Bury the Chains; Chapter 18

In Chaptear 18 of Adam Hochschilds "Bury the Chains", we are told the David V. Goliath tale of Toussaint and his army's uprising, and their miraculous defeat of British armed forces in St. Domingue. The chapter begins with a chilling account of a slave rebellion that conveys the seriousness of the movement. The reader is told of an overly descriptive depiction of the fate of one of the plantation owners' family, which sets the tone early on in At the Foot of Vesuvius. Taking place in the later part of the eighteenth century, the island of St. Domingue was under French regime and was a haven for some of the most brutal slave conditions in the world. While the native slaves exponentially outnumbers their free white counterparts, it was only a matter of time for a large-scale uprising to occur. What began with angry slaves meeting under the night sky at Alligator Woods eventually unraveled into the "largest and bloodiest slave revolt the world had ever seen" (256). This rebellion exposed the huge contradiction that existed between the current French Revolution and the present slave conditions throughout the land. The British involvement originally came from the fear that the trend of rebellion would contagiously spread to the British owned Jamaica, Caribbean neighbor of St. Domingue. While slaves in Jamaica believed freedom was "imminent", mulatto citizens from St. Domingue joined the efforts in protest to their second class lifestyle forced upon them. Once war broke out between Britain and France in 1793, Britian forces conquered St. Domingue in an effort to gain "an immense treasure house of sugar and coffee plantations and stop the virus of rebellion from spreading" (268). After the city of Tiburon was captured, the anxious British troops felt as if they had already attained victory. But while the celebration and news spread, the French educated Toussaint L'Ouverture transformed his army of "illiterate rebels into a formidable force" (269) that held off the British invasion by leaving over 60% of the troops sent to St. Domingue deceased. This leader, with no prior military experience, instilled both passion and a burning desire for liberty into each of his followers. He'd attack at the perfect time, while British forces faced the dangers of the Carribean terrain. While soldiers tried to take on diseases that spread rampant with pointless medical defensive techniques, many lives of soldiers were lost in malpractice alone. In a panic, the British armed forces purchases over 13,000 slaves in an effort to enhance their military. After the rebellion forces captured Mourne l'Hopital, the ears of British soldiers were ringing with singing voices of the ex-slaves basking in their victory. By October 1798, the British forces admitted to their losing effort and ended their military efforts. While this was a landmark in the abolition movement, Toussaint proved to many that "the character of men is independent of exterior color" (The Times, 279). Hochschild makes it apparent that British record of their losing effort in St. Domingue has been seemingly erased from history out of shame.


"It was the slaves of St. Domingue, however, who had freed themselves" (267).
"By 1798, it was clear that the redcoats could not keep their foothold much longer" (278).
"We are fighting that liberty-the most precious of all earthly possessions-may not perish" (278).