indignation almost amounting
to frenzy among the whites. They directly trampled under foot the
national cockade, and with difficulty were prevented from seizing all
the merchant ships in the roads. After this, the two parties armed
against each other. Even camps began to be formed. Horrible massacres
and conflagrations followed, the reports of which, when brought to
the mother country, were so terrible that the Assembly rescinded the
decree in favor of the people of color in the same year.

In 1792, the news of this new decree reached St. Domingo, and
produced as much irritation among the people of color, as the news of
the former had done among the whites; and hostilities were renewed on
both sides.

As soon as these events became known in France, the Conventional
Assembly, which had then succeeded the Legislature, seeing no hope of
reconciliation on either side, knew not what other course to take
than to do justice, whatever the consequences might be. They resolved
accordingly, in the month of April, that the decree of 1791, which
had been first made and reversed by the preceding Assembly, should be
made good; thus restoring to the people of color the privileges which
had been voted to them; and they appointed Santhonax, Polverel, and
another to repair as Commissioners to St. Domingo, with a large body
of troops, in order to enforce the decree, and to keep the peace.

In the year 1793, the same division and bloodshed continuing,
notwithstanding the arrival of the commissioners, a very trivial
matter, a quarrel between a mulatto and a white man, (an officer in
the French marines,) gave rise to new disasters. The quarrel took
place at Cape Francois on the 20th of June. On the same day, the
seamen left their ships in the roads, and came on shore, and made
common cause with the white inhabitants of the town. On the other
side were ranged the mulattoes and other people of color, and these
were afterwards joined by some insurgent blacks. The battle lasted
nearly two days. During this time, the arsenal was taken and
plundered, some thousands were killed in the streets, and more than
half of the town was burned. The commissioners, who were witnesses of
the horrible scene, and who had done all that they could to restore
peace, escaped unhurt; but they were left upon a heap of ruins, and
with little more power than the authority which their commission gave
them. They had only about a thousand troops left in the place. They