During the year 1795 and part of 1796 I learn nothing about them,
neither good, nor bad, nor indifferent, though I have ransacked the
French historians for this purpose. Had there, however, been any thing
in the way of _outrage_, I should have heard of it; and let me take this
opportunity of setting my readers right, if, for want of knowing the
dates of occurrences, they should have connected _certain outrages_,
which assuredly took place in St. Domingo, _with the emancipation of the
slaves_. The great massacres and conflagrations, which have made so
frightful a picture in the history of this unhappy island, had been all
effected _before the proclamations_ of Santhonax and Polverel. They had
all taken place _in the days of slavery_, or before the year 1794, that
is, 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 coloured planters_,
and between the _royalists_ and the _revolutionists_, who, for the
purpose of reeking their vengeance upon each other, called in the aid of
their respective slaves; and as to the insurgent Negroes of the North,
who filled that part of the colony so often with terror and dismay, they
were originally put in motion, according to Malenfant, under _the
auspices of the royalists_ themselves, to strengthen their own cause,
and _to put down the partizans of the French revolution_.
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