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CHAPTER IV.

        Family, birth, and education of Toussaint L'Ouverture--His promotions in servitude--His marriage--Reads Raynal, and begins to think himself the providentially-appointed liberator of his oppressed brethren.

        IN the midst of these conflicting passions and threatening disorders, there was a character quietly forming, which was to do more than all others, first to gain the mastery of them, and then to conduct them to issues of a favorable nature. This superior mind gathered its strength and matured its purposes in a class of Haytian society where least of all ordinary men would have looked for it. Who could suppose that the liberator of the slaves of Hayti, and the great type and pattern of negro excellence, existed and toiled in one of the despised gangs that pined away on the plantations of the island?
        The appearance of a hero of negro blood was ardently to be wished, as affording the best proof of negro capability. By what other than a negro hand could it be expected that the blow would be struck which should show to the world that Africans could not only enjoy but gain personal and social freedom? To the more deep-sighted, the progress of events and the inevitable tendencies of society had darkly indicated the coming of a negro liberator. The presentiment found expression in the works of the Abbé Raynal, who predicted that a vindicator of negro wrongs would erelong arise out of the bosom of the negro race. That prediction had its fulfilment in Toussaint L'Ouverture.
        Toussaint was a negro. We wish emphatically to mark the fact that he was wholly without white blood. Whatever he was, and whatever he did, he achieved all in virtue of qualities which in kind are common to the African race. Though of

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negro extraction, Toussaint, if we may believe family traditions, was not of common origin. His great grandfather is reported to have been an African king of the Arradas tribe.
        The Arradas were a powerful tribe of negroes, eminent for mental resources, and of an indomitable will, who occupied a part of Western Africa. In a plundering expedition undertaken by a neighboring tribe, a son of the chief of the Arradas was made captive. His name was Gaou-Guinou. Sold to slave dealers, he was conveyed to Hayti, and became the property of the Count de Breda, who owned a sugar manufactory some two miles from Cap François. More fortunate than most of his race in their servitude, he found among his fellow-slaves countrymen by whom he was recognized, and from whom he received tokens of the respect which they judged due to his rank. The Count de Breda was a humane man, and intrusted his slaves to none but humane superintendents. At the time the plantation of the Count de Breda was directed by M. Bayou de Libertas, a Frenchman of mild character, who, contrary to the general practice, studied his employer's interests, without overloading his hands with immoderate labor.
        Under him Gaou-Guinou was less unhappy than his companions in misfortune. It is not known that his master was aware of his superior position in his native country; but facts stated by Isaac, one of Toussaint L'Ouverture's sons, make the supposition not improbable. His grandfather, he reports, enjoyed full liberty on the estates of his master. He was also allowed to employ five slaves to cultivate a portion of land which had been assigned to him. He became a member of the Catholic Church, the religion of the rulers of Western Hayti, and married a woman, who was not only virtuous but beautiful. The husband and the wife died at nearly the same time, leaving five male children and three female. The eldest of his sons was Toussaint L'Ouverture.
        These particulars, illustrative of the superiority of Toussaint's family, are neither without interest nor without importance. If, strictly speaking, virtues are not transmissible, virtuous tendencies,

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and certainly intellectual aptitudes, may pass from parents to children. And the facts now narrated may serve to show how it was that Toussaint was not sunk in that mental stagnation and moral depravity of which slavery is commonly the parent.
        The exact day and year of Toussaint's birth are not known. It is said to have been the 20th of May, 1743. *

What is of more importance is that he lived fifty years of his life in slavery before he became prominent as the vindicator of his brethren's rights. In that long space he had full time to become acquainted with their sufferings as well as their capabilities, and to form such deliberate resolutions as, when the time for action came, should not be likely to fail of effect. Yet does it seem a late period in a man's life for so great an undertaking; nor could any one endowed with inferior powers have approached to the accomplishment of the task.
        Throughout his arduous and perilous career, Toussaint L'Ouverture found great support himself, and exerted great influence over others, in virtue of his deep and pervading sense of religion. We might almost declare that from that source he derived more power than from all others. The foundation of his religious sentiments was laid in his childhood.
        There lived in the neighborhood of the Gaou-Guinou family a black esteemed for the purity and probity of his character, and who was not devoid of knowledge. His name was Pierre Baptiste. He was acquainted with French, and had a smattering of Latin, as well as some notions of geometry. For his education he was indebted to the goodness of one of those missionaries, who, in preaching the morality of a divine religion, enlighten and enlarge the minds of their disciples. Pierre Baptiste became the godfather of Toussaint, and therefore thought it his duty to communicate to him the instructions and impressions he had received from his own religious teacher. Continuing to speak his native African tongue, which was used in his family,

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Toussaint acquired from his godfather some acquaintance with the French, and, aided by the services of the Catholic Church, made a few steps in the knowledge of the Latin. With a love of country which ancestral recollections and domestic intimacies cherished, he took pleasure in reverting to the traditional histories of the land of his sires. From these Pierre Baptiste labored to direct his young mind and heart to loftier and purer examples consecrated in the records of the Christian church.
        This course of instruction was of greater value than any skill in the outward processes which are too commonly identified with education. The young negro, however, seems to have made some progress in the arts of reading, writing, and drawing. A scholar, in the higher sense of the term, he never became; and, at an advanced period of life, when his knowledge was great and various, he regarded the instruction which he received in boyhood as very inconsiderable. Undoubtedly, in the pure and noble inspirations of his moral nature, Toussaint had instructors far more rich in knowledge and impulse than any pedagogue could have been. Yet in his youth were the foundations laid in external learning of value to the man, the general, and the legislator. It is true, that in the composition of his letters and addresses, he enjoyed the assistance of a cultivated secretary. Nevertheless, if the form was another's, the thought was his own; nor would he allow a document to pass from his hands, until, by repeated perusals, and numerous corrections, he had brought the general tenor, and each particular expression, into conformity with his own thoughts and his own purpose. Nor is there required anything more than an attentive reading of his extant compositions, to be assured of the superior mental powers with which he was endowed.
        In his mature years, and in the days of his great conflict, Toussaint possessed an iron frame and a stout arm. Capable of almost any amount of labor and endurance, he was terrible in battle, and rarely struck without deadly effect. Yet in his childhood he was weak and infirm to such a degree, that for a long time his parents doubted of being able to preserve his existence.

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So delicate was his constitution that he received the descriptive appellation of Fatras-Bâton, which might be rendered in English by Little Lath. But with increase of years the stripling hardened and strengthened his frame by the severest labors and the most violent exercises. At the age of twelve he surpassed all his equals in the plantation in bodily feats.
        The duty of the young slaves was definite and uniform. They were intrusted with the care of the flocks and herds. As a solitary and moral occupation, a shepherd's life gives time and opportunity for tranquil meditation. By nature Fatras-Bâton was given to thought. His reflective and taciturn disposition found appropriate nutriment on the rich uplands and under the brilliant skies of the land of his birth. Accustomed to think much more than he spoke, he acquired not only self-control, but also the power of concentrated reflection and concise speech, which, late in life, was one of his most marked and most serviceable characteristics.
        Pastoral occupations are favorable to an acquaintance with vegetable products. Toussaint's father, like other Africans, was familiar with the healing virtues of many plants. These the old man explained to his son, whose knowledge expanded in the monotonous routine of his daily task. Thus did he obtain a rude familiarity with simples, of which he afterward made a practical application. In this period, when the youth was passing into the man, and when, as with all thoughtful persons, the mind becomes sensitively alive to things to come as well as to things present, Toussaint may have formed the first dim conception of the misery of servitude, and the need of a liberator. At present he lived with his fellow-sufferers in those narrow, low, and foul huts where regard to decency was impossible; he heard the twang of the driver's whip, and saw the blood streaming from the negro's body; he witnessed the separation of parents and children, and was made aware, by too many proofs, that in slavery neither home nor religion could accomplish its purposes. Not impossibly, then, it was at this time that he first discerned the image of a distant duty rising before his mind's

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eye; and as the future liberator unquestionably lay in his soul, the latent thought may at times have started forth, and for a moment occupied his consciousness. The means, indeed, do not exist by which we may certainly ascertain when he conceived the idea of becoming the avenger of his people's wrongs; but several intimations point to an early period in his life. His good conduct in his pastoral engagements procured for him an advancement. Bayou de Libertas, convinced of his diligence and fidelity, made him his coachman. This was an office of importance in the eyes of the slaves; certainly it was one which brought some comfort and some means of self-improvement.
        Though Toussaint became every day more and more aware that he was a slave, and experienced many of the evils of his condition, yet, with the aid of religion, he avoided a murmuring spirit, and wisely employed his opportunities to make the best of the position in which he had been born, without, however, yielding to the degrading notion that his hardships were irremediable. Sustained by a sense of duty, which was even stronger than his hope of improving his condition, he performed his daily task in a composed if not a contented spirit, and so constantly won the confidence of the overseer. The result was his promotion to a place of trust. He was made steward of the implements employed in sugar-making.
        Arrived at adult age, Toussaint began to think of marriage. His race at large he saw living in concubinage. As a religious man, he was forbidden by his conscience to enter into such a relation. As a humane man, he shrunk from the numerous evils which he knew concubinage entailed. Whom should he choose? Already had he risen above the silly preferences of form and feature. Reality he wanted, and the only real good in a wife, he was assured, lay in good sense, good feeling, and good manners. These qualities he found in a widow, well skilled in husbandry, a house-slave in the plantation. The kind-hearted and industrious Suzan became his lawful wife, according to "God's holy ordinance and the law of the land." By a man of color, Suzan had had a son, named Placide. Obeying the generous impulses of his heart, Toussaint adopted the

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youth, who ever retained the most lively sense of gratitude toward his benefactor.
        Toussaint was now a happy man, considering his condition as a slave,--the husband of a slave,--a very happy man. His position gave him privileges, and he had a heart to enjoy them. His leisure hours he employed in cultivating a garden, which he was allowed to call his own. In those pleasing engagements he was not without a companion. "We went," he said to a traveller,--"we went to labor in the fields, my wife and I, hand in hand. Scarcely were we conscious of the fatigues of the day. Heaven always blessed our toil. Not only we swam in abundance, but we had the pleasure of giving food to blacks who needed it. On the Sabbath and on festival days we went to church,--my wife, my parents, and myself. Returning to our cottage, after a pleasant meal, we passed the remainder of the day as a family, and we closed it by prayer, in which all took part." Thus can religion convert a desert into a garden, and make a slave's cabin the abode of the purest happiness on earth.
        Bent as Toussaint was on the improvement of his condition, he yet did not employ the personal property which ensued from his own and his wife's thrift, in purchasing his liberty, and elevating himself and family into the higher class of men of color. His reasons for remaining a slave are not recorded. He may have felt no attractions toward a class whose superiority was more nominal than real. He may have resolved to remain in a class whose emancipation he hoped some day to achieve.
        The virtues of his character procured for Toussaint universal respect. He was esteemed and loved even by the free blacks. The great planters held him in consideration. His intellectual faculties ripened under the effects of his intercourse with free and white men. As he grew in mind, and became large of heart, he was more and more puzzled and distressed with the institution of slavery; he could in no way understand how the hue of the skin should put so great a social and personal distance between men whom God, he saw, had made essentially the same, and whom he knew to be useful if not indispensable

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to each other. Naturally he asked himself what others had thought and said of slavery. He had heard passages recited from Raynal. He procured the work. He read therein passages that eloquently told him of his rights, and with fiery zeal denounced his oppressor. He read, and became the vindicator of negro freedom. *