Coisnon, retiring from the embrace of Toussaint, assails him in a set speech with persuasions to submit to the Consul, and to betray the cause of freedom. He does not perhaps desire him in plain terms to permit slavery to be restored; on the contrary protests that there is no such design; but Toussaint knew too well the meaning of such professions; and that his discerning mind on this point should be so imposed upon, after what had happened, could hardly be expected either by the envoy or his masters. Such speeches, if used to Toussaint himself, were probably meant only to say his credit, and give him the means of deceive his followers. He was in effect desired to come the Cape and bring over his troops to join the French standard. On this condition he was assured of "respect, honours, fortune," the office of the lieutenant-general of the island," all in short that the gratitude of the republic could offer, or his of heart, desire. On the other hand, if he should refuse to submit, the most dreadful horrors and series of war are denounced against him and followers. The implacable vengeance of the great nation is threatened; and the eloquent envoy does not omit to point out to him how hopeless must be

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all his efforts to resist the armies which have conquered Europe, and which now will have no enemy contend against, but the rebels of St. Domingo. Above all, he is desired to reflect upon the fate that awaits the hostage youths, so beloved, and so worthy of his affection. "You must submit," said Joisnon, "or my orders are to carry my pupils back to the Cape. You will not, I know, cover yourself with infamy by breaking faith and violating a safe conduct. Behold, then, the tears of your wife; and consider, that upon your decision depends whether the boys shall remain to gladden her heart and yours, or be torn from you both for ever"* The orator concludes by putting into the hero's hands the letters of the captain-general and the Consul.

Isaac next addressed his afflicted father in a speech which his tutor had no doubt assisted him in preparing. He related how kindly he was received by the Consul, and what high esteem and regard that chief of the republic professed for Toussaint Louverture and his family. The younger brother added something which he had been taught to the same effect; and both, with artless eloquence of their own, tried to win their father to a purpose, of the true nature and consequence of which they had no suspicion.

* I desire not to be understood as giving the exact language of this conference throughout; but the substance is either expressly avowed in, or plainly to be inferred from, Coisnon's report, and other official papers.

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Need we doubt that the distressed mother added her earnest entreaties to theirs?

During these heart-rending assaults on the virtue and firmness of Toussaint, the hero, checking his tears, and eying his children with glances of agonized emotion, maintains a profound silence. "Hearken to your children," cries Coisnon. "Confide in their innocence; they will tell you nothing but truth."

Again the tears of the mother and her boys, and their sobbing entreaties, pour anguish into the hero's bosom. He still remains silent. The conflict of passions and principles within him may be seen in his expressive features, and in his eager glistening eye. But his tongue does not attempt to give utterance to feelings for which language is too weak. Awful moment for the African race! Did he hesitate? perhaps he did. It is too much for human virtue not to stagger in such a conflict. It is honour enough not to be subdued. But why do I speak of human virtue? The strength of Toussaint flowed from a higher fountain; and I doubt not that at this trying moment he thought of the heroism of the Cross, and was strengthened from above.

Coisnon saw the struggle, he eyed it with a hell-born pleasure, and was ready in his heart to cry out "victory," when the illustrious African suddenly composed his agitated visage, gently disengaged himself from the grasp of his wife and children, took the envoy into an inner chamber, and gave him a dignified refusal. “Take back my children,"

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said he, "since it must be so. I will be faithful to my brethren and my God."

Can any trait that History has recorded of the patriot or the hero be put in competition with this noble sacrifice to public duty!

Coisnon, finding he could not carry his point, wished at least to draw our hero into a negotiation with general Leclerc; and Toussaint, always humane and fond of peace, was willing to treat upon any terms by which "the horrible fate," as he himself truly called it, which was intended for his brethren, might be avoided without the miseries of war. He, therefore, readily agreed to send an answer to the captain-general's letter, but would not prolong the painful family scene by staying to write it at Ennery, or again seeing his boys. It was two in the morning when he arrived there, and at four he mounted his horse again, and set off at full speed for his camp.

On the next day our hero dispatched a Frenchman of the name of Granville, who was tire tutor to his younger children, with a letter for the captain-general; and this man, whom Coisnon is anxious to prove as great a rogue as himself, overtook his brother-tutor and the two poor hostage youths on their way to the Cape.

On the parting between the mother and her children, as it afforded no room to display his own talents at negotiation, the envoy has been prudently silent; but such of my readers as have feeling hearts will be able to paint it in some degree for themselves. Toussaint's letter was of such a nature that it

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produced a reply from general Leclerc, and a further correspondence took place between these opposite leaders during several days, a truce being allowed for the purpose, which Leclerc expected as he tells us, would have ended in a peace.

It would be most desirable to have recourse to the letters that passed on this occasion ; but Leclerc and the Consul have not thought fit to publish any of them; and as to Toussaint he had no the means of publication; for when his enemies took the towns, his printing presses all fell into their hands ; and, then, not a letter was sufferer to pass from the island, or any news from thence to be told, without leave from the Consul or his generals. We must be content therefore with such intelligence as they have thought fit to give us.

The treaty at length broke off, and we are to] it was in consequence of a discovery manifest] made in Toussaint's letters, that he was a hypocrite, and only treated in order to gain time. What was the nature of his demands the French Government did not think proper to state. In absence of all information on this head, I will leave to suppose, that the liberty of the common people, with some security for that blessing, the points in dispute, as they were the only things they would not yield, and were all that Toussaint sought to obtain. The only light which Leclerc’s real or pretended dispatches give to assist guesses respecting the nature of this negotiation is reflected from his reason for putting and end to it. "My orders," says he "are immediately to

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restore prosperity and abundance." Now it must be presumed that the only means proposed for effecting this miracle was the cart whip; and that Toussaint would have objected to no other means of making the island prosper, his former conduct sufficiently proves.

The truce being ended, war was most furiously renewed against Toussaint and his adherents in every quarter of the island; and that general and Christophe were by proclamation declared to be "out of the protection of the law."

General Leclerc took, however, other steps far more effectual to him in the war than this ferocious proscription of the chiefs. He saw that it was easier to dupe the poor labourers, than to deceive men who had been accustomed to govern; he knew that the poor in all countries are apt to be discontented with their rulers, when they feel the public evils, which a war, necessary even for their own sakes, must always produce ; and he also knew, that the labouring Negroes, who were there called cultivators, had in general been loth to submit to necessary industry, and were but half content with Toussaint for putting by his laws, a curb upon idleness and vice. He therefore concluded, that it would not be impossible to make a breach between the upright chief and the cultivators; or, at least, to make the latter mere bye-standers in the war.

With this view, he, in the first place, forbore to attempt any change in the state of the labouring Negroes in the places occupied by his troops.

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Though he had many of their old masters in his train, to whom the Consul had vowed that he would restore their slaves, and put the cart-whip soon again in their hands, Leclerc did not suffer one of them to go upon his own estate; or only allowed them to go to confirm the new order of things, and treat the labourers as free men. Not a whip was to be seen or heard for some time on any account. But he went much further. He published in his own name, and the Consul's name, solemn declarations, that the freedom of all the people of St. Domingo should be held sacred. In the same papers he taxed Toussaint, and the soldiers who followed him, with ambition, and threw on them the blame of all the dreadful sufferings that were going to fall on the colony.

It is not to be wondered at, that the French invaders should use these arts. In what country that has fallen under the dreadful yoke of the republic has not the same game been played in the beginning, as far as the state of the poor would allow in this instance the extreme ignorance of the cultivators rendered it, with regard to them, peculiarly successful.

But Leclerc also assailed, with too much success, the fidelity of the soldiers, and of the black generals and officers who had commands under Toussaint. He held out to them the most tempting offers of preferment in the French service, if they would join his army; and two or three traitors who came over to him on his first landing, were promoted to the highest commands, and caressed

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most flattering manner. He did not scruple to bind himself to every Negro general who would pit his word, not only for the freedom of himself his corps, but that of all the Negroes in the island. There still remained there great numbers he old party of Rigaud; and though these were zealous friends to freedom, and very suspicious of white people, yet they hated Toussaint, because he had conquered and expelled their old leader; and they were therefore among the first to listen the false assurances of Leclerc, and lend him heir aid against their countrymen.

It was more by these base means, than by the bravery of his troops, that Leclerc obtained all his early successes, of which the French government so loudly vaunted itself, early in the summer of last year. It must be admitted that his French troops fought bravely, and with astonishing activity and perseverance, considering their disadvantages in that country; but, if they had not been powerfully assisted by Negro allies, and if the cultivators had not been so infatuated as for the most part to resist the earnest calls of Toussaint, and remain quiet spectators of the war, the invaders would never have been able to advance far from the coast.

It is no part of my undertaking to write the history of the war of St. Domingo. It could else very easily be shewn from the French gazettes, that whenever they engaged the Negroes successfully, the latter were inferior in numbers, or at least in regular troops, as well as in arms. It could

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also be proved from the same accounts, that in spite of that inferiority, Toussaint's troops more than once defeated the invaders. In a war in which the gazettes are all on one side, the accounts of the publishing enemy should be very strictly watched; and yet, with a common degree of attention, any readers of Leclerc's dispatches will find that these assertions are entirely true.

The courage of Toussaint in this war, as in all the former ones in which he had been engaged, was conspicuous. The only engagement with troops led by himself into action, of which his enemies have thought it prudent to speak, was the battle of the Ravine of Couleuvre, and of this action Leclerc gives the following account: "A combat of man to man commenced, -- the troops of Toussaint fought with great courage and obstinacy; but every thing yielded to French intrepidity." He adds, indeed, that Toussaint evacuated a very strong position, and retired in disorder to Petite Riviere, leaving 800 of his troops dead on the field of battle. But let us remember that this 'is the French account, and that Toussaint's story is untold*.

Our hero's spirit was still more honourably displayed in his constancy and firmness. So powerfully did the dreadful scourge of war, inflicted upon all points of the colony at once by France and her numerous black confederates, second the

* See Leclerc's official dispatches of. February 27. London papers of April 19, 1802.

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treacherous offers and promises of Leclerc, that such of the Negro troops as still adhered to Toussaint began to be weary of the contest, and every day almost, some leading man among them went over to the enemy. From the first, the regular troops he was able to collect were not very numerous: as it appears even from the accounts of his enemies, who certainly could not wish to represent the force they had been opposed by, as less than it really was. So many of the military Negroes had been induced to join the French, or at least to lay down their arms, and so great a proportion of the rest had been killed in action, that the black generals, by the end of the month of February in which the war began, were chiefly supported by such of the cultivators as the influence of Toussaint could preserve from the deceits of Leclerc, and engage to fight in the case of their own freedom.

But these men were a very small proportion of the whale body; and they were, besides, but indifferent soldiers, not having been previously taught the military exercise, and being very badly armed. These cultivators too began to quit the standard of Toussaint when he was obliged to retire into the inner part of the island; so that at last, he had, as his enemies admit, only a few hundred followers with whom he was obliged to retreat to the mountains, and there of course to endure a great variety of hardships.

Yet even in this seemingly hopeless state of affairs, the constancy of Toussaint never yielded for

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a moment. He never despaired of the cause of freedom; never offered to abandon it; but still preferred all the dangers and sufferings of war, to a peace which would have placed him in safety; riches, and power, but which must have been bought at the expense of his honour and virtue, or, let me rather say, of his duty to God. Worldly men may be thought staunch patriots, and may think themselves so; but there are cases too trying for any virtue that is not rooted in religion. To devote himself to the public good, and sacrifice all that is dear to him, even life itself, when the very people for whom all this is to be suffered, distrust, forsake, and betray their generous champion, is a flight of virtue too high for any one who does not, like Toussaint, expect his praise and his reward, in a better world.

After many bloody actions, and six or seven weeks of almost perpetual marching and fighting, the French general thought himself master of St. Domingo. He boasted to his brother-in-law, and the Consul proclaimed to all Europe, that the object of the war was accomplished. “Toussaint, without stations, without treasure, without army, is no more than a brigand, wandering from morne to morne with some brigands like himself, whom our intrepid warriors are pursuing, and whom they will soon have caught and destroyed."

Thus spoke the Consul to the public at Paris, on the 6th of May 1802. He, probably, spoke as he thought; be had even some good grounds for the opinion, and yet. (mark, the

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shortness of a tyrant's triumph, when free men with brave leaders oppose him), while the Consul was yet speaking, dispatches were entering his harbours to tell him that his boasts were vain, and that liberty was victorious in St. Domingo. Before the first day of that month, the "flying and helpless brigand" he spoke of, had defeated and ailed the veteran armies of France, driven them back to the coast, besieged them there, and obliged the captain-general solemnly to renounce, by the establishment of Negro freedom, the whole object of the war.

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PART II.

Bounaparte thought that he had triumphed over freedom in the West Indies, with the same ease as in Europe. But he was mistaken. He did not consider, or did not know, the difference between the state of his French citizens, and that of West India slaves, and that the feelings of animal nature might prove harder to subdue than the love of an injured country, and the pride of freedom.

Had the object of the war in St. Domingo been only such as was falsely given out there, in the beginning, to the deluded cultivators, that dreadful war would soon have ended, and probably never revived. The authority of the republic, which had in truth never been disputed, would have been more firmly established by the early successes of the French army, and for any other purpose but restoring a hated and intolerable slavery, would have been easily maintained. General Leclerc was, as we have seen, master of the colony, and Toussaint seemingly ruined, by the middle of March in the last year, when the very success, of the French General proved fatal to him, by inspiring a rash confidence which made him suddenly dismiss that cunning and hypocrisy from which h had hitherto derived his chief success.

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Leclerc, elated with victory, and thinking that he had now nothing more to fear from the Black troops, imagined that the sooner he put the plantation Negroes again under the drivers and the whips, the better he should secure his conquest, and the more honour he should obtain; for this was the true, and every where but in St. Domingo, the acknowledged object of all his bloody labours. It is probable too, that the orders of his imperious brother-in-law obliged him to make this change, the moment he was master of the island.

By whatever motive he was urged to such rashness, certain it is the French general thought it was now time to drop the mask. In the month of March, I know not exactly on what day, but it was probably about the middle of that month, he published an order, expressly restoring to the philters all their former power over the Negroes belonging to their estates.

The worthy General 'seems here to have driven harder than the planters themselves desired, or at least than they thought to be safe; for about the same time, it was necessary to take strong measures to compel such of them as were in the island, to live upon their own estates; and a writer of their party, in a letter from Port-au-Prince, of March 4th, in speaking of this order with praise, yet shews his doubts of its being practicable: "Orders have just been received which will probably reestablish agriculture in our plains and mountains, if they are capable of being executed. Proprietors,

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or their attornies, are restored to their ancient authority over the Negro cultivators.” *

If even the planters were unprepared for this bold measure, judge what a thunder-clap it was to the astonished cultivators! The proclamation were not yet five weeks old, by which they were promised the full enjoyment of their freedom, upon the sacred words of the same Captain General, ant of the Consul himself. How amazed, then, mud they have been at the impudence, as well as baseness, of these dissemblers!

But they ought chiefly to have blamed their own folly, and their ingratitude to the brave Toussaint. In vain had that wise and faithful leads; said to them: "Distrust the whites, they will betray you if they can; their desire evidently manifest is the restoration of slavery; their proclamations are only formed to deceive the friends of liberty; do every thing to avert the horrid yoke with which we are threatened." ** They had not listened in time to these truths, -- they had taken the word of the French invaders rather than that of their faithful chief. They had foolishly thought “We have nothing to do with the quarrel; we shall have to work in the same way which ever conquers." They now saw their mistake too late.

* M. Peltier's Journal, Paris, pendant 1'annee 1802, No. 250. page 521.

** Toussaint's Letter to Dosage, published in the Monitor, and copied into the London papers of May 26, 1802. See the letter at large below, page 70.

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The Negro troops who had joined their invaders, no doubt were also alarmed at this step of the French General. It was a breach of faith with them, also; for they had expressly come in under the proclamations which promised freedom not to themselves only, but to all their brethren. They could not be so blind as not to see, that equal treachery, and a fate as horrid, was in store for themselves ; but they durst not immediately revolt, for they had been prudently broken into small bodies, placed at a distance from each other, and mixed with the white troops ; and had also, by the discharge upon various pretences, of great numbers from each of their corps, been greatly reduced in strength; at the same time they were closely watched by the European French.

If West India slavery were not, in its nature, a thousand times worse than any thing called slavery in Europe; the Negroes thus betrayed and divided, and dispirited as they, no doubt, were, would probably have submitted, at least for a while, till a fairer opportunity of resistance should offer. But men who have been delivered from that "horrible yoke," will risk and suffer every thing, rather than receive it again.

Toussaint well knew this, and therefore saw at once his means of victory, in this imprudent wickedness of his enemies.

Instead of continuing his flight among the mountains; he .turned short towards the north coast of the island, where a very extensive and fertile plain surrounds Cape Francois, and where

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there was, in consequence, the greatest number of cultivators. He summoned them to arms, and they were not now, as before, deaf to his voice. They rose in a mass around him, hailing him as their deliverer and guardian angel.

These new troops were badly armed, or rather, for the most part, not armed at all, except with hoes, and a kind of cutlass, which is used in the West Indies, for trimming the green fences. But their numbers and zeal enabled their brave leader to surmount all difficulties. He poured like a torrent over the whole plain of the north, every where seizing the French posts, and driving their divisions before him, till they found refuge within the fortifications of Cape Francois.

Toussaint had no battering artillery; yet he surrounded the town, made several sharp attacks upon it up to the very mouths of the cannon, and would certainly have taken the place, had not the fleet been lying in the harbour. The French were obliged to land the marines, and 1200 seamen from the fleet, to raise new batteries, and to haul the ships close in shore, where their broadsides might play upon the besiegers. Yet, after all, the place must have yielded to the intrepid Toussaint and hi husbandmen, if General Hardy, with a grand division of the French army from the south, had not! advanced by forced marches, and thrown himself into the town. The Captain-General himself was obliged to follow by sea, quitting all his conquests in the south, after having marched back all his victorious detachments, from the interior to the coast

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It is truly wonderful to consider, in how short a time these great reverses were effected. About the middle of March, the French were at the summit of their successes and confidence; yet by the 9th of April, they were reduced to such extremity, that Leclerc, besieged at the Cape, and hardly able to maintain himself there, was upon the point of retreating by sea, to the Spanish part of the island.

I cannot detain my readers so long as would be necessary, were I to relate all the reverses and disasters which the French sustained in various quarters of the island, from their rash attempt to restore the cart-whip slavery. The Negroes were now, everywhere, become as hostile to them, as they were disposed to be friendly before. But at the Cape, the chief struggle was maintained, and the deepest miseries, felt. The fever began now to fight for the Negroes, and that capital became a mere pest-house; though till this reverse of fortune, the French troops had been remarkably earthy. Powerful reinforcements arrived from France, but all to no purpose; Toussaint still pressed the siege; and all that the large garrison could do, was to defend themselves within the wars and trenches.

General Leclerc now felt and bitterly lamented his error. He had too soon dropped the mask, and saw that, unless some new means of deceit could be found, all was lost; and yet with all the ignorance of the cultivators, and all their dislike

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to the hardships of war, it seemed very difficult to delude them again.

It was too late to deny that there had been a design to restore slavery; but it was perhaps possible, as Leclerc supposed, to make the Negroes believe that the Consul, and he himself, had been deceived as to the true state of the colony; and that convinced by disasters, how vain the late attempt was, he had repented of and abandoned the purpose. The Negroes did not know that Buonaparte was too proud, and too fond of despotism, ever to give up the plan he had formed against their freedom; therefore they might reasonably expect, that what his brother-in-law, the Captain-General, stipulated, the Consul would ratify and confirm.

It seemed, therefore, on the whole, not impossible, that. artful professions of a change of measures, and new promises to maintain freedom, might gain credit, and a treaty be patched up with his black enemies, so as to give him a new opportunity of dividing the people from their military leaders, and getting the latter into his power; after which he was resolved they should hear no more again of the cart-whip, till he had made surer work, by destroying Toussaint and his adherents.

With these righteous views, General Leclerc framed a proclamation which is a perfect master piece of cunning and imposture. Without expressly acknowledging the injustice of his past measures, or his design against freedom, and even

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without ceasing to speak of the first resistance of the armed Negroes, as rebellious, he artfully began this paper with an implied apology for his late attempts, on the score of his ignorance of the colony, and of the character of the people. He dexterously passed over his own orders for the restoration of slavery, and treated what had been notoriously done to that end, as arising from the delay of forming a free government, for which the war had not left him a sufficient time; as if the known attempts to bring back the cart-whip had been a natural and necessary consequence of the want of such positive regulations to the contrary, as he was too busy to make till now.

He next affected to frame a constitution for the island, of which liberty and equality to all the inhabitants, without distinction of colour, was to be the basis.

This, he added, should not be definitive, till approved by the French government; but the condition was so worded, that it might be applied either to the basis of liberty and equality, or to a most unmeaning plan, of organization as he called it, which was to be founded upon that basis.

In addition to this important concession, he by the same instrument, called an assembly of representatives of the island, who were to be appointed without distinction of colour, to consult and advise for the general good; and the powers of this assembly were as carefully limited, as if the impostor had really designed to establish such a form of government. He knew that the Negroes had not political knowledge enough to care about such limitations;

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all they would value or understand was the acknowledgment of their freedom, and the admission of Negroes to a share in the government; yet the captain-general's caution as to the powers of the assembly, would serve to convince them of his sincerity. This vile production was dated the 5th of April, and immediately after, sent into the camp of the Negroes, and to every part of the island; and the stratagem had all the immediate effects its base author could have desired.

The Negroes, at large, were naturally weary of the war; they were still cut off from the chief ports, and foreigners were afraid to attempt to trade with them, and consequently they were deprived of all the necessaries and comforts of life, with which commerce used to supply them. The cultivators also, were, by their new duties as soldiers, not only exposed to extreme dangers and hardships, but separated from their wives and children, and no longer able to till their provision-grounds for the support of their families.

They saw no speedy end to these and other evils but by a peace; for reinforcements were daily at riving from France, and they could have no hope while that was the case, of being able to finish the war, by expelling the invaders from the fortified towns and harbours on the coast. For freedom only could they be willing to fight and to suffer such hardships; and if freedom were now sincere offered, what more could they desire.

Whilst the ignorant multitude thus reasoned and felt, the enlightened Toussaint probably saw the

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matter in a different view; he knew the craft of his enemies, and feared perhaps that these offers, like the first, were only snares for himself and his brethren. But it is easier in such cases, for a true patriot to form right opinions, than to prevail on the people to follow them; even his faithful second in command, Christophe, probably was inclined to the side of peace; and perhaps the army of cultivators under that general's command, were clamorous with him, to persuade him to come into their own wish, and embrace the offered terms.

The French government, in its public accounts, pretended that Christophe deserted his commander-in-chief, and by making his own submission, obliged Toussaint to follow the example; but this was just as true, as that both these Negro chiefs egged their lives of Leclerc, and surrendered as pardoned rebels, which, as we shall presently see, was the bare-faced pretence of the Consul on this occasion, in order to hide their triumph and his own disgrace. This slander on the brave Christophe, as invented to make the pretended submission of our hero, at a time when he was known to be victorious, appear less monstrously unnatural, and incredible, that every thinking man must have seen that gross pretext to be. If any truth were mixed up with the many falsehoods in those impudent accounts, the fact probably was, that both Christophe, and Dessalines, the Negro general next in authority, were dupes to Leclerc's flagitious contrivance, and desirous of peace, and that their persuasions and wishes determined our hero

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to treat with the French general, contrary to his own better judgment.

However this may have been, certain it is, the proclamation soon answered the desired end ; and that prior to the 8th of May 1S02, a peace was concluded with our hero, and all the generals and troops under his command; in which the whole people of St. Domingo concurred.

Thus were the fruits of victory suddenly snatched out of the hands of Toussaint, and thus only, were the French invaders delivered for a while from that fate, which their wickedness richly deserved.

My readers may perhaps remember the misrepresentations of the Consul, to which I have now just alluded. When the news of this peace first reached Europe, Buonaparte had the hardihood to call it the submission of Toussaint and his generals. He published a letter in the Moniteur, to which he put the name of General Leclerc, and in which he actually went so far as to represent Toussaint coming in a manner with a rope about his neck, begging for pardon as a guilty rebel; and General Leclerc is made even to refuse for a long time, to let him so escape hanging.

There is a boldness in the Consul's impostures, which clearly point out their author; for no other man would have assurance enough to devise them.

Leclerc certainly would not, for the sake of his own credit, have written such self-contradictory absurdities as that pretended letter contained; his character indeed was somewhat unfairly compromised, by the publication two or three days afterwards, of

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the proclamation just mentioned; and also of a letter from Leclerc to Toussaint, from the Captain general's own Gazette, at Cape Francois ; for these papers both gave the lie to every sentence in the pretended official dispatches, and shewed to all Europe, that Leclerc himself, instead of the Negro chief, had been obliged to submit and make concessions.

The letter of Leclerc to this hardly-pardoned rebel, contains the following passages: -- You, General; and your troops, will be employed and treated like the rest of' my army. With regard to your self, you desire repose, and you deserve it. After a man has sustained, for several years the burthen of the government of St. Domingo, I apprehend he needs repose. I leave you at liberty to retire to which ever o f your habitations you please. I rely so much on the attachment you bear to the colony of St. Domingo, as to believe that you will employ the moment of leisure which you may have in your retreat, in communicating to me your views respecting the means to be taken to make agriculture and commerce again, flourish. As soon as a list and statement of the troops under General Dessalines are transmitted to me, I will communicate to you my instructions as to the positions they are to take.”*

How condescending this style in the great General Leclerc, towards a convict just saved at his own humble and repeated petition from the

* See this letter copied from the French Gazettes in the London news papers of June 19.

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guillotine! How gracious in a conqueror thus to leave his vanquished enemy in command over his own rebellious troops, and over the army of Dessalines, another pardoned rebel:

In most countries perhaps, it is too true that the accounts given of distant events in the time of war, are not always framed with a strict regard to truth; but never probably before, in the history of the world, did any government disgrace itself by falsehoods so gross as Buonaparte published upon this occasion.

Two things very honourable to our hero's character, we learn from this letter of general Leclerc; First, it appears that Toussaint, who even before he had conquered, was offered "rank, honours, fortune," all that the Consul could bestow, asked no favour for himself when in a condition to dictate his own terms, He obtains all he asked, and that all, is retirement. Secondly, we find that his retirement to private life was his own choice, and not, as the Consul shamelessly pretended, a thing prescribed to him by Leclerc. It was a virtuous choice, and, notwithstanding the event, a wise one. Perfidy might have surprised him anywhere, but it was by retirement only, that after what was past, he could avoid the risk of incurring suspicion, even with a government not disposed to be perfidious. Constrained, in all probability by the general wish, to make a peace which he saw would be insecure, he took the course which was under such circumstances, the least dangerous for himself and for the public. If the Captain-general meant well, it

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would leave no motive, if ill, no decent pretext, for the violation of the treaty. In these last measures of Toussaint, we find therefore, as in all the rest of his illustrious career, a rare union of wisdom, dignity, and virtue.

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As our hero here sheathes his sword for ever, let me stop to wipe it from a stain, which the venom of his murderers has dropped on it.

There is, in spite of slander, no just ground to believe that one drop of blood not shed fairly in the field, and in the heat of action, ever tarnished the glory of Toussaint.

There is even positive evidence to prove his innocence of any such crime, though he has had no means of making his own defence; and though the ruffians who stifled his voice, have been for the most part his only historians.

In order to establish these truths, I must here depart a little from the plan of this little work, and offer a few remarks which will detain my readers longer than I could wish; for the character of our hero, and that of his enemies too, are deeply involved in the truth or falsehood of those foul accusations, which charge him and his troops with massacreing their prisoners.

First, I would observe, that no massacre or other cruelty has been charged against Toussaint and his Negroes, but by their barbarous and treacherous enemies; and that these were driven to make such

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charges, whether true or false, in order to justify their own acknowledged conduct in giving no quarter. As to the rumours brought from the island by foreigners, these were only French assertions at second hand; for no foreigner has reported that he saw any massacre, or other atrocity, committed by the Negroes. Their enemies were the only people with whom the merchants, and mariners who visited the island, had any intercourse, or from whom they could obtain any information; and as these visitors often saw Negroes, who were brought in prisoners, put to death in cold blood, it was necessary for the murderers to charge the party of the sufferers with like conduct, in order to lessen the horror which strangers could not but feel and express at such proceedings. It is clear, also, that the accounts, brought by such people to America and other places, were for the most part, false; because they in general differ from, and far surpass in extravagance the stories, which the French generals or the Consul have published in Europe on the same subject; and the latter certainly would not have concealed or lessened an crimes of those persecuted enemies, which ha really been committed.

Secondly, these charges not only rest upon the testimony of enemies, and of cruel enemies, who were driven to make them, whether true or false] for the sake of their own characters, but of enemies, who in addition to such grounds of distrust have forfeited all claim to belief in any case, from habits of the grossest falsehood. It might be

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clearly shewn that the letters, or pretended letters of Leclerc and Villaret, in which these charges against the Negroes are contained, are in all other expects false, almost from beginning to end; so hat if these charges are true, they are almost the only truths contained in those long letters.

Now if enmity and hatred, and self-interest and falsehood, in a witness, are not enough to overthrown his testimony, I know not how a false accusation can ever be rejected on account of the badness of the authority upon which it stands.

The defence of Toussaint, however, need not rest here; for, thirdly, we have his former good character and humane conduct to rely upon, and these ought in reason, to protect him against the belief of a charge of cruelty, if it rested even upon much better evidence than the bare words of Buonaparte and Leclerc. It is not likely that he, who had often, as his enemies confess, prevented massacres and murders in former wars, even at the hazard of his interest with the Negroes, and of his life itself, should in his last war begin to commit such crimes; and that too against the most powerful enemy he had ever had to deal with, and whose vengeance it would seem hardly possible that he should be able finally to avoid.

Fourthly, and this demands particular attention, if Toussaint was really guilty of the charges which his oppressors have brought against him, they had in their hands much better proofs of his guilt than their own assertions, and yet have not produced those proofs. They repeatedly make mention, of

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their having possession of letters written by Toussaint to the inferior Negro Generals and others, which as they assert, contain full proofs of his barbarous and wicked disposition and conduct.

Leclerc, for instance, in his letter of March 9th, thus writes, or is represented to have written: -- " The cruelty end barbarity of Toussaint, are without example --the letters we have found in his baggage, or which have been delivered up to us by the Blacks who have abandoned his party, characterize a soul equally, hypocritical and atrocious."*

Admiral Villaret, in his letter by the same conveyance; says, in speaking of Toussaint and Christophe, "Their intercepted correspondence proves, that the general and absolute orders of those sanguinary chief's, were, to massacre the whites, and to set fire to all the plantations, upon the first appearance of a French squadron."** In the same dispatch, the Admiral mentions other letters of Toussaint, addressed to the commander of Cape Nichola Mole, which were found at the capture that station.

New where are all these letters? Why are they not laid before the public, to support the accusation and the abuse so anxiously lavished upon their author? Villaret and Leclerc pretend to appeal to them, but do not produce them, nor venture even to quote their language. They send them to the Consul, *** and he acts in the same way; he appeals

* Leclerc's Dispatches of March 9. London Newspapers May 2sth, 1802.

** Villaret's Dispatches of March 4. London Newspapers of April 19th, 1802.

*** Villaret's Letter of February 10. London Newspapers March 20th, 1802.

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to the letters also, and he also suppresses their contents. Can any thing more be wanting to satisfy thinking man, that these letters, if produced, would be in truth, evidences, not of the guilt of the inter, but of his innocence of the foul charges in question

One however, and one only, of Toussaint's letters, have the Consul and his agents selected as fit meet the public eye; and this, for the reader's better satisfaction, I shall here copy from their own gazette.

Toussaint Louverture, General of St. Domingo, to Citizen Domage, General of Brigade, Commander in Chief of the District of Jeremie.

My dear General -- I send to you my Aid-de-camp, Chaney, who is the bearer of the present dispatch, and will communicate to you my sentiments.

As the place of Jeremie is rendered very strong by its natural advantages, you will maintain yourself in it, and defend it with the courage which I know you possess. Distrust the whites; they will betray you if they can. Their desire evidently manifested, is the restoration of slavery.

I therefore give you a carte blanche for your conduct; all which you shall do, will be well done. Raise the cultivators in mass, and convince them fully of this truth, that they must place no confidence in those artful agents who may have secretly received the proclamations of the white men of France, and would circulate them clandestinely, in order to seduce the friends of liberty.

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I have ordered the General of Brigade, Laplume, to burn the town of Cayes, the other towns, and all the plains, should they be unable to resist the enemy's force; and thus all the troops of the different garrisons, and all the cultivators, will be enabled to reinforce you at Jeremie. You will entertain a perfect good understanding with General Laplume, in order to execute with ease, what may be necessary. You will employ in the planting of provisions, all the women occupied in cultivation.

Endeavour, as much as possible, to acquaint me with your situation.

I rely entirely upon you, and leave you completely at liberty to perform every thing which may be requisite to free us from the horrid yoke with which we are threatened.

I wish you good health

A true copy. (Signed) Toussaint Louverture.
(Signed) The General of Brigade commanding the department of the South,
Laplume.

In this letter, so far is Toussaint from directing massacres, that in the most urgent case, his severest orders are only to burn the places which could not be defended; which, as I have already observed on behalf of Christophe, is clearly a lawful measure of defence against an invading enemy. In the war our hero had to sustain, it was a measure peculiar just and necessary, because he had nothing human to rely upon for final safety, but the inconveniecies which European troops would feel from the climate; and to leave them the shelter of the town or even of the buildings on the estates, would, by

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lessening their exposure to the sun and rain, have believed them in some measure from that important disadvantage.

Here let me remark by the way, that the bitter and frequent reproaches which the Consul has thrown upon the Negro Chiefs for this defensive measure of burning, and the great pains which he has taken to fix upon Toussaint, the being chief author of that fair exercise of the right of war, affords of itself pretty strong proof that there was nothing truly to allege against him, of a really cruel or unwarrantable kind.

Certain it is at least, that no more objectionable letter from Toussaint was found, than this which I have laid before my readers, or it would not have been the only one picked out by his enemies, for publication. It was a false assertion, therefore, and a calumny, that they had intercepted letter from our hero, directing massacres. It was equally false that they had found any such letters directing the burning of the towns as soon as the French fleet should appear.

The falsehood of both charges might be further inferred, if necessary, from the fact admitted by his enemies, that no such orders were any where executed. They do not pretend that either massacre or burning took place anywhere, on the appearance of the fleet. Even Cape Francois was not burnt till two days after the fleet's appearance; and till the town could be defended no longer.

Here surely I might safely rest Toussaint's defence against these slanders; but it has pleased Providence to make his innocence manifest in a

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great variety of ways, and to confound in a striking manner, the efforts of malice and calumny, to impeach as if to display a particular regard for the character of this distinguished patriot, and devout servant of God. The incautious confessions of his enemies have given, in most points, the direct lie to their own accusations.

I here beg my readers to refer to what was said in defence of Christophe, in page 33, and to the important passages there extracted from the French gazettes.

The official accounts accused Toussaint indirectly, and the private ones, industriously circulated in France, positively charged him, with having massacred, through the means of that Lieutenant General, all the White inhabitants of the Cape. Villaret, as we have just seen, boldly affirms, to countenance this fabrication, that orders in writing were to massacre all the White people upon the first appearance of the fleet ; and as it appeared that the White inhabitants of the Cape were actually carried off, it was doubtless meant to be understood, as it actually was understood and believed in this country, that they were carried off to be slaughtered.

Yet what was the event? Three months after, all these inhabitants are found to be alive, and a restored by Toussaint to their homes, when he made peace with Leclerc. All the intermediate time, they had been in the power of the Negro chief; they had been with him on the mountains during the whole of his retreat, yet not a man of them was missing.

At the time of the invasion, it was in like

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manner announced, that the Negro troops at Port-au-Prince, had carried away with them, in their retreat from that place, a great number of Whites, among whom was Citizen Sabes, Aid-de-camp of the French general, Boudet.

That these prisoners were massacred was not indeed expressly said in the official letter, but nobody could read that and the succeeding government accounts, without concluding that not one of them had been left alive. Non-official accounts went further, and expressly represented them all as having been massacred. General Leclerc afterwards says, or rather was made by his brother-in-law to say, "I can find no terms to express the ferocity of Toussaint. He has massacred more than 10,000 inhabitants, Blacks, Whites, and Mulattoes. We collected in our several expeditions nearly 8000* persons, men, women, and children, whom he intended to massacre."**

After these positive assertions of the Consul, (whom I verily believe to be the original inventor of all these charges in the pretended dispatches) can it be denied, that the authors meant it to be believed, that the Negro chief had put all his prisoners to death?

Yet it would doubtless appear had there been any opportunity for such a truth to escape, that the prisoners made at Port-au-Prince, like those of

* It is either 8000 or 3000, the Newspaper I copy from is not clearly legible on this part, and I have not time to search for another.

** Official Letter of March 9th. London Newspapers of May 26.

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the Cape, were all humanely preserved. I infer this in particular from the fact, that Citizen Sabes, the Aid-de-camp, though carried off among them, to be murdered on the 4th of February, is actually brought on the stage alive, by Buonaparte, on the 1st of April following. It was then found convenient to bring him to life again, that he might be the bearer of one of Toussaint's pretended supplications for pardon. Now who can believe that he alone, one of the hated White invaders, would have been spared, if the innocent inhabitants of Port-au-Prince, who were carried off in his company, had all been murdered?

The Consul himself, shallow and careless though he has been in these inventions, foresaw that the production of Citizen Sabes, would in this view be inconsistent with his past calumnies, and therefore made an attempt, though an absurd one, to reconcile the safety of this citizen with his former fictions. Leclerc is represented as thus speaking of Sabes's escape: --

“He was always carried by the Blacks with them from morne to morne, and from wood to wood, and was twenty times upon the point of being put to death. The detail of the massacres of which was witness, make one shudder."

How Sabes came to escape these massacre though twenty times on the point of death, is left entirely to conjecture.

This futile attempt to support a detected falsehood, is obviously the spawn of the same gross invention, which rescued from Toussaint in the course

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of several expeditions, 8000 men, women, and children, intended to be massacred.

To drag his victims about with him in his flight from some strange want of power to get rid them by assassination, was, it seems, Toussaint's ordinary fortune and employment. Whilst he and his armed Negroes were hunted from morne to morne, and found it hard enough to save their own lives, they chose to encumber themselves with citizen Sabes, during near two months, and with 8000 other citizens, for a time not specified, determined all the while to put them to death, and in, the mean time providing for them at an expense that could ill be afforded.

Such are the detected falsehoods, and such the flagrant inconsistencies, in these charges against the humane and brave Toussaint. He has had no trial, not even before a tribunal of his enemies; he has had no means of defending himself at the bar of he public; his voice has been stifled by the strong arm of despotism; not a pen in St. Domingo or France, but those of his slanderers and murderers, as been allowed to record or remark upon his conduct, and yet it has pleased God to provide the leans of clearing his fair fame, to the credit of his Christian principles, and to the disgrace of his infidel oppressors.

His innocence stands established upon every, round that could have been demanded or wished for, with the fairest and most indulgent means of defence ; and upon many different grounds, each of which would have been singly sufficient. We could be bound to acquit him, were it only from the bad character of his perjured accusers, from

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their enmity, and the self-interest which urged the accusation. Their suppression of evidence which if guilty, would have proved him so, is a still stronger answer to their hostile testimony, and his former character, were the question doubtful, should decide it in his favour. But in addition to all this, we have proof of his innocence in the very evidence selected by malice against him. To crown all, we have for the falsehood of much of the charge, the confessions of the accusers themselves; and all the rest of their story when examined, is found to be not only vague and unsupported, but unnatural, inconsistent, and absurd.

Can any honest man, then, refuse to say that of massacre or inhumanity of any kind, Toussaint was not guilty?

And now that this Christian hero is justified from these feeble though bold-faced slanders, let us look for a moment, at the conduct of his enemies.

Here my readers will be spared the trouble of reasoning -- they have only to read, and I have only to copy, the confessions, or rather the boasts of the ruffians themselves.

"Being attacked by the rebels, he killed sixty-eight, and made forty-five prisoners, among whom was the chief of this division of the rebels. He was instantly shot.”*

"General Hardy surrounded on the Coupe a

* Villaret's Official Letter of March 4: London Papers of April 19, 1802.

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l'Inde six hundred Negroes, WHO RECEIVED NO QUARTER." *

"General Salines possessed himself of one of the enemy's camps, with baggage, and put TWO HUNDRED MEN TO THE SWORD''. **

"The enemy threw himself upon the Antibonite, &c. &c. The WRETCHES were put to the sword." ***

The enemy took the resolution of evacuating La Crete a Pierrot -- they were overwhelmed by our troops, who gave them no quarter.” ****

It is needless to go further with such extracts. It is unnecessary also to judge of what horrors remain untold, when these miscreants, fighting for an object as contrary to justice and gratitude as to their own solemn promises, avowed such conduct early in the war.

It was necessary that these barbarous commanders, or the Consul for them, should wish to involve the brave and humane Toussaint in the shame of equal enormities. For my own part, I can justify him upon none but his own Christian principles, for abstaining from all retaliation. Had he been an infidel like themselves, he might, consistently with worldly honour, and worldly humanity, have put all their adherents to the sword, and the

* Leclerc's Official Letter of March 24. London papers of May 26.

** Ibid.

*** Ibid.

**** Admiral Villaret's Official Letter of April S. London Papers of May 26.

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massacres they falsely impute to him, could, if real, not have been complaints in their mouths, without effrontery matchless as their own.

At a period subsequent to the death of Toussaint, the conduct of these ferocious invaders was such, that, if detailed, it might almost efface from the remembrance of my readers, the cold blooded massacres already noticed. Not merely prisoners of war, but hundreds and thousands of unoffending fellow creatures, whom the savage Europeans themselves called innocent, have been daily and nightly suffocated and drowned for the sole purpose of rooting out their hapless race. As to prisoners of war, simple death has been thought far too mild a fate for them. If report may be trusted, they have been treated in a way so horrid, beyond all example in this bad world, that though I believe the dreadful rumour, for the sake of our common natures I will not repeat it.

Let us now proceed to the last act of the illustrious life of Toussaint. I shall write it with shame as well as indignation; for I am a white man, and a native of Europe.

The hero had retired to his peaceful family mansion at Gonaives, which is on the south west coast of St. Domingo, at a little distance from St. Marc He had there a little estate which was called by his own surname, Louverture, and where he perhaps hoped long to enjoy the peace and leisure to which he had for ten years been a stranger, and to indulge his warm affections in the society of his loved wife and their surviving children.

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The two promising youths, of whom I spoke in former part of this history, were probably now no more, and had left a melancholy blank in the e sly circle. I suspect that they had either perished in the war, or been put to death by the humane and virtuous Leclerc, to punish the crimes of their father.

I would not willingly lay to the charge of that bad man, who is now gone to his dreadful account, any sin of which he is not guilty: I therefore do not assert as a certain fact that the young men were murdered*.

Toussaint, however, was a Christian, and therefore he was, no doubt, beginning to taste with

* It is said by Coisnon, whose narrative was formerly quoted, that the lads were sent back to their father, and detained by him, at the end of the fruitless negotiation in February. But for this act of generosity, so unlike all the other; conduct of Leclerc, we have only the word of his own agent; and it so happens that we hear of the hostage youths no more. If they had been with their father they would have been crested, and sent away like the rest, as we shall presently see; or it is expressly stated, that the whole family was sent to France; yet the arrival of his wife, with two children only, vas noticed in the French papers; these were not spoken of as the young men so well known in France; and it is certain that Toussaint had other children old enough to be under a tutor's care in the island of St. Domingo, at the time of the invasion.

There has since been a rumour through America of the young Toussaints being at the head of an insurrection, but it proved soundless. I have anxiously watched for some notice of them since, but in vain. They are missing, therefore, ever since heir return from Ennery to the Cape, and it belongs to their keepers, to account for them.

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thankfulness the family blessings that remained to him, without repining for those which it had pleased God to take away. But Providence had new trials at hand, for the patience of this distinguished servant.

On a sudden, at midnight, the Creole frigate, supported by the Hero, a 74 gun ship, both dispatched on purpose by Leclerc from the Cape, stood in towards the Calm Beach, near Gonaives. Boats, with troops, immediately after landed, and surrounded the house of Toussaint, while he was at rest with the faithful companion of all his cares and dangers.

Brunet, a brigadier-general, and Ferrari, aid-decamp to Leclerc, who have both been praised in the Moniteur for this honourable service, entered the chamber of the hero with a file of grenadiers, and demanded of him to go, with all his family, on board the frigate.

The lion was in the toils, and assistance was hopeless, but Toussaint was still himself; still dignified, generous, and feeling. He submitted as far, as concerned his own fate, without gratifying hi base enemies by a murmur: but, alive to the fear and to the dangers of his wife and children, he re quested that they might be left at home, and would have made that the condition of his own compliant This condition, however, his ruthless oppression would not grant; for the destruction of all who were dearest to Toussaint, was part of their perfidious purpose. An irresistible military force

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appeared, and the whole family, including the niece of a deceased brother, were carried on board the frigate, and from thence embarked in the Hero, which proceeded with them immediately to France.

I will not offer such an insult to my readers as he Consul did to Frenchmen and to Europe, in supposing that the gross perfidy of this proceeding, an be made to bear a serious doubt.

What estimate could the Corsican despot form of the judgments of other men when he talked of Toussaint's conspiring so soon after the peace! How could this great man have hoped that conspiracy would put him in a better condition than he lately stood in with a triumphant army at the gates of Cape Francois, and his enemies perishing in its hospitals? Yet this was the position he had within three weeks exchanged for peace. Or take the Consul even on his own false grounds, if our hero had begged his life at the head of his army, because he could no longer resist, what motive could he so soon have had, or, what hope could he have placed in resistance, now when that army was no more at his command, but had entered into the service of his conquerors.

To crown the wicked absurdity, the pretended proof of his treason; was the writing a confidential letter to Christophe, who, as we are told by the same account, had three weeks before deserted and betrayed him.

I mention not these absurdities with a view seriously to refute them, but rather to shew how ill

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this shallow despot, for such, in spite of his great fortune, he is, can give plausibility to his own impostures.

When the distance from the Cape to Gonaives is considered, and that there had elapsed only about a month from Leclerc's peace with Toussaint, to his dispatches, giving an account of the arrest of that general, and of his departure for France, it seems probable that the ships of war were sent from the Cape, to seize him almost as soon as he had arrived at his home.

The history of mankind does not afford an instance of perfidious conduct so shockingly gross and shameless as this action. I will not even except the Consul's own conduct towards Pelage of Guadaloupe, though that General was treated in the same manner, as avowed in the Moniteur, immediately after his brave and important services to the French government, and without even an attempt to lay a single fault to his charge.

The measures of the Captain-general had been so well taken for this treacherous proceeding towards Toussaint, that the Negro troops and officers, who were indignant at Ouch base usage of their great leader, could make no effectual resistance. They had been previously dispersed through the island in different garrisons, and mixed with the European troops, and were besides closely watched.

Two principal chiefs among them, however, had the courage to fly to arms, in the hopeless attempt to rescue, or die with their brave commander. I am

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sorry that I cannot record the names of these generous men. Leclerc, in adding to his own former disgraces, the infamy of shedding their blood, has only spoken of them as chiefs. "Two insurgent chiefs are already arrested; I have ordered them to be shot." He avows, in the same letter, that a hundred of the principal confidential friends of Toussaint had been arrested; and though he lays nothing to their charge but having possessed the friendship of that hero, he tells us, without ceremony, of their being also embarked on ship-board as exiles. He might have said mere briefly, "these I have ordered to be drowned." The terms are, "I have sent a part of them on board the frigate Mucron, which has orders to proceed to the Mediterranean; the rest have been distributed on board the different ships."

Where are these unaccused and innocent prisoners? It was supposed from the mention of the Mediterranean, that they had been sold as slaves on the coast of Barbary ; but the Consul had by this time invented a shorter method of getting rid of the sable friends of freedom, and had, no doubt, sent it for the use of "the virtuous" Leclerc, at St. Domingo, as well as of Richepause, at Guadaloupe. The Mediterranean was probably the watch-word by which these monsters understood one another, when they wrote of their mid-sea drownings. Of the prisoners in the frigate Mucron, and of the friends of Toussaint,

* See his official letter of June 10th.

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confined in the ships at St. Domingo, the public has heard no more; and certain it is, that soon after this period, the French generals drowned their prisoners by hundreds and thousands, even in their very roadsteads and harbours, without trial, without distinction of age or sex, guilt or innocence, without remorse or shame, and almost in the face of day. The only trouble they took, was to put out a short way from the shore in the evening, and discharge their human cargoes, so as to be at anchor again before day-break. So near the island was it done, that the floating bodies of the victims, too numerous for the sharks to devour, continually shocked the eyes of the British and American seamen who were passing near that horrible coast.

If the elder sons of Toussaint had not been murdered, as I suspect they were, in the war, they were probably among the number of these 100 innocents to whom the attachment of their father was fatal; for as I have already observed, all his family were made prisoners, and yet two child only arrived with the mother in France.

Let us now follow the oppressed hero in his to that country.

He was refused, as far I am able to collect, comfort of conversing with his family on the passage In other respects, at least, he was treated with t utmost rigour; for even the public French accounts disclosed that he was confined constantly in his bin, and there guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets.

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No sooner had he arrived in the harbour of Brest than he was hurried on shore; and it was now that his fortitude had to sustain its severest. Even the fierce and cruel Leclerc had thought it too harsh to separate him from his beloved wife children; but now he was forced by the merciless Consul, to bid them a last adieu. They were detained prisoners on ship-board, while he was carried to a solitary cell in a distant castle in the country.

How truly dreadful to the feeling hearts of Toussaint and his family must have been this separation! He knew full well, nor could his faithful wife be ignorant, that they were to meet no more in this life. Till the last trumpet shall sound, that face which had beamed affection on him for thirty years, which was now beginning to be furrowed with his own cares, and which he save then bathed with his own sorrows, must be beheld no more. Those little innocents too, the last fruit of their conjugal love; that orphan daughter of his brave brother, * who perished at his side in the cause of freedom; and those faithful servants whose tears witness their attachment; all must receive his last ad farewell.

And, oh! in what hands does he leave all these beloved objects? to what a fate are they reserved?

* Paul Louverture was here meant, who bravely attempted defend the city of St. Domingo against the invaders, and at first repelled their assault. It was supposed that he had fallen, it there is reason to doubt this fact, for he is named by French writers, as having taken a lead in the last revolution.

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He knows his ruffian enemies too well to hope they will be suffered to live. Dear repositories of the confidence of Toussaint, privy to the foul mysteries of his fate, they are doomed not long to survive him. Bitter thought, that their love, and their relation to himself, consigned them to a violent death, and that his presence must no longer sustain them!

Unfortunately, we have no cool willing spectator like Coisnon to describe this separation -- but its bitter circumstances may, in part, be supposed. Methinks I see the hero endeavouring to soothe the sufferings of his family, and to hide his own; while the unhappy group surround him in the cabin, and force him to linger with them, though the officers of the Consul are calling from the deck loudly for dispatch.

At length the ruffians will bear no longer delay; and Toussaint strives gently to disengage himself, from the embraces of anguish and affection.

I see the agonized wife clasping his neck with convulsive force; and the elder boy clinging to his waist, while the other embraces his knee with its little arms, and screams at the approach of the soldiers.

The word is repeatedly given, the ruffians beg to force them, asunder -- a general cry arises --Toussaint is borne out of the cabin, and put into boat that is waiting to receive him. As they re astern, his eyes catch a last view of his distract wife, who is borne up by one of her servants. He lifts an imploring eye to heaven, and a tear.

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tickles down his manly cheek. He has almost reached the shore before the splashing oars, and increasing distance, relieve his ear from the cries of is children.

This pitiless deed being done, the humane Consul's further orders were to convey his victim to prison with as much secrecy as possible; and his mutes managed so well, that it was for some time a mater of guess and of jarring reports in France, in what place this interesting prisoner was confined. He was conveyed in a close carriage, and under a strong escort of cavalry, to the remote castle of Joux, in the neighbourhood of Mount Jura. Here he was confined a long time, in a way the strictness of which may be supposed, from the darkness which prevailed as to his fate, while multitudes were curious to know it. We may conclude that none but his keepers were permitted to see or converse with him, with the exception only of a single Negro attendant, who was as closely confined as his master.

This treatment I admit might not entirely flow from the Consul's cruelty and malice. His policy had doubtless a great share in it; for even in France, it was not convenient that the tale of Toussaint should be told. From the time of this great man's arrest to that of his death, Leclerc and the Consul took very remarkable care that his voice should not be heard by any body but his gaolers; and these, I doubt not, were forbidden, on pain of death, to hear any thing that their prisoner might wish to disclose. The same effectual care seems to

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have been taken to stop the mouths of all his family and friends. We may, therefore, reasonably suspect that Toussaint, and those in his confidence, had some dreadful secrets to tell, though it is no easier matter to guess what could have been revealed, to make his oppressors more detestable than they al ready were, upon the facts they were unable to conceal.

The afflicted wife and family of our Hero were not imprisoned with less closeness than himself Curiosity was, no doubt, busy about them; and yet I have been able to obtain no account of them public or private, from the time of their detention on ship-board at Brest, which was about the 11th of July, to the 11th of September following.

The Paris papers of the latter date have the following paragraph: "A corvette from Brest with the wife, two children, a niece, and the servant of Toussaint, arrived on the 3d instant at Bayonne."

It is probable that to this period, they continued closely confined in the ship which brought them from the West Indies; but for what end t were removed to Bayonne, or how the tyranny the Consul afterwards disposed of them, I have been able to learn. Nearly twelve months have since elapsed; and had the fate of this interesting family been generally known in France, we should, doubtless, have heard of it in England Their voice has been hushed; they have disappeared; and, from the character of their oppress we may guess at the means.

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Toussaint himself, whom we left in the castle of Joux, may be supposed to have already glutted the Consul's jealousy and vengeance. There he lay, robbed of power, of greatness, of freedom, of his family and friends, and as far as malice could effect, of his fair fame itself. Denied a trial, debarred from all other means of proving or asserting his innocence, unable either to resist or complain, he was left to pine in solitude and silence, while his enemy was able to abuse and slander m at pleasure, without contradiction or reproof.

What more could the Tyrant desire? Buonaparte's revenge, however, and his envious spite against true greatness of character, were not yet appeased.

A faithful servant had hitherto been suffered to tend this oppressed Hero, at the expence of sharing his imprisonment; and it was no doubt reported to the Consul that this little indulgence soothed, in some degree, a heart which he was resolved, if possible, to break. This consolation, therefore, was next torn from him -- the poor Negro was divided from his beloved master, and it under a strong guard to a prison at Dijon, where his silence was, no doubt, made forever secure, by some of the Consul's merciful methods.

The despot, no doubt, expected that these and other severities would speedily save him the shame cutting off his illustrious victim by a direct assassination. But Toussaint had consolation and support still remaining of which tyranny could not deprive

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him. The God whom he had worshipped continually, was still with him, and though it was not his holy will to send deliverance in this life, the spirit of his servant was strengthened, and kept frog impatience and despair.

The Consul's inflexible cruelty, therefore, had further measures to take. From the castle of Joux, where perhaps Buonaparte had not a cell of a keeper bad enough for his final purpose, this brave Toussaint was removed at the approach of winter to Besancon, and there placed in his last abode, a cold, damp, and gloomy dungeon. Let my readers imagine the horrors of such a prison to an African who had arrived at the age of fifty years, or more, in a climate like that of the West Indies, where warmth and free air are never wanting, not even in gaols, and where the cheerful beams of the sun are only too bright and continual. We know, that with all the warmth whit fires and good clothing can give to Negroes in this climate, the stoutest of them suffer severely, by the winter.

But it was for these very reasons that the merciless Consul chose for Toussaint, his last place of confinement. The floor of the dungeon was ally covered with water;* and we need not that the poor victim was deprived of every

* These particulars the author has learnt from a very respectable and intelligent gentleman who spent some time in France last winter, and obtained his information from the best authorities that the case would afford.

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that might help to sustain his declining health during the severity of the winter.

The new method adopted with Toussaint, could not fail of final success. The strength however of the sufferer's constitution, added to his patience and religious tranquility, made the murder a very tedious work. His death was not announced in the French papers till the 27th of April last; so that he held out under all the sufferings of the last winter; and it is doubted whether the Consul was not obliged to have recourse at last, to poison or some other violent means. Some people entertain a notion that this great man is still living. If he be, Providence has wonderfully preserved him, and probably for some glorious end; but as the account of his death, shameful as it was to the Consul, was permitted to be published in France, and has not been contradicted there, I fear it is too true that this foul murder is finished; and has added unspeakable guilt and infamy to the former crimes of his oppressor.

Here, then, we must drop the curtain on the great, the good, the pious, and the generous Toussaint, leaving him to reap the fruits of his virtues in that happier world, "Where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest."

Were an epitaph wanted for this wonderful man, we might find a fair, though not a full one in the words of his murderer -- "Called by his talents to the chief command in St. Domingo, he preserved the Island to France during a long and

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arduous foreign war, it, which she could do nothing to support him. He destroyed civil war, put an end to the persecutions of ferocious men, and restored to honour the religion and worship of God, from whom all things come.” *

The man of whom all this was said, perished, as we have seen, under the merciless oppression of the man who said it. Are you anxious to know how his murderer will perish? you shall know from the same pen, how this man of blood, this sworn foe to hypocrisy, prophesies on that point. "Having been called by the order of Him from whom all things emanate, to bring back to the earth, justice, order, and equality, I shall hear my last knell sound without emotion.” **

* See the first Part, page 22.

** Speech of Buonaparte in answer to a complimentary Address. Inserted in the London Papers of August 9, 1802.

FINIS.

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