History of the United States During Thomas Jefferson's Administrations (Complete 4 Volumes). Henry Adams

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СКАЧАТЬ three hundred men sent to St. Domingo, four thousand remained fit for service.25 "Add to our losses that of five thousand sailors, and the occupation of St. Domingo has cost us till now twenty-four thousand men, and we are not yet definitely masters of it." He was depending on Toussaint's generals and army for his support against an insurrection of the laborers, who were maddened by the rumor that slavery had been restored at Guadeloupe, and was soon to be re-established at St. Domingo. Nothing could be more discouraging than Leclerc's letters:26—

      "I have no false measure to reproach myself with, Citizen Consul; and if my position, from being a very good one, has become very bad, it is necessary to blame here only the malady which has destroyed my army, the premature re-establishment of slavery at Guadeloupe, and the newspapers and letters from France, which speak only of slavery. Here is my opinion on this country. We must destroy all the negroes in the mountains, men and women, keeping only infants less than twelve years old; we must also destroy half those of the plain, and leave in the colony not a single man of color who has worn an epaulette. Without this the colony will never be quiet; and at the beginning of every year, especially after murderous seasons like this, you will have a civil war, which will shake your hold on the country. In order to be master of St. Domingo, you must send me twelve thousand men without losing a single day."

      Besides these twelve thousand men and twelve hundred thousand dollars in specie, Leclerc required five thousand more men in the following summer. "If you cannot send the troops I demand, and for the season I point out, St. Domingo will be forever lost to France."

Long afterward, at St. Helena, Napoleon wrote comments27 on the causes of his disaster at St. Domingo, severely blaming his brother-in-law Leclerc for failing to carry out his orders to arrest and send to Europe all the black generals, as he sent Toussaint. Napoleon's rule in politics, and one which cost him dear, was to disregard masses and reckon only on leaders. Toussaint came within a step of achieving the greatest triumph of his age. Had he been true to himself and his color, and had he hidden himself for a few months in the mountains, he need not have struck a blow in order to drive Bonaparte's generals back to Europe; the yellow fever and the blind despair of the negro laborers would have done the work alone. Bonaparte's theory in regard to the negro chiefs was an illusion. Christophe, Dessalines, Maurepas, and all Toussaint's chief officers served Leclerc faithfully till they saw his case to be hopeless. "Dessalines is at this moment the butcher of the blacks," wrote Leclerc Sept. 16, 1802, in the midst of insurrections; "Christophe has so maltreated them as to be execrated by them." The negro chiefs were traitors to both sides; and if not arrested by Leclerc, they deserved to be shot by their own people. While they helped to exterminate the black laboring class, Leclerc sent home reports that might have frozen the blood of any man less callous than Bonaparte:28—

      "The decrees of General Richepanse [at Guadeloupe] circulate here, and do much harm. The one which restores slavery, in consequence of being published three months too soon, will cost many men to the army and colony of St. Domingo. . . . I get news of a bloody combat sustained by General Boyer at the Gros Morne. The rebels were exterminated; fifty prisoners were hung. These men die with incredible fanaticism,—they laugh at death; it is the same with the women. The rebels of Moustique have attacked and carried Jean Rabel; it should have been retaken by this time. This fury is the work of General Richepanse's proclamation and of the inconsiderate talk of the colonists."

As the insurrection spread, and the fever reduced Leclerc's European force, the black generals and troops began to desert. Shooting was useless; drowning had no effect. No form of terror touched them. "Few colonial troops remain with me," wrote Leclerc in almost his last letter. "A battalion of the Eleventh Colonial, which had been joined with the Legion of the Cape, having furnished a number of deserters, 176 men of this battalion were embarked at Jacmel for Port Republican. Of this number 173 strangled themselves on the way, the Chef de Bataillon at their head. There you see the men we have to fight!"29 At length the report came that Leclerc himself had succumbed. Worn by anxieties, exertions, and incessant fever, he followed his army to the grave.

News of Leclerc's death, Nov. 1, 1802, and of the hopelessness of Bonaparte's schemes against St. Domingo, reached the Government at Washington nearly at the same time with other news which overshadowed this. The people of the United States expected day by day to hear of some sudden attack, from which as yet only the dexterity of Godoy and the disasters of Leclerc had saved them. Although they could see only indistinctly the meaning of what had taken place, they knew where to look for the coming stroke, and in such a state of mind might easily exaggerate its importance. A few days before Congress met, the Western post brought a dispatch from Governor Claiborne at Natchez announcing that the Spanish Intendant, Don Juan Ventura Morales, had forbidden the Americans to deposit their merchandise at New Orleans, as they had a right to do under the treaty of 1795.30

      No one doubted that although the attack might come from a Spanish Intendant, the real party with whom America had to deal was not Spain, but France. The secret papers of the French government show what was said, but hardly believed at the time, that the First Consul was not directly responsible for the act; but they also prove that the act was a consequence of the retrocession. The colonial system of Spain was clumsy and disconnected. Viceroys, governors, commandants, intendants, acted in Mexico, Cuba, New Orleans, Peru, everywhere without relation to each other. At New Orleans the Governor, Don Juan de Salcedo, was powerless to control the Intendant, Don Juan Ventura Morales, and no authority nearer than Madrid could decide between them. The entrepôt, or right of deposit, not only prevented the Spanish Intendant from imposing duties on American produce, but also covered a large amount of smuggling which further diminished the revenue. The Intendant, who had charge of the revenues, and was partly responsible for the large deficit which every year drained the resources of Spain to Louisiana, was forced to hear the complaints of the Treasury at Madrid, continually asking him to find a remedy, and at last, in one of its dispatches, letting slip the remark that "after all, the right of deposit was only for three years." The treaty of 1795 had in fact stipulated that the King of Spain would "permit the citizens of the United States, for the space of three years from this time, to deposit their merchandise and effects in the port of New Orleans, and to export them far from thence, without paying any other duty than a fair price for the hire of the stores; and his Majesty promises either to continue this permission if he finds during that time that it is not prejudicial to the interests of Spain, or if he should not agree to continue it there, he will assign to them on another part of the banks of the Mississippi an equivalent establishment."

According to the explanation given by Morales to Laussat,31 the new French prefect whom Bonaparte sent to receive possession of Louisiana, the Spaniard acted on this own responsibility, in what he believed to be the interests of the colony, and within the stipulations of the treaty. Thinking that the retrocession offered a chance, which might never recur, for reopening a question which had been wrongly decided, Morales, defying the opposition and even the threats of Governor Salcedo, proclaimed the right of deposit to be at an end. He reasoned that Spain as a result of peace with England had shut her colonial ports to strangers, and this measure, so far as it included Louisiana, was illusory so long as the right of deposit should exist. The right had been granted for three years from 1795; and if the practice had been permitted to continue after these three years expired, it might have been owing, not to the treaty, but to the general privileges granted to neutrals during the war; and as for the Americans, it was their own fault not to have looked more carefully to their rights at the close of the three years, when they should have secured the continuation or the promised substitute. As Spain was about to lose Louisiana in any case, Morales remarked that she need not trouble herself about the quarrel he was making with the United States; while the French republic took Louisiana as it actually stood under СКАЧАТЬ