allons of rum, 250,000 gallons of molasses, and
5,000,000 pounds of sugar. It was the beginning of the commercial
importance of one of the most progressive cities in the country.
Imagination refuses to picture what would have been the case but for the
refugees from San Domingo.

But the same revolution which gave to Louisiana its prestige to the
commercial world, almost starved the province to death. In the year 1791,
the trade, which had flourished briskly between Santo Domingo and New
Orleans, was closed because of the uprising, and but for Philadelphia,
famine would have decimated the city. 1,000 barrels of flour were sent in
haste to the starving city by the good Quakers of Philadelphia. The members
of the Cabildo, the local council, prohibited the introduction of people of
color from Santo Domingo, fearing the dangerous ideas of the brotherhood of
man. But it was too late. The news of the success of the slaves in Santo
Domingo, and the success of the French Revolution, says Gayarre, had
penetrated into the most remote cabins of Louisiana, and in April, 1795, on
the plantation of the same Poydras who had sung the glory of the army of
Galvez, a conspiracy was formed for a general uprising of the slaves
throughout the parish of Pointe Coupee. The leaders were three white men.
The conspiracy failed because one of the leaders was incensed at his advice
not being heeded and through his wife the authorities were notified. A
struggle ensued, and the conspiracy was strangled in its infancy by the
trial and execution of the slaves most concerned in the insurrection. The
three white men were exiled from the colony.[37] This finally ended the
importation of slaves from the West Indies.

ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON

FOOTNOTES:

[1] King, "New Orleans, the Place and the People during the Ancien Regime,"
333.

[2] De las Casas, "Historia, General," IV, 380.

[3] Herrera, "Historia General," dec. IV, libro II; dec. V, libro II; dec.
VII, libro IV.

[4] French, "Historical Collections of Louisiana," Part V, 119 et seq.

[5] Gayarre, "History of Louisiana," 4th Edition, I, 242, 254.

[6] French, "Historical Collections of Louisiana," Part III, p. 42.

[7] Gayarre, "History of Louisiana," I, 102.

[8] Gayarre, "History of Louisiana," I, 242, 454.

[9] Ibid., I, 366.

[10] Ibid., I, 365-366.

[11] In 1900 a writer in Pearson's Magazine in discussing race mixture in
early Louisiana made some startling statements as to th