s had walked arm in arm through the city
and peace seemed possible, when word came that on September 24th the
National Assembly at Paris had reversed the decree of May 15th. The
mulattoes at once flew to arms, and the struggle between them and the
whites went on with increased carnage and cruelty. This continued with
varied results through 1792. "You kill mine and I'll kill yours," was
the cry. As it had been from the outset, so it continued among the
whites: open war between the colonists and the governors; between the
people of the North and the South; contention and bitterness, intrigue,
treachery. They made head nowhere against the mulattoes; nowhere against
the negroes. In December, 1791, three commissioners arrived from France
to distract the confusion. They accomplished nothing, and were succeeded
in September, 1792, by Santhonax, Polverel, and Ailhaud, ordinary men;
not sufficient for so extraordinary a state of things as this.

The hour had come, but not the man. The world waited for him, but none
knew where to look; for none believed him to be among the degraded
negroes. The old custom of master and slave was broken in pieces, and a
nation of men, with no cultivation, with no education in
self-government, with none of the conservative strength which hangs
about privilege and possession and long-honored habit, were now up,
inspired only with a hatred of slavery and vague aspirations for that
which they knew not how to name. In this chaotic hour the man who could
express this longing for freedom, this need of growth, this aspiration
for infinite good--not only in words, but in deeds and in life--was
needed: without him all would come to nothing, and the struggle of the
blacks would be but a spasm, to end in exhaustion and discouragement;
for successful revolutions have been secured by developing, from among
the unknown, the known man, around whom the elements of the new state
could gather for new order.

Among the half-million blacks there must be one, and more than one, who
could redeem his race; to whom the outcast and despairing might look and
take courage and say, "Such as he is, I may try to be." This man was
longed for; consciously or not, the blacks yearned for their king, could
they but see him. The presentiment existed, for had not the Abbe Raynal
long before predicted a vindicator for the race? No man can save
another, and no nation. Each race must look for its salvation and its
leaders in its own com