The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture: The Negro Patriot of Hayti
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
When the subject of this book, Toussaint L'Overture, was born slavery was one the 'givens' of history, as much a part of modern life as traffic congestion and noise. All great civilizations, the educated people in that day would have told you, are built on sweated labor of slaves--Greece, Roman being two prime examples.
Toussaint dared to challenge that, not just with the belief that slaves should be free, but with the far more radical concept that slaves had within themselves the power to break their chains and live free and independent. He dared to demonstrate that truth, not against a corrupt and decadent colonial government, but against the very same French military leaders and troops who had conquered Europe with ease. The defeat he and his people inflicted the French was so great that the nation abandoned its most valuable overseas possession for a pitance rather than risk another colonial war. That's why the United States owes its possession of all the land west of the Alleganies and east of the Mississipi River to a Haitian slave whose name most Americans have never heard.
When this book was published in 1853, slavery was in fighting for its existence. Modern Britain never permitted slavery on its shores and, after a long and bitter political struggle, banned slavery in its colonies. In the sort of unilateral projection of force that is the prerogative of superpowers, the navies of Britain and, oddly enough, of the United States sought to end the seaborne slave trade that remained, particularly that around the coasts of Africa. But in the United States, the 'peculiar institution' of slavery remained. This book was written to destroy the prejudices upon which that slavery was built, using as an example the marvelous life of Toussaint L'Overture.
This is the book to read if you want to be inspired by words out of the past, a book about a brilliant military leader, a far-sighted statesman, and a good and decent man.
From the Author
The life which is described in the following pages has both a permanent interest and a permanent value. But the efforts which are now made to effect the abolition of slavery in the United States of America, seem to render the present moment specially fit for the appearance of a memoir of Toussaint L'Ouverture. A hope of affording some aid to the sacred cause of freedom, specially as involved in the extinction of slavery, and in the removal of prejudices on which servitude mainly depends, has induced the author to prepare the present work for the press. If apology for such a publication were required, it might be found in the fact that no detailed life of Toussaint L'Ouverture is accessible to the English reader, for the only memoir of him which exists in our language has long been out of print. --Rev. John R. Beard, 1853
The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture: The Negro Patriot of Hayti,John R. Beard,Michael W. Perry,Inkling Books,1587420104,1743?-1803,Biography,Biography & Autobiography,Biography / Autobiography,Biography/Autobiography,Generals,Haiti,History,Military,Revolution, 1791-1804,Revolutionaries,Toussaint Louverture,,Biography: general,Slavery & emancipation
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