g and yellow fever
decimated the French, but matters went hard with the Negroes too, and
Toussaint finally offered to yield. He was courteously received with
military honors and then, as soon as possible, treacherously seized,
bound, and sent to France. He was imprisoned at Fort Joux and died,
perhaps of poison, after studied humiliations, April 7, 1803.

Thus perished the greatest of American Negroes and one of the great men
of all time, at the age of fifty-six. A French planter said, "God in his
terrestrial globe did not commune with a purer spirit." Wendell
Phillips said, "Some doubt the courage of the Negro. Go to Hayti and
stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever
had and ask them what they think of the Negro's sword. I would call him
Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and
through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him
Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went
down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great
Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the
slave trade in the humblest village of his dominions. You think me a
fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes, but with your
prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse
of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden
for the English, La Fayette for France, choose Washington as the bright
consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in
the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of
the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture."

The treacherous killing of Toussaint did not conquer Hayti. In 1802 and
1803 some forty thousand French soldiers died of war and fever. A new
colored leader, Dessalines, arose and all the eight thousand remaining
French surrendered to the blockading British fleet.

The effect of all this was far-reaching. Napoleon gave up his dream of
American empire and sold Louisiana for a song. "Thus, all of Indian
Territory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana
and the Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of
Washington and Oregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a
despised Negro. Praise, if you will, the work of a Robert Livingstone or
a Jefferson, but to-day let us not forget our debt to Toussaint
L'Ouverture, who was