| A Haitian Mulatto Claims Civil and
Political Rights |
 |
| From Ogé, Vincent the Younger. Motion
faite par M. Vincent Ogé. As reproduced in The French
Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History, trans.
Lynn Hunt, ed. Lynn Hunt (New York: Bedford Books
of St. Martin's Press, 1996), 103-104. |
|
Vincent Ogé was a mulatto property owner
on Saint Domingue. He presented his claims for full civil and
political rights to a meeting in Paris of white planters from the
colony. As Ogé and his supporters were property holders and slave
owners, they wanted to align themselves with resistant white
planters. After the outbreak of the slave rebellion in 1791,
mulattos and free blacks sometimes supported the slaves, sometimes
the white planters. Ogé, himself, was executed in the fall of
1790 after leading a mulatto rebellion on the island.
|
| But Sirs, this word of Freedom that
one cannot pronounce without enthusiasm, this word that carries
with it the idea of happiness, is this not because it seems to
want to make us forget the evils that we have suffered for so many
centuries? This Freedom, the greatest, the first of goods, is it
made for all men? I believe so. Should it be given to all men? I
believe so again. But how should it be rendered? What should be
the timing and the conditions? Here is for us, Sirs, the greatest,
the most important of all questions; it interests America, Africa,
France, all Europe and it is principally this question that has
determined me, Sirs, to ask you to hear me out.
If we do not take the most prompt and efficacious measures; if
firmness, courage, and constancy do not animate all of us; if we
do not quickly bring together all our intelligence, all our means,
and all our efforts; if we fall asleep for an instant on the edge
of the abyss, we will tremble upon awakening! We will see blood
flowing, our lands invaded, the objects of our industry ravaged,
our homes burnt. We will see our neighbors, our friends, our
wives, our children with their throats cut and their bodies
mutilated; the slave will raise the standard of revolt, and the
islands [of the Caribbean] will be but a vast and baleful
conflagration; commerce will be ruined, France will receive a
mortal wound, and a multitude of honest citizens will be
impoverished and ruined; we will lose everything.
But, Sirs, there is still time to prevent the disaster. I have
perhaps presumed too much from my feeble understanding, but I have
ideas that can be useful; if the assembly [of white planters]
wishes to admit me, if it desires it, if it wants to authorize me
to draw up and submit it to my Plan, I will do it with pleasure,
even with gratitude, and perhaps I could contribute and help ward
off the storm that rumbles over our heads.
|
|