He adds, "If you will take care not to talk to them of the restoration of slavery, but to talk to them of freedom, you may with this word chain them down to their labor. How did Toussaint succeed?--How did I succeed before his time in the plain of the Culde-Sae on the plantation Gouraud, during more than eight months after liberty had been granted to the slaves? Let those who knew me at that time, let the blacks themselves, be asked: they will all reply that not a single negro upon that plantation, consisting of more than four hundred and fifty laborers, refused to work: and yet this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline and the slaves the most idle of any in the plain. I inspired the same activity into three other plantations of which I had the management. If all the negroes had come from Africa within six months, if they had the love of independence that the Indians have, I should own that force must be employed; but ninety-nine out of a hundred of the blacks are aware that without labor they cannot procure the things that are necessary for them; that there is no other method of satisfying their wants and their tastes. They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so."
Such was the conduct of the negroes for the first nine months after their liberation, or up to the middle of 1794. In the latter part of 1796, Malenfant says, "the colony was flourishing under Toussaint, the whites lived happily and in peace upon their estates, and the negroes continued to work for them." General Lecroix, who published his "Memoirs for a History of St. Domingo" in 1819, says, that in 1797 the most wonderful progress had been made in agriculture. "The Colony," says he, "marched as by enchantment towards its ancient splendor: cultivation prospered; every day produced perceptible proof of its progress." General Vincent,[U] who was a general of brigade of artillery in St. Domingo and a proprietor of estates in the island, was sent by Toussaint to Paris in 1801 to lay before the Directory the new constitution which had been agreed upon in St. Domingo. He arrived in France just at the moment of the peace of Amiens, and found that Bonaparte was preparing an armament for the purpose of restoring slavery in St. Domingo. He remonstrated against the expedition; he stated that it was totally unnecessary and therefore criminal, for every thing was going on well in St. Domingo. The proprietors were in peaceable possession of their estates; cultivation was making rapid progress; the blacks were industrious and beyond example happy. He conjured him, therefore, not to reverse this beautiful state of things; but his efforts were ineffectual, and the expedition arrived upon the shores of St. Domingo. At length, however, the French were driven from the island. Till that time the planters had retained their property, and then it was, and not till then, that they lost their all. In 1804, Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor; in process of time a great part of the black troops were disbanded, and returned to cultivation again. From that time to this, there has been no want of subordination or industry among them."