HISTORY

OF

Toussaint Louverture.

A NEW EDITION,

WITH

A DEDICATION

TO HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY

THE EMPEROR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS.

1814.

TO

HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY,

ALEXANDER,

EMPEROR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS.

SIRE,

In republishing at this period the Life of Toussaint Louverture, I am induced to dedicate it to your Imperial Majesty, by feelings which those who know how to appreciate true elevation of character cannot fail to understand.

That illustrious African well deserved the exalted names of Christian, Patriot, and Hero. He was a devout worshipper of his God, and a successful defender of his invaded country. He was the victorious enemy, at once, and the contrast of Napoleon Buonaparte, whose arms he repelled, and whose pride he humbled, not more by the strength of his military genius, than by the moral influence of his amiable and virtuous character: by how many ties, then, of kindred merit and generous sympathy must he not be endeared to the magnanimous Liberator of Europe!

In nothing, however, will your Imperial Majesty more sympathize with the brave Toussaint, than in his attachment to the great cause in which he fell the cause, not of his country only, but of his race; not merely of St. Domingo, but of the African continent.

How would it have cheered the gloom of that solitary dungeon in which this great man resigned his gallant spirit, had he been

assured that an arm more powerful than his own would shortly vindicate on his oppressor the rights of suffering humanity! But could he also have foreseen that with that arm would be found a heart, the seat of every generous affection, a soul ennobled by every elevated sentiment, the unhappy hero would perhaps have lost the remembrance of all his sorrows, while he indulged the animating hope now cherished by every friend to the sacred cause -the hope that Alexander, the great and the good, having been guided by Providence to restore freedom, justice, and peace, to one continent, may, through his powerful influence, soon dispense the same blessings to another.

I have the honor, Sire, to be,

with profound respect,

Your Imperial Majesty's

most humble and obedient Servant,

THE AUTHOR.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE History of Toussaint Louverture was published in 1803, soon after the recommencement of the war with France, with a view chiefly to its probable influence on the minds of the lower classes of the English readers.

It was designed to counteract the false impressions which many of them had received of the character of Buonaparte; to exhibit him, not as friendly, but irreconcileably hostile, to the freedom of the laboring poor, and to enlist their best feelings against that dangerous enemy of their country, as a monster of perfidy, cruelty, and baseness.

The style was therefore accommodated, as much as possible, to their understandings and taste; but nothing was asserted in it as fact, which the Author did not believe to be substantially true.

Subsequent information has indeed induced him to doubt the correctness of a few subordinate circumstances stated in this little narrative: such as the place in which the illustrious African was seized by the order of Leclerc, and the manner of the crime; but with these exceptions, the relation is, as he believes, strictly consonant to fact; and its truth can be in a great measure demonstrated by a careful comparison of the French official accounts with each other, or by more authentic documents.

He has, therefore, thought it expedient not to alter the original form of the work, except by omitting many familiar expressions and allusions which might offend the taste of his polite readers; and some passages and terms, which, in the altered state of our

relations with France, could not now be used without impropriety.

With these corrections, the Author has been induced again to offer this work to the notice of the public, under a persuasion that its subject will excite new interest, when the obdurate resolution of France to renew her Slave Trade, excites the afflicting expectation of another attempt to reduce St. Domingo to its former state of slavery. That in this attempt the amiable and respectable Monarch who now fills the throne of France has not contemplated a renewal of the horrors by which the former expedition was characterized, it is but justice to his character to suppose. There is, however, too much reason to fear, that by whatever delusion it may have been prompted, that odious enterprise has been resolved on and in assisting the public to judge of the probable consequences, the present publication may perhaps not be without its

use.

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