Writing from Christophe's kingdom against the French colonial party and its correspondents at home, Vastey explains both why Haitians freed themselves and why they afterward turned on one another. He begins with a complaint about the record: no general account of Haiti has been written by a Haitian, and the European fragments that exist were assembled from planters' testimony and carry its prejudice.

His central claim is that the internal wars were manufactured abroad. Hedouville, he argues, came with secret instructions to divide Toussaint Louverture from Rigaud, and having failed with the first flattered the second into accepting a command he had no right to hold; the later conflict under Petion was that war's aftershock. Both generals, on this account, were tools of a France unable to restore slavery by force.

The polemic is aimed as much at writers in the republic - Colombel and Milcent are named again and again - as at Paris.