Domingo. Did the slaves baptize their freedom in blood? Did they fight
like unchained desperadoes because they had been made free? Did they
murder their emancipators? No; they acted, as human beings must act,
under similar circumstances, by a law as irresistible as those of the
universe: kindness disarmed them, justice conciliated them, freedom
ennobled them. No tumult followed this wide and instantaneous
emancipation. It cost not one drop of blood; it abated not one tittle of
the wealth or the industry of the island. Colonel Malenfant, a slave
proprietor residing at the time on the island, states that after the
public act of abolition, the negroes remained perfectly quiet; they had
obtained all they asked for, liberty, and they continued to work upon all
the plantations.--[Malenfant in Memoirs for a History of St. Domingo by
General Lecroix, 1819.]
"There were estates," he says, "which had neither owners nor managers
resident upon them, yet upon these estates, though abandoned, the negroes
continued their labors where there were any, even inferior, agents to
guide them; and on those estates where no white men were left to direct
them, they betook themselves to the planting of provisions; but upon all
the plantations where the whites resided the blacks continued to labor as
quietly as before.
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