prehensive soul. The Moses who will lead the
blacks out of bondage must be a _black_, and he will come!

Let us go back for a moment. On the arrival of the first commissioners,
Mirbeck, Roume, and St. Leger, the mulattoes in the West were in arms
under Rigaud; the blacks in the North, under Jean Francois and Biassou.
They were a ragged crowd: pikes, muskets, cane-knives, axes, whatever
the hand could find, were their arms, and they fought without order or
discipline, inspired by revenge and hatred to slavery. Jean Francois, if
vain and ostentatious, was sagacious and full of resource. Biassou was
bold, fiery, and vindictive. The blacks had slaughtered and been
slaughtered, hanged and been hanged, plundered and been plundered. There
seemed no end to it and no object. They heard that the commissioners
were placable, so they wished to make terms. But who would dare to
venture among the whites? Were not all outcasts, hunted beasts, fugitive
slaves? Raynal and Duplessis (mulattoes) at last took the hazard. The
Governor sent them to the commissioners, they to the Colonial Assembly.
The Assembly that day was in an exalted state: it emulated the gods. It
replied loftily: "Emissaries of the revolted negroes, the Assembly,
established on the law and by the law, cannot correspond with people
armed against the law. The Assembly might extend grace to guilty men,
if, being repentant, etc.," and Raynal and Duplessis were ordered
sharply to "withdraw."

They did withdraw, amid the hooting of the mob. They returned to Grande
Riviere. The army and the people came out to meet them, wishing peace:
they told their story, and peace was turned to war, love to hatred.
Biassou, in a rage, ordered all the white prisoners in the camp to be
put to death. "Death to the whites!" went along the lines and among the
people. The insane pride of the whites worked its own punishment, and
now a hundred more were to be slaughtered. No white was there to save
them, and no God to wrest them away. Then a man, black, indifferent in
person, unpleasing of visage, meanly dressed, makes his way among the
crowd to Biassou swelling with rage. He speaks to him a few words,
quietly, calmly; they are to the purpose. The General's face is
composed; he listens; he countermands his orders, and the whites are
saved.

The negro who saves them is Toussaint Breda, afterward called
Louverture. The son of an African chief, Gaou-Guinon, with no drop of
white blood in his veins