Erik Roos’s Reviews > The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution > Status Update

“But to-day as then, the great propertied interests and their agents commit the most ferocious crimes in the name of the whole people, and bluff and browbeat them by lying propaganda.” ~ CLR James

“The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.” ~ CLR James

“But neither Dessalines’ army nor his ferocity won the victory. It was the people. They burned San Domingo flat so that at the end of the war it was a charred desert. Why do you burn everything? asked a French officer of a prisoner. We have a right to burn what we cultivate because a man has a right to dispose of his own labour, was the reply of this unknown anarchist.”

“If you wish to keep your liberty use your arms on the day that the white authorities ask you for them, because any such request is the infallible sign and precursor of the return to slavery.” ~ Sonthonax

“In overthrowing me, you have cut down in San Domingo only the trunk of the tree of liberty. It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep.” ~ Toussaint

“Once more the masses had received a shattering blow— not from the bullets of the enemy, but from where the masses most often receive it, from their own trembling leaders.”

‘In every revolution there are many who hesitate and though decisive action may not be immediately effective, vacillation is certain to lose them all.’

Uncover your breasts, you will see them branded by the iron of slavery. During ten years, what have you not undertaken for liberty? Your masters slain or put to flight; the English humiliated by defeat; discord extinguished, a land of slavery purified by fire & evolving more beautiful than ever under liberty; these are your labors & these the fruits of your labours. & the foe wishes to snatch both out of your hands

“You are going to fight against men who have neither faith, law nor religion. They promise you liberty, they intend your servitude. Why have so many ships traversed the ocean, if not to throw you again into chains? They disdain to recognize in you submissive children, and if you are not their slaves you are rebels. The mother-country, misled by the Consul, is no longer anything for you but a stepmother…”

“… Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest sustenance. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the fountains, burn and annihilate everything in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of that hell which they deserve.” ~ Toussaint