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The Haitian Leader

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Submitted By rimie
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The most famous maroon leader was François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, whose six-year rebellion (1751-57) left an estimated 6,000 dead. Toussaint drew from African traditions and religions to motivate his followers.

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture helped plot the uprising, although this claim has never been substantiated. Among the rebellion's leaders were Boukman, a maroon and voodoo houngan (priest); Georges Biassou, who later made Toussaint his aide; Jean-François, who subsequently commanded forces, along with Biassou and Toussaint, under the Spanish flag; and Jeannot, the bloodthirstiest of them all. These leaders sealed their compact with a voodoo ceremony conducted by Boukman in the Bois Cayman (Alligator Woods) in early August 1791. On August 22, a little more than a week after the ceremony, the uprising of their black followers began.
By 1794, François Toussaint Louverture had built up the best-organized and most effective military unit on the island. When he decided to join Sonthonax and the French republicans in May 1794, the military balance soon shifted in their favor.
Toussaint did hope to restore Saint Domingue’s economy. Although he assured the black population that there would be no return to slavery, he insisted that most former slaves had to return to their plantations and resume field work. They would now be paid and have more free time, but they were still not free to leave or to become independent farmers on their own land. Toussaint needed the income from the large plantations to support his army.
To ensure the loyalty of his officers, he gave many of them large estates. Toussaint thus began to create a black-dominated society, but one with a large gap between the ruling elite and the mass of the population.
In 1802 he was forced to resign by forces sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to restore French authority in the colony. He was deported to France where he was jailed and eventually died on the 7th of April, 1803. Toussaint Louverture’s story became a legend: a black former slave had shown that he could defeat the best white generals and outwit the most skillful white politicians.

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