o stupendous in its relations,
and bearing upon the cause of universal abolition and emancipation, and
to the consequent improvement and elevation of the African race, would
tend to awaken an active and a universally deep and active interest in
the minds of that numerous host of abolitionists in Great Britain, whom
we trust have the best interests of the descendants of Africa deeply at
heart.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE AND THE HAYTIAN REVOLUTIONS[2]

BY JAMES MCCUNE SMITH, M. A., M. D.

[Note 2: Extracts from a lecture delivered at the Stuyvesant
Institute, New York, for the benefit of the Colored Orphan Asylum,
February 26, 1841.]

_Ladies and Gentlemen:_

Whilst the orgies of the French revolution thrust forward a being whose
path was by rivers of blood, the horrors of Santo Domingo produced one
who was pre-eminently a peacemaker--TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.

In estimating the character of Toussaint L'Ouverture, regard must be
paid, not to the enlightened age in which he lived, but to the rank in
society from which he sprang--a rank which must be classed with a remote
and elementary age of mankind.

Born forty-seven years before the commencement of the revolt, he had
reached the prime of manhood, a slave, with a soul uncontaminated by the
degradation which surrounded him. Living in a state of society where
worse than polygamy was actually urged, we find him at this period
faithful to one wife--the wife of his youth--and the father of an
interesting family. Linked with such tender ties, and enlightened with
some degree of education, which his indulgent master, M. Bayou, had
given him, he fulfilled, up to the moment of the revolt, the duties of
a Christian man in slavery.

At the time of the insurrection--in which he took no part--he continued
in the peaceable discharge of his duties as coachman; and when the
insurgents approached the estate whereon he lived, he accomplished the
flight of M. Bayou, whose kind treatment (part of this kindness was
teaching this slave to read and write) he repaid by forwarding to him
produce for his maintenance while in exile in these United States.

Having thus faithfully acquitted himself as a slave, he turned towards
the higher destinies which awaited him as a freeman. With a mind stored
with patient reflection upon the biographies of men, the most eminent in
civil and military affairs; and deeply versed in the history of the most
remarkable revolutions that had yet occurred a