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CHAPTER I.

EFFECTS OF ANCIENT SLAVERY AGITATION, ETC.
Application of the "Logic of History"-Effect of Earlying to us.
Slavery Agitation-Slavery in Ancient Times-Slavery
Agitation in Rome-Its Terrible Effects: Agitation the
Cause of the Downfall of the Roman Empire-Greece
and her Dependencies Destroyed by Slavery Agitation
The Agitation in France-Bloody Effects of, in St. Do-
mingo-BRISSOT, and other French Abolitionists, stir up
the "Irrepressible Conflict"-A Servile Insurrection
Ensues-Napoleon Issues a "Proclamation of Freedom"
-Terrible Disasters follow the same-A French Army
Destroyed-Servile Insurrection in St. Domingo-GIB-
BON, the Historian, on the Character of the Negro: their
Fall from Ancient Superiority-MCKENZIE, the Histori-
an, on the "Cause" in the West Indies-Statistics of

St. Domingo-The Sublime Teachings of History.

APPLICATION OF THE LOGIC OF HISTORY. "WE CANNOT ESCAPE HISTORY."-Message of A. Lincoln. This I hold to be the chief office of history:-To rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion to which a want of records would consign them, and that men should feel a dread of being considered infamous in the opinions of posterity, for their depraved expressions and base actions.-Tacitus. It is said that history is like a lantern placed at the stern of a ship to show the course it has pursued, whereas it should be placed at the bow to indicate the track it is pursuing, and to shed the light of its rays on the rocks on which others have been wrecked. And herein all nations of every age have failed to profit by the light of past history. They place that light at the wrong end of the ship of State. It will be the object of this publication to place the light of history where it should be, as a beacon of warning on our onward course, through the dangerous Archipelago of the living present, and by a proper analogy to guide our tempesttossed barque so as to shun the dangers of the unknown future.

Happily, we are not confined to the immediate past for analogies to illustrate our present condition, as a nation, but we are permitted to read our most probable fate by the light which ancient Greece, Athens and Rome, have left

burning on the ruins of their historical altars. The history of those nations-their rise, progress and melancholy downfull, is full of warnand Fifth, speak to the Nineteenth century The First, Second, Third, Fourth in no dead or equivocal language. from her gory grave of national oblivion, speaks Rome, in thunder tones to America. proud, erudite and far famed, though now alThe once most fossilized Athens, hails us through the loud trumpet of history, and bids us beware the breakers on which ambition wrecked her greatness and glory. Heroic, historic and legendary Greece, warns us from her grave of woe, to beware of Macedonian and Peloponessian strifes. The chivalrous CATO, from the suicide's sepulchre, will act our monitor against the insidious agitations of Abolition GRACCHUSES, CRASSUSES and EUNUSES. The arts and sciences, now locked in the secret hecatombs of early oriental greatness, all admonish ic of history. us to study and profit by the teachings and log

The writer hereof, having devoted much time for many years to the culling out and filing away such scraps of history as prophetic calculation (so to speak) induced him to believe would sooner or later be useful in a crisis, that the least observing must have known years ago would inevitably overtake our people, will regard himself amply compensated for the time which the within historical collation has required, if the same shall in the least degree serve to direct popular attention to a long train of evils now threatening the life of this nation, and which are so ineffacably chisseled in the milestones that mark the great highway of nations, that he who runs may read, and he who reads without criminal prejudice, may learn a lesson of more value than the gold of Eldorado. THE SLAVERY AGITATION-ITS CONSEQUENCES Mr. LINCOLN tells us that we cannot escape This shows that he has at least read

history.

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France, Germany, Hungary, 1taly,

Spain and Portugal,. Great Britain, European Russia, Poland,

enough of the history of ancient and modern | Rome,.
nations to learn one fact; that as no nation
ever did escape its own history, ours will cling
to us with equal tenacity. In this, and the
subsequent chapters, it will not be so much our
object to present original propositions as it will
be to collate and spread out before our readers
the logic and argument of history, and we shall
endeavor to avoid all verbiage except so far
as may be necessary to present the various facts,
sayings, doings and historical reminiscenses,
in such manner as to present the aims and pur-
poses of the vast array of witnesses we shall
place on their voir dire.

It has of late been a stereotyped phrase that slavery is the cause of this war," but such declarations are mostly confined to slavery agi

tators. So far as our observation and belief

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go, such is in no sense the truth of history. The agitation of the slavery question is no doubt the principal pretext, and without question has furnished the main pabulum on which treason has fed and waxed strong, but as we proceed it will be seen that the real cause has more to feed it than slavery, or even its agitation; but before we proceed to that "count"

let us take observation of the

EFFECT OF EARLY SLAVERY AGITATION.

It will be neither our purpose to show that slavery is, or ever was, right or wrong. but barely to present the light of historical facts, leaving the reader to form his own conclusions. Slavery has existed, under various phases, from the remotest periods of sacred and profane history. In the 17th chap. of Genesis, v. 12, 13, 23 and 27, the fact that Abraham bought men with his money is four times recognized. Verse 12 is represented to be in the language of God, Himself, speaking to ABRAHAM, viz.:

And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations; he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.

In the 24th chap. 35th v., man and maid servants are mentioned among the blessings which GOD had bestowed upon ABRAHAM:

And the LORD hath blessed my master (ABRAHAM) greatly, and he is become great, and He has given him

Hocks and herds, and silver and gold, and man servants,

and maid servants, and camels and asses.

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From the 14th chap. and 14th verse it appears that ABRAHAM had three hundred and eighteen "trained servants, born in his house." The 21st chap. of Exodus, the 25th chap. of Leviticus and the 25th chap. of Deuteromony recognize slavery and the buying of slaves, &c. Slavery is also recognized by PAUL in 1st Co

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Greece and Turkey.
Sweeden,........

Denmark and Norway,
Low Countries,

[Sve Voltaire de Histoire Generale.

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In those days white men were held as slaves, and not till long after were Ethiopeans brought to Roman servitude. The Roman law regulating slavery was in a great measure borrowed from the Hebrew code, modified to suit the spirit of the age. It gave power to the master over the life and limb of his slaves, and the utmost rigor prevailed. The Romans and their neighbors were continually at war, nor did they agree to cartels for the exchange of prisoners. All prisoners became slaves by the inexorable laws of war, and were held either by the state under the system of Roman helotry, or by citizens who purchased from the state. Not unfrequently citizens, as under the old Levitical law, voluntarily surrendered themselves as slaves, to escape the consequences of want and destitution.

SLAVERY AGITATION IN ROME.

Slavery was no doubt a monster political evil in the Roman Commonwealth-a thousand fold more so than any system known to civilized nations of the present age. Romans, Grecians and Athenians enslaved their equals, and frequently their intellectual superiors; and at one time, history tells us, every twelfth person in the realm either was, or had been a slave.The evil, great as it was, could no doubt have been borne, until GOD, in his own way, should have wrought its extinction or amelioration, far better than the dreadful consequences that followed in the wake of its political agitation.

In those days, philanthropy, whether properly or improperly directed, as it has been ever since, tried to force its growth by hot-bed stimulants, and while good men, no doubt, just and pure motives, yet it requires a very were prompted to assail the institution from little attention to the "logic of history" to see that the moment the agitation became popular, as it did under the insipient agitations of Gracchus, by which he was called to the Tribunate, it attracted the legions of political demagogues and vampyres, who, from no better motive than to obtain power and plunder, contrive to float upon the surface of any move that

tians, the and in the 6th chap. of the Ephe- promises popular favor.

tians, the 6th chap. of PAUL'S 1st Epistle to TIMOTHY, in the 3d and 4th chapters of his Epistles to the Collossians, in chap. 24 of his Epistle to TITUS, in the 1st Epistle of PETER, the Epistle of PAUL to PHILEMON, &c.

SLAVERY IN THE TIME OF CLAUDIUS.

GRACCHUS was no doubt originally governed by philanthropic motives. He struck at the evil in its national capacity, and at first urged measures of a humane and national character. He neither denounced individual slave-holders as guilty of the "sum of all villainy, threatened to confiscate their property. Hence,

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nor

The following table exhibits the great num- although standing forth as the avowed enemy ber of slaves held in an early period : of the system, he became the favorite of the

slaveholders, who elected him Chief of the Tribunes. But the moment he had a taste of power, he inaugurated a political agitationthreatened to "force emancipation, speedily and without recourse"-and called around him some of the best talent, yet most ambitious men of Rome. GRACCHUS was to Rome what CHARLES SUMNER is to America-an eloquent agitator of the slavery question. APPIUS CLAUDIUS, his father-in-law, MUTIUS SCEVOLA, the most famous lawyer of Rome, and CRASSUS, the leader of the priesthood, and the wealthiest man in the Commonwealth, were associated with GRACCHUS. Those influential abolitionists agitated the slavery question, until it entered into all the petty political questions of the day, and until their proselytes were counted by legions, and on the scum of the excitement floated a large class of demagogues and political hucksters, who scrupled not at any means to obtain place and power. These selfish plebians and patricians organized for offensive raids on the public exchequer, and carried their vile purposes with them to such ill extent, that all classes were aroused to the highest degree of excitement. An "Irrepressible Conflict" ensued, which not only destroyed Rome, and blotted her out from the map of the world, ás a nation of power and vitality, but forever blasted the hopes, the happiness and the liberties of slaves, helots and people.

The hot blood of party was aroused to a fearful temper, and from that moment Rome began to totter to her final fall. GRACCHUS was a candidate for re-election, on the platform of confiscation and emancipation. The excitement is represented as intense. Appeals were made to passions and fanatical prejudices, and on the day of the election, the phrenzied multitude beat GRACCHUS to death and threw his body into the Tiber. Three hundred of his followers perished on the same day.*

Many of the measures of GRACCHUS were no doubt wise and beneficent, and had he not committed the fatal error of linking them with political Abolitionism and Agrarianism, he would without question have not only saved Rome, but secured lasting fame as a man of good impulses and great genius.

After the death of GRACCHUS his followers canonized him as a "martyr to a glorious cause." EUNUS, one of his disciples, undertook the spread of political Abolitionism into Italy and the Island of Sicily. He collected what force he could from the Plebian ranks

distilled the vain hope of sudden freedom into the ears of the common slaves and the helots, and as BLAKE says, managed to raise a motly army of 200,000, armed with scythes, pitchforks, &c., and marched forth, proud in the belief that he was to occupy a high niche in the Pantheon, as the deliverer of the slaves of Italy and Sicily. Mr. BLAKE, who wrote the "History of Slavery," containing 832 pages, a work especially designed for abolition use in this country, informs us that a million of per

*See Blake's History of Slavery.

worse than Car

sons were butchered in this thagenian war." EUNUS failed in his abolition purposes, and the slaves, whom he had promised liberty they were not prepared to enjoy, in the language of the same author, "committed one universal suicide!"

The tragic sequel of this Sicilian insurrection did not deter others from embarking in the Abolition crusade. TIBERIUS, brother of the Tribunate GRACCHUS, organized the Abolition party anew, and carried on the contest, he and his successors, until all-masters, helots and slaves, perished in the general wreck of the Empire.

That the agitation of the slavery question, and the blending that issue with Roman politics for the benefit of Roman demagogues, and to the disparagement of Roman Statesmen, was the primeval cause of the downfall of that Gov-' ernment-that once stretched its power from the Tiber to the Adriatic, is a fact too well authenticated by history to require other accumulative evidence than the admission of Mr. BLAKE himself, who on page 59 of his work says:

The laws of GRACCHUS cut the Patricians with a double

The

edge. Their fortunes consisted in lands and slaves; it questioned their title to the public land, and tended to force emancipation [See American parallel in Lincoln's Proclamation], by making their slaves a burden. In taking away the soil [see the parallel of the radical idea of reducing the states to territories, &c.] it took away the power that kept their live machinery in motion. moment was a crisis in the affairs of Rome--such a crisis as hardly occurs to a nation in the progress of many centuries [see parallel in the American crisis.] Men are in the habit of proscribing JULIUS CAESAR as the destroyer of the Commonwealth. The civil wars, the revolutions of CAESAR, the miserable vicissitudes of the Roman Emperors-the avarice of the Nobles and the rabble, the crimes of the forum and the palace—all have their germ in the ill success of the reform of GRACCHUS.

Here, then, is the admission of the principal abolition historian of this country, that Rome was destroyed by the ill successes" of the slavery agitation. Have we no fear for a like result from the same cause on this continent?

President HARRISON, in his inaugural address, in censuring the interference of the nonslaveholding states, said:

It was the ambition of the leading states of Greece, to control the domestic concerns of others, that the destruction of that celebrated confederacy, and subsequently of all its members, is mainly to be attributed.

SLAVERY AGITATION IN FRANCE.

France, also, had her abolition societies and agitators, and the result of the agitation of this ill omened subject is familiar to the student of history. We offer no apology for the following copious extracts from ALLISON'S History, which was written long before the advent of our present troubles, and with no possible view to aid political ideas or dogmas. For the purpose of the better exhibition of the parallels with the chain of history we are making, and which Mr. LINCOLN truly says we dents in semi-dramatic order, in four acts.cannot escape, we present the facts and inciThe period lies between 1791 and 1802:

ACT THE ABOLITIONISTS AGITATE AND STIR
UP DISCORD.

The Jacobin abolitionists, in 1791, began the agitation of the slavery question in the Constituent Assembly. This proved to be a firebrand as it has been in our Congress. We quote as follows: [See Allison's Hist. of Europe, vol. i. pp. 120-1.]

"The second catastrophe, more extensive in its operation, yet more terrible in its details, was the revolt of St. Domingo. The slaves in that flourishing colony, agitated by the intelligence which they received of the leveling principles of the Constituent Assembly, had early manifested symptoms of insubordination. The Assembly, divided between the desire of enfranchising so large a hody of men, and the evident dangers of such a step, had long hesitated on the course they should adopt, and were inclined to support the rights of the planters. But the passions of the negroes were excited by the efforts of a society styled 'The Society of Friends of Blacks,' [same as our Abolitionists,] of which BRISSOT was the leading member; and the mullattoes were induced, by their injudicious advice, to organize an insurrection. They trusted that they would be able to control the ferocity of the slaves even during the heats of a revolt; they little knew the dissimulation and cruelty of the savage character. A universal revolt was planned and organized, without the slightest suspicion on the part of the planters, and the same night fixed on for its breaking out over the whole island.

"At length, at midnight, on the 30th October, the insurrection broke forth. In an instant twelve hundred coffee and two hundred sugar plantations were in flames; the buildings, the machinery, the farm offices, reduced to ashes; the unfortunate proprietors hunted down, murdered or thrown into the flames by the infuriated negroes.The horrors of a servile war universally appeared. The unchained African signalized his ingenuity by the discovery of new and unheard-of modes of torture. An unhappy planter was sawed asunder between two boards; the horrors inflicted on the women exceeded anything known even in the annals of Christian ferocity. The indulgent master young and old, rich and poor, the wrongs of an oppressed race were indiscriminately wreaked. Crowds of slaves traversed the country with the heads of the white children affixed on their pikes; they served as the standards of these furious assemblages. [Our abolitionists have endeavored to incite similar outrages in the South.] In a few instances only, the humanity of the negro character resisted the savage contagion of the time; and some faithful slaves, at the hazard of their own lives, fed in caves their masters or their children, whom they had rescued from destruction.

eing the greatest sugar plantation in the world, the, island has been reduced to the necessity of importing that valuable produce; and the inhabitants, naked and voluptuous, are fast receding into the state of nature from which their ancestors were torn, two centuries ago, by the rapacity of Christian avarice."

ACT II.-MORE FREEDOM TO THE NIGGERS DE

MANDED.

As we have seen what came of the effort to free the negroes from bondage, so let us look at the effect of the Abolition effort to enfranchize the ignorant blacks We quote from the same history, vol. II, p. 241:

By a decree on March 8, 1790, the Constituent Assembly had empowered each colony belonging to the Republic to make known its wishes on the subject of a Constitution, and that these wishes should be expressed by colonial as-. semblies, freely elected and recognized by their citizens. This privilege cxcited the most ruinous divisions among the inhabitants of European descent, already sufficiently menaced by the ideas fermenting in the negro population. The whites claimed the exclusive right of voting for the election of members of this important assembly, while the mulattoes strenuously asserted their title to an equal share in the representation; and the blacks, intoxicated with the novel doctrines so keenly discussed by all classes of society, secretly formed the project of ridding themselves of both. This decree of the National Assembly was brought out to the island by Lieutenant Colonel OGE, a mulatto officer in the service of France, who openly proclaimed the opinion of the parent Legislature, that the half-caste and free negroes were entitled to their full share in the election of the representatives. The jealousy of the planters was immediately excited. They refused to acknowledge the decree of the Assembly, constituted themselves into a separate Legislature, and having seized OGE in the Spanish territory, put him to death by the torture of the wheel, under circumstances of atrocious cruelty.

"This unpardonable proceeding, as is usually the case with such acts of barbarity, aggravated instead of stifling the prevailing discontents, and the heats of the colony soon became so vehement that the Constituent Assembly felt the necessity of taking some steps to allay the ferment. The moderate and violent parties in that body took different sides, and all Europe looked on with anxiety upon a debate so novel in its kind, and fraught with such momentous consequences to a large portion of the human race. Barnave Malouet, Alexander Lameth, and Clermont Tonnerre strongly argued that men long accustomed to servitude could not receive the perilous gift of liberty with safety either to themselves or others, but by slow degrees, and that the effect of suddenly admitting that bright light upon a benighted population would be to throw them into inevitable and fatal convulsions. But Mirabeau, the masterspirit of the Assembly, and the only one of its leaders who combined popular principles with a just appreciation of the danger of pushing them to excess, was no more, and the declamations of Brissot and the Girondists prevailed over these statesman-like ideas. By a decree on the 15th of May, 1791, the privileges of equality were conferred indiscriminately on all persons of color, born of a free father and mother,

"Far from appreciating the hourly increasing dangers of their situation, and endeavoring to form with the new citizens an organized body to check the further progress of leveling principles, the planters openly endeavored to resist this rash decree. resist this rash decree. Civil war was preparing in this once peaceful and beautiful colony; arms were collecting;

"The intelligence of these disasters excited an angry discussion in the Assembly. Brissot, the most vehement opponent of slavery, ascribed them all to the refusal of the blessings of freedom to the negroes; [precisely as our abolitionists ascribe every evil-the war and all-to slavery;] the moderate members, to the inflammatory addresses circulated among them by the Anti-Slavery Society of Paris; [precisely as our abolitionists have ever done, and are now doing.] At length it was agreed to concede the political rights for which they contended to the men of color; and, in consequence of that resolution, St. Domingo obtained the nominal blessings of freedom. ["At length" came Lincoln's proclamation-a perfect historical parallel. But it is not thus that the great changes of nature are conducted; a child does not acquire the strength of manhood in an hour, or a tree the consistency of the hardy denizens of the forest in a season. The hasty phi-the soldiers, caressed and seduced by both parties, were lanthropists who conferred upon an ignorant slave population the precipitate gift of freedom, did them a greater injury than their worst enemies. [And our "hasty philanthropists," who clamor for immediate abolition, will do the slaves here "more harm than their worst enemies."] The black population remain to this day, in St. Domingo, a memorable example of the ruinous effect of precipitate emancipation. Without the steady habits of civilized society; ignorant of the wants which reconcile to a life of •labor; destitute of the support which to a regular government might have afforded, they have brought to the duties of cultivation the habits of savage life. To the indolence of the negro character they have joined the vices of European corruption; profligate, idle, and disorderly, they have declined both in numbers and in happiness; from

wavering between their old feelings of regal allegiance and the modern influence of intoxicating principles, when a new and terrible enemy arose, who speedily extinguished in blood the discord of his oppressors. On the night of the 22d of August, the negro revolt, long and secretiy organized, at once broke forth, and wrapped the whole Northern part of the colony in flames. JEAN FRANCOIS, a slave of vast, penetrative, firm character, and violent passions, not unmingled with generosity, was the leader of the conspiracy; his lieutenants were BIASSON and TOUSSAINT. The former, of gigantic stature, Herculean strength and indomitable ferocity, was well fitted to assert that superiority which such qualities seldom fail to command in savage times; the latter, gifted with rare intelligence, profound dissimulation, boundless ambition,

SCRAPS FROM MY SCRAP-BOOK.

and heroic firmness, was fitted to become at once the Numa and the Romulus of the sable Republic in the Southern Hemisphere.

"This vast conspiracy, productive in the end of calamities unparalleled even in the long catalogue of European atrocity, had for its objects the total extirpation of the whites, and the establishment of an independent black governmeat over the whole island."

[Beware of liberty to the blacks, and extirpation" of the whites ]

We quote as follows from the same Act, though in a different scene, p. 243-3 (1801):

"Meanwhile the legislative assembly, which had succeded the constituent, a step farther advanced in revolutionary violence, were preparing ulterior measures of the most frantic character. Irritated at the colonial legislature for not having followed out their intention, and instigated at the populace, whom the efforts of Brissot and the Society at Paris, des Amis des Sorris had roused to a perfect phrensy on the subject, they revoked the decree on the 24th of September preceding, which had conferred such ample powers on the colonial legislature, dissolved the assembly at Cape Town, and dispatched three new commissioners, Arthanx, Santionax, and Polverel, with unlimited powers to settle the affairs of the colony. In vain Barnaves and the remnant of the constitutional party in the assembly strove to moderate these extravagant proceedings; the violence of the Jacobins bore down all opposition. 'Don't talk to us of danger,' said Brissot; 'let the colonies perish rather than one principle be abandoned.' [Don't talk to us, say our Abolition Brissots-let the Union perish rather than abandon our platform.]

The proceedings of the new commissioners speedily brought matters to a crisis. They arrived first at Port an Prince, and in conformity with the secret instructions of the government, which were to dislodge the whites from that stronghold, they sent off to France the soldiers of the regiment of Artois, established a Jacobin club, transported to France or America thirty of the leading planters, and issued a proclamation [aye, aye, a "proclamation"] in which they exhorted the colonists "to lay aside at last the prejudices of color." Having thus laid the revolutionary train at Port au Prince, they embarked for Cape Town, where they arrived in the middle of June. Matters had by this time reached such a height there as indicated the immediate approach of a crisis. The intelligence of the executive of the King, and proclamation of a Republic, had roused to the very highest pitch the Democratic passions of all the inferior classes. The planters, with too good reason, apprehended that the convention which had succeeded the legislative assembly would soon outstrip them in violence and put the finishing stroke to their manifold calamities, by at once proclaiming the liberty of the slaves, and so destroying the remnant of property which they still possessed. But their destruction was nearer at hand than they supposed. On the 20th of June a quarrel accidentally arose between a French naval captain and a mulatto officer in the service of the collonial government; the commissioners ordered them both into their presence, without regard to the distinction of color, and this excited the highest indignation in the officers of the marine, who landed with their crews to take vengeance for the indignity done to one of their members. The colonists loudly applauded their condúct, and invoked their aid as the savior of St. Domingo; the exiles brought from Port au Prince fomented the discord as the only means of effecting their liberation; a civil war speedily ensued in the blockaded capital, and for two days blood flower in torents in these insane contests, between the sailors of the fleet and the mulatto population.

"The negro chiefs, secretly informed of all these disorders, resolved to profit by the opportunity of finally destroying the whites thus afforded to them. Three thousand insurgents penetrated through the works stripped of their defenders during the general tumult, and making straight for the prisons, delivered a large body of slaves who were there in chains. Instantly the liberated captives spread themselves over the town, set it on fire in every quarter, and massacred the unhappy whites when seeking to escape from the conflagration. A scene of matchless horror ensued: twenty thousand negroes broke into the city, and, with the torch in one hand and the sword in the other spread slaughter and devastation around. Hardly had the strife of the Europeans with each other subsided, when they found themselves overwhelmed by the venge

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ance which had been accumulating for centuries in the African breast. Neither age nor sex were spared; the young were cut down in striving to defend their houses, the aged in the churches where they had fled to implore protection; virgins were immolated on the altar; weeping infants hurled into the fires. Amid the shrieks of the sufferers and the shouts of the victor, the finest city in the West Indies was reduced to ashes; its splendid churches, its stately palaces, were wrapped in flames; thirty thousand hu-. man beings perished in the massacre, and the wretched fugitives who had escaped from this scene of horror on board the ships, were guided in their passage over the deep by the prodigious light which arose from their burning habitations. They almost all took refuge in the United States, where they were received with the most generous hospitality; but the frigate La Fine foundered on the passage, and five hundred of the survivors from the flames perished in

the waves.

"Thus fell the Queen of the Antilles: the most stately monument of European opulence that had yet arisen in the New World. Nothing deterred, however, by this unparalleled calamity, the commissioners of the Republic pursued their frantic career, and, amid the smoking ruins of the Capital, published a decree, which proclaimed the freedom of all the blacks [what could more perfectly represent this case than the President's proclamation, while the rebel armies were thundering at our capital?] who should enroll themselves under the standards of the Republic; a measure which was equivalent to the instant abolition of slavery over the whole island. Farther resistance was now hopeless; the Republican authorisies became the most ardent persecutors of the planters; pursued alike by Jacobin phrensy and African vengeance, they fled in despair. Polveral proclaimed the liberty of the blacks in the West, and Montbrun gave free vent to his hatred of the colonists, by compelling them to leave Port au Prince, which had not yet fallen into the hands of the negroes. Everywhere the triumph of the slaves was complete, and the authority of the planters forever destroyed.

"But, although the liberation of the negroes was affected, the independence of the island was not established."

ACT III.-NAPOLEON ISSUES AN ABOLITION

PROCLAMATION.

In 1801, NAPOLEON, urged on by the Abolitionists, issued his proclamation abolishing slavery in the Island of St. Domingo, in which he called on the "brave blacks to remember that France alone had recognized their freedom," and on November 22, 1801, having appointed LE CLERC, his brother-in-law, to the command of the army about to visit St. Domingo in order to reduce the recusant TOUSSAINT to obedience, he issued the following "proclamation" [See p. 245]:

At St. Domingo, systematic acts have disturbed the political horizon. Únder equivocal appearances, the government has wished to see only the ignorance which conobey; but a fleet and an army, which are preparing in the founds names and things, which usurps when it seeks to harbours of Europe, will soon dissipate these clouds, and St. Domingo will be reduced, in whole, to the government of the Republic." In the proclamation addressed to the blacks, it was announced by the same authority, "Whatever may be your origin or your colour, you are French-. men, and all alike free and equal before God and the Republic. At St. Domingo and Guadaloupe slavery no longger exists-all are free-all shall remain free. At Martinique different principles must be observed."

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