1791 to 1793 · Haitianspan

The northern plain rising outgrows every other revolt in the Americas

Saint-Domingue's uprising dwarfed all others and set off five or six more inside the colony.

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1791 to 1793 · Haitianspan

European printmakers freeze the revolution at Cap Francais

Engravings returned to the burning port for a decade while the war moved on without them.

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1791 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Two hundred and seventeen armed men are shipped out of the colony

Free men of colour disarmed the soldiers who had won their fight and put them on a ship.

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1791 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Bwa Kayiman was a political congress as much as a ceremony

Runaways met near Cap Francais and left with a plan for a general rising.

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ReclamationMay unnamedNago still not found Peek · 9 in May
August 1791 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Sixteen of twenty four missionaries in the North backed the rising

Hurbon counts the Catholic clergy of the northern province among the supporters of the revolt.

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ReclamationAug unnamedArada, about 16 still not found Peek · 8 in Aug
February 1791 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Marie-Rose Masson buys her freedom and never gets the papers

Four years of saving, 3,342 livres paid, a receipt given, and the papers never signed.

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February 1791 · Caribbeanmonth known

Spain hands Oge back and France kills him as a deterrent

Extradition, a failed rescue at the prison, and executions staged to frighten imitators.

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25 February 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

Colonists break Oge and Chavannes on the wheel where Makandal burned2 sources

A demand that France enforce its own March 1790 law is answered with public torture.

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March 1791 · Caribbeanmonth known

The French governor flees his own colonists into Spanish territory

White mobs in Port-au-Prince drive Blanchelande across the same border Oge had used.

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15 May 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

A French decree becomes the template for colonial concordats

Croix-des-Bouquets administrators promise to obey the decree granting some men of colour rights.

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15 May 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

Paris grants political rights to a sliver of Saint-Domingue's free men

A decree gives colonial assembly seats only to men of colour born to two free parents.

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15 May 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

A limited grant of rights throws the colony toward secession

News of Oge's execution shames Paris into a decree the governor then refuses to apply.

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15 May 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

France enfranchises some free men of colour and then takes it back

The compromise decree enfranchised only those born to free parents, and was withdrawn in September.

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19 May 1791 · Diaspora

Fifteen passengers step off the Charming Sally at Philadelphia

The flight out of Saint Domingue began three months before the northern plain burned.

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1791 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Healy says the government planned the revolt and picked Toussaint

In her account the insurrection was staged to cure white colonists of wanting independence.

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1791 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Paris answers with its own draft constitution for the colony

The Colonial Committee prints a rival set of governing principles as a pamphlet.

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1791 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

An English clergyman defends the rebel slaves in print

Percival Stockdale's pamphlet affirms the human rights of the enslaved and their right to take them by force.

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1791 to 1802 · Haitianspan

Toussaint's own language buries the pan-African reading of his career

He wrote and often spoke the language of the system he never escaped, and hid his accent.

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2 August 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

At Pernier, Petion walks into his own guns to save French prisoners

His first battle in the rising of the free men of colour becomes the anecdote that defines him.

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14 August 1791 · African

A Petwo ceremony names the generals and the revolution begins

Mocombe dates the start of the revolution to the congress at Bois Caiman, not to the later rising.

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Sunday 14 August 1791 · Haitian

Two hundred delegates meet over dinner and fix the date of the rising

Drivers from across the northern plain gather at Lenormand de Mezy and set the final plan.

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14 August 1791 · African

Two hundred drivers hear the king has granted three free days

At Lenormand de Mezy a man of colour reads out papers, and some plantations refuse to wait.

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August 1791 · Haitianmonth known

Bwa Kayiman was a Vodou ceremony and a binding political oath

Trouillot refuses both the reading that it was only politics and the reading that it was only mysticism.

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14 August 1791 · Haitian

The Lenormand meeting was open and its contents leaked in advance

Delegates from perhaps a hundred plantations decided to rebel eight days ahead of time.

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14 August 1791 · Haitian

Bois Caïman4 sources

A Vodou ceremony that was also a general staff meeting.

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August 1791 · Haitianmonth known

The enslaved rise and leave the French revolutionaries no choice

Dupuy follows Fick: not one leading Jacobin, Robespierre and Marat included, would touch the trade first.

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August 1791 · Caribbeanmonth known

Haiti's first export to the Caribbean was its refugees

Within hours of the first shots, planters from western Hispaniola were sailing for Jamaica.

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14 August 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

A second meeting in the woods seals the rising with an oath

Boukman Dutty had been a coachman and a driver, and knew the work gangs of the north.

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14 August 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

Boukman swears in the conspirators at Bois Caiman

A priestess opens the throat of a pig and the general insurrection has its oath.

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August 1791 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

A hundred thousand enslaved people rise across the northern plain

Woodward puts the August rising at roughly 100,000 people and dates the terror from it.

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August to September 1791 · Haitianspan

Toussaint holds the Breda cane fields while the plain burns

The steward keeps his master's gang in hand, then evacuates the manager's wife.

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August 1791 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

A week before the rising the Breda gang puts out a cane fire

The last recorded act of the workforce Toussaint knew, done on their own initiative.

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probably 21 August 1791 · African

Dubois puts Bois-Caiman on the Sunday, not right after the meeting

The ceremony probably fell on 21 August at an estate halfway between Gallifet and Le Cap.

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21 August 1791, disputed · Haitiandate disputed

The founding ceremony may have happened a week earlier, or differently

Girard says the gore at Bois Caiman comes from a Frenchman who wanted the rebels to look satanic.

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22 August 1791 · African

The north rises eight days after the oath was sworn

Mocombe keeps the ceremony and the rising as two separately dated events.

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22 August 1791 · Haitian

After 22 August the rebels stop taking royalist orders

Bell dates the insurrection's break from its white sponsors to the day it began.

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22 August 1791 · Haitian

The Night of Fire2 sources

The northern plain rises in one coordinated night. Within a week, thousands under arms.

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22 August 1791 · Haitian

The North rises and the plantations are set alight2 sources

Eight days after the ceremony the northern plain burns and its owners are killed.

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22 August 1791 · Haitian

The enslaved burn the Plaine-du-Nord and look east for supplies

Sugar acreage becomes a funeral pyre, and the insurgents immediately open a Spanish channel.

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August 1791 · Africanmonth known

Boukman's words survive only as French verse written decades later

The most quoted speech of the revolution reaches us as an alexandrine poem, not as Kreyol.

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night of 22 to 23 August 1791 · Haitian

The North rises for lighter discipline and more free time

Stein argues the first demands were about grievances and hours, and grew only when refused.

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1791 · Haitianyear only

The great rising began among creoles, not the newly landed Africans

Geggus rejects the idea that record slave imports explain the revolt that founded Haiti.

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August 1791 · Haitianmonth known

The rebels rose when the colony had just shipped out its soldiers

The rising followed the deportation of half the garrison and the opening of a settler civil war.

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August 1791 · Haitianmonth known

Two risings in one month, and the enslaved catch everyone off guard

Free coloured revolt in the west and south, then the northern plain goes up in flames.

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22 August 1791 · Haitian

A conch sounds in the woods and the cane burns a week later

Renda dates the oath to 14 August and the rising to the night of 22 August 1791.

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22 August 1791 · Haitian

Fire covers the northern plain before the masters can blink

The rallying cry raised that day is tracked by Trouillot through 1795, 1802, 1843 and 1918.

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24 August 1791 · Haitian

Three days into the rising the planters write to Jamaica

The Colonial Assembly's first act was to ask a rival empire for help.

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29 August 1791 · Caribbean

The planters go to Philadelphia for help, and hit a wall of American self-interest

A week after the rising, Saint-Domingue's planters ask the United States for troops.

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late August 1791 · Haitianmonth known

Le Cap shoots more than a hundred prisoners in the burying ground

Ships are held in harbour, gallows and a wheel are raised, and the streets empty.

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1 September 1791 · Haitian

A creole king of Limbé is broken on the wheel after capture

Jean-Baptiste Cap owned property worth 3,000 livres and had been elected king by the insurgents.

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25 August 1791 · Haitian

The rising was timed for the day the Assembly would be sitting

Le Cap was to be attacked while the colony's entire political elite sat in session.

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5 September 1791 · Haitian

Insurgents at L'Acul elect a king with a Capuchin officiating

Two marriages, consecrated colours and an election, one king for each captured quarter.

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September 1791 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Colonists secretly ask Britain for a protectorate

Facing massive risings, white settlers ask for a protectorate rather than a republic.

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September 1791 · Caribbeanmonth known

Within weeks the revolt is being sung about in Jamaica and Havana

Songs in Jamaica and pigs sacrificed in Havana show how fast the news moved.

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24 September 1791 · Pre-Revolutionary

Paris cancels its May decree after being told blacks are orangutans

The National Assembly withdraws free coloured citizenship weeks before the north burns.

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12 October 1791 · Haitian

Rebel leaders admit they cannot command the African veterans they lead

Jean-François and Biassou told the commissioners their followers barely spoke French and were used to war.

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15 October 1791 · Haitian

A letter to Biassou puts Toussaint at the planning of an attack

One of the few documents that shows what Toussaint was doing in 1791.

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November 1791 · Haitianmonth known

Rebel leaders offer to end the rising for their own freedom alone

Jean-François and Biassou sought an amnesty for the mass and emancipation only for the leadership.

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November 1791 to April 1792 · Pre-Revolutionaryspan

Paris makes Jews citizens, then free men of colour, five months apart

Two emancipation campaigns ran through the National Assembly and finished months apart.

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late 1791 · Haitianseason

Jean-Francois has Jeannot executed and takes command

After Boukman's head goes on display, the insurgent leadership purges its most violent general.

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mid-November 1791 · Haitianmonth known

Boukman is gunned down and his head raised on a stake at Le Cap

A cavalry troop surrounds him, his body is burned in view of the camps, and a bounty is paid.

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1791 · Haitianyear only

The kabinda dance, and what was never told to the blans

Chants about Ginen carried information that no white or milat listener was ever given.

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12 December 1791 · Haitian

Toussaint signs his first surviving letter at nearly fifty

The earliest document certainly in his own hand is a joint insurgent letter from December 1791.

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December 1791 · Haitianmonth known

Insurgent generals say their men expect three free days a week

Negotiating with the colony, Jean-Francois and Biassou call the king's promise a false principle.

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December 1791 · Haitianmonth known

The rebel commanders offer to sell the revolt for their own freedom

Jean-Francois and Biassou proposed peace in exchange for liberty and amnesty for the leaders alone.

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December 1791 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Toussaint's first certain signature comes months into the revolt

He signed no baptismal or notarial record before the rising, which points to a man who could not yet write.

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