ulattoes and free-blacks, was a resentful and
restless slave population.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution, even before it, France had
in her possession eight slave holding colonies, San Domingo,
Martinique, Guadeloupe, Cayenne, Tabago, St. Lucie, the Isle of
France, and the Isle of Bourbon. The most important of these being
Martinique and Guadeloupe, with a white population of about 25,000,
contained about 150,000 slaves and a small number of free Negroes; and
then there was her flourishing colony of San Domingo. Martinique and
Guadeloupe were represented in the National Assemblies which brought
France into early contact with the issue rising out of racial
color.[2] San Domingo with its large population and economic
importance offered a more perplexing problem. The population there was
large. Moreau de St. Mery quoted the official figures of 1790 as
30,826 whites, 24,262 free Negroes and mulattoes, and 452,000
slaves.[3]

The legal status of slaves here was substantially the same as that of
slaves in the tropical colonies of other nations; in fact, the Western
European slave code remains practically the same. This slave colony
seems singular in being unfavorable to the health and life of the
natives. The annual excess of deaths over births amounted to about two
and one half per cent. Added to this death rate was the rapid spread
of the feverish desire for wealth at any cost among the peoples of
European countries. The slave trade was profitable. The demand for
slaves was continual, amounting at this period to anywhere between
30,000 to 35,000 a year in the French West Indies. Human life and
rights were subordinate to gold, despite the position assumed by these
nations as champions of Christianity.

The question of mulattoes and freedmen and their descendants was
peculiar to San Domingo. The free Negroes and mulattoes were four
fifths the whites in number. When the offspring of illicit unions
between slave women and their masters attained their majority they
were emancipated, and in many cases their mothers were set free also.
As follows a system of servitude,

"The Sons of gods take the Daughters of men, but
The Sons of men dare not touch the daughters of the gods."

And thus it came about the number of these classes increased rapidly.
The poor laboring class of the community, corresponding somewhat to
the class of "poor whites" within the slave section of our country,
was made up of free Negroes