indefinite to admit of ready classification. Only one refers to the condition of the free negroes, which was destined to be the chief bone of contention between the Friends of the Blacks and the defenders of the existing order. As a whole, the cahiers made it clear that an attack on slavery was not a matter vital to the mass of the nation, and that success, if it came at all, must be due to the loyalty of the Estates-General to the principles of equaHty and liberty, and to the ability and energy of the little group of intellectual leaders who made up the Society of Friends of the Blacks.

This fact determined the character of the controversy for several years. Anti-slavery agitation was the hobby of an intellectual elite, to be promoted by an appeal to men's minds and consciences, in opposition oftentimes to their pecuniary interests. Before it could be really effective it must become a prejudice, a habitual state of mind with masses of men inaccessible to logical argument and moral appeal.

'^ Au corps electoral contre I'esclavage des noirs, Oeuvres de Condorcet, IX, 471-5.

"On the campaign of the spring of 1789, cf. Boissonnade, Saint-Domingue a la veille la revolution, 208-13.

Chapter III

Beginnings of the Contest in the National Assembly The contest between the Friends of the Blacks and the defenders of slavery began in connection with the application of an irregular delegation for admission to the Estates-General as representatives of San Domingo, As this delegation was destined to furnish the leading opponents of the Friends of the Blacks, its history is of interest. Early in 1788 certain colonial proprietors residing in France and a few merchants interested in colonial trade, acting in concert with a small number of actual residents of San Domingo, began an agitation for representation of that colony in the Estates-General, then promised for 1792. An organization of nearly two hundred members was formed in Paris under the name of the "Colonial Committee." Correspondence was maintained with discontented planters, pamphlet literature was published, and petitions were circulated among the colonial proprietors both in San Domingo and in France. After an attempt to secure the personal influence of the Counts of Provence and Artois and the Duke of Orleans, formal request was made to the king for representation of San Domingo. This request was refused by the Council of State. The agitators, however, boldly drew up and sent to the colony a plan for electoral assemblies. These assemblies were held, without any legal sanction, and thirty-one deputies were elected.

While these irregular elections were proceeding the Committee continued its work in France, and succeeded in securing a demand for the admission of colonial deputies in at least fourteen cahiers of primary assemblies. Repeated applications were made to Necker and to the Minister of Marine, but without result, and when the Estates-General opened the representatives of San Domingo had no legal standing.^ Nevertheless, part of the deputies presented themselves on June 8th, making application separately to each of the three orders.

The third estate alone proved receptive. On June 20th, eight San Domingo deputies were allowed to take the Tennis Court Oath. On June 27th the Committee on Credentials made a report unanimously

* This account of the origin of the colonial deputation is based on the excellent narrative in Boissonnade, op. cit., ch's 6-9.

recommending the admission of the colonial deputation but declared itself unable to agree on the number of deputies to which the colony was properly entitled. The Assembly accepted the report, apparently without a dissenting voice, and postponed discussion of the question of numbers to July 3d.2

So far the deputation had easy saiHng. Half the committee had favored the admission of twenty deputies, half of twelve, either figure being far in excess of what the colony could expect on the basis of the number of its free inhabitants. But more was involved than a question of parliamentary organization. The question brought squarely before the assembly the delicate problems of slavery and the status of free negroes under the new regime, and brought upon the colonial delegation the wrath of the powerful Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

Immediately after the first appearance at Versailles of the San Domingo deputation the Friends of the Blacks had recognized a foe. Mirabeau's newspaper challenged their right to count the slaves as a basis of representation, and taunted them with bitter words: "Either count your negroes as men or as beasts; if they are men, free them, let them vote, let them be elected to office. If they are cattle, let the number of your deputies be made proportional to your human population; we have counted neither our horses nor our mules. "^

Between the vote of admission on June 27th and the final.debate on July 3d and 4th the Friends of the Blacks awoke to the importance of the issue. Condorcet published a vigorous pamphlet denouncing the slave-holder and all his works. "We are tempted," said he, "to advocate a law which shall exclude from the National Assembly every man who, as a slaveholder, is interested in the maintfenance of principles contrary to the natural rights of man, which are the only purpose of every political organization. . . . The natural right of man to be governed only by laws to which he has given his consent cannot be invoked in favor of a man who is himself at the very moment violating the law of nature. " The pamphlet closes with the remark that the planters can doubtless speak concerning their own interests, "but that on their lips the sacred word 'rights' would be blasphemy against reason."^ The last sentence gives the key to the conflict that was to follow. On the one hand, the remorseless logic of a century devoted to the worship of reason, sacred

2 Point du jour, I, 61-4. Le Hodey, l; 259-62. XlVe Lettre du comte de Mirabeau a ses commetans, 4-9.

^ Xe Lettre du comte de Mirabeau a ses comm6tans, 3. * Oeuvres de Condorcet, IX, 477-85, principles which the opposition never dared to deny and scarcely attempted to evade; on the other hand the economic interests of powerful groups of "practical" men, antagonistic to one another in many of their aims, but drawn together by the common need of self-protection against the men of ideals.

When the question was reopened on July 3d, Mirabeau took the lead in the discussion, raising again the question of counting the slaves, and arguing further that the so-called deputies really represented only about one-half even of the free population, since the whole body of free blacks and mulattoes had been excluded from the suffrage.^ In this debate, as on many future occasions, the mouthpiece of the colonial deputation was the Marquis de Gouy d'Arsy, a colonial proprietor residing in Paris, who had been from the beginning a leader in the movement for colonial representation. Gouy made no attempt to defend the principle of slave representation, but based his claim for the admission of eighteen or twenty delegates on the wealth and commercial importance of the colony. His weak point was the exclusion of free tax-paying mulattoes from the electoral assemblies. According to the Abbe Jallet he said that since the mulattoes were natural enemies of the whites it would be dangerous to give them any influence, an argument which, as one might expect, made a bad impression on the assembly.^

The debate dragged over into the next day without bringing out any other argument of importance, and the number of deputies was finally settled by a weary compromise at six.'' Although there was some opposition from other sources, including a rival group of colonial proprietors who protested against the seating of any delegates at all, it is clear that the opposition of the Friends of the Blacks was the main cause of the deputation's reduction in number from twelve or more to six.

The chief importance of this discussion was the prominence which it gave to two questions that the colonial deputies were most anxious to keep smothered — slavery and the civil status of the free negroes. During the debate of June 27th the Duke of La Rochefoucauld found opportunity to present the aims of the Society of Friends of the Blacks, and requested the future consideration of the problem of emancipation. Four other deputies called attention at the same time to the demands of their

'Journal, 115-6. Cf.LeHodey, 1,335; Duquesnoy, Journal, 1, 160.

' Le Hodey, I, 341-54; Point du jour, I, 107-8. This was the first occasion on which the vote "par tete " was employed, and a large number of the clergy and nobility refused to participate.

12 THE NEGRO QUESTION IN THE TRENCH REVOLUTION

constituents that something be done to improve the condition of the slaves, and their remarks received hearty applause.^

Other events quickly followed which convinced the colonial deputies that there was real danger in the Revolution for their peculiar institutions. In July there arrived at Versailles one Raimond, a mulatto, a native of San Domingo, who had come to France in 1784 to seek some amelioration of the condition of the free mulattoes.® He had accomplished nothing and when the National Assembly convened it was only natural that he should turn to it for assistance. Raimond was a man of considerable education, the author of numerous well written pamphlets and a politician of no mean ability. He came of a family of wealthy planters, and was at least three-fourths white.^"

At about the same time there appeared another formidable antagonist of the planting and slave-trading interests. The British Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade had slackened its activity in England on account of an adjournment of Parliament, and took the opportunity to send Thomas Clarkson to work in the National Assembly. Immediately on his arrival at Versailles Clarkson sought the acquaintance of the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, Condorcet, Brissot, Petion, La Fayette, and other Friends of the Blacks and began a quiet campaign against the slave trade." Moreover, at the famous session of August 4th, the Duke of La Rochefoucauld again brought up the question of the emancipation of all the slaves, and besought the Assembly to give it consideration before closing its labors. ^^

Thus before the end of the summer of 1789 the defenders of the interests of slavery found themselves confronted with three distinct threatening movements — the free mulatto question agitated by Raimond, the question of the slave trade pushed to the front by Clarkson, and in the back ground the demand for emancipation. In response to these move-

* Point du jour, 1, 64; Jallet, op. cit., 107.

' Raimond, Veritable origine des troubles de Saint-Domingue, et des differentes. causes qui les ontproduits, 4. Lettre au citoyen D, 7.