onent, that as a last resort,
Leclerc broke the shackles of the slave, and proclaimed "Liberty and
equality to all the inhabitants of Santo Domingo."

This proclamation terminated the conflict for the time. Christophe and
Dessalines, general officers, and at length Toussaint himself,
capitulated, and, giving up the command of the island to Leclerc, he
retired, at the suggestion of that officer, to enjoy rest and the sweet
endearments of his family circle, on one of his estates near Gonaives.
At this place he had remained about one month, when, without any
adequate cause, Leclerc caused him to be seized, and to be placed on
board of a ship of war, in which he was conveyed to France, where,
without trial or condemnation, he was imprisoned in a loathsome and
unhealthy dungeon. Unaccustomed to the chill and damp of this
prison-house, the aged frame of Toussaint gave way, and he died.

In this meagre outline of his life I have presented simply facts,
gleaned, for the most part, from the unwilling testimony of his foes,
and therefore resting on good authority. The highest encomium on his
character is contained in the fact that Napoleon believed that by
capturing him he would be able to re-enslave Hayti; and even this
encomium is, if possible, rendered higher by the circumstances which
afterward transpired, which showed that his principles were so
thoroughly disseminated among his brethren, that, without the presence
of Toussaint, they achieved that liberty which he had taught them so
rightly to estimate.

The capture of Toussaint spread like wild-fire through the island, and
his principal officers again took the field. A fierce and sanguinary war
ensued, in which the French gratuitously inflicted the most awful
cruelties on their prisoners, many of whom having been hunted with
bloodhounds, were carried in ships to some distance from the shore,
murdered in cold blood, and cast into the sea; their corpses were thrown
by the waves back upon the beach, and filled the air with pestilence, by
which the French troops perished in large numbers. Leclerc having
perished by pestilence, his successor, Rochambeau, when the conquest of
the island was beyond possibility, became the cruel perpetrator of these
bloody deeds.

Thus it will be perceived that treachery and massacre were begun on the
side of the French. I place emphasis on these facts in order to endeavor
to disabuse the public mind of an attempt to attribute to emancipation