arious stockholders. Nor did the
institution cease to accommodate the public from time to time with loans
of considerable extent. During the year 1791 the bank advanced to the
Commonwealth, at different times, in all one hundred sixty thousand
dollars, and in the following year something over fifty-three thousand
dollars.

NEGRO REVOLUTION IN HAITI

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE ESTABLISHES THE DOMINION OF HIS RACE

A.D. 1791

CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOTT

Haiti, the Spanish Santo Domingo, earlier called Espanola,
is the largest of the West Indian islands except Cuba. The
bloody revolutionary and slave revolts which began in 1791
and ended in the supremacy of the negroes, form the most
memorable passages in its history. From 1797 their great
leader, Toussaint Louverture, whose achievements are here
recounted, was Governor of the whole island, whose
independence he proclaimed in 1801. Having afterward opposed
Napoleon's attempt to reestablish slavery, Toussaint was
treacherously arrested and sent to France, where, in a
dungeon, he died in 1803. But white supremacy was never
restored in Haiti.

In 1697 France, by treaty, acquired the western part of the
island, the eastern portion remaining in the possession of
Spain, which had held it ever since its discovery by
Columbus. The French found their Haitian lands very
profitable in cotton and sugar, and the western region
prospered, while the Spanish community was stagnant. At the
outbreak of the French Revolution (1789) the whole island
was thrown into a ferment, out of which came the changes
that Elliott relates.

At that time the French portion of Haiti had about half a
million inhabitants, of whom some forty thousand were of
European blood, thirty thousand free negroes, the rest negro
slaves. The free colored people, mostly mulattoes, had no
voice in the Government, but in 1790 the French National
Assembly decreed to those born of free parents full
citizenship. Opposition on the part of the whites caused
delay in carrying out the decree. Taking advantage of the
ensuing commotion, the slaves rose in revolt (August, 1791),
and the conditions which Toussaint at length was called upon
to meet were inevitably brought about.

This black hero, of whose origin and personality information
is given below, has