d more of them
were granted their freedom. While these freedmen did not receive equal
treatment with the whites, they were careful to preserve the advantages
they held over the slaves. Many of them served in the militia to help
keep the slaves under control. However, the threat of slave revolts
continued. The greater the possibility of success, the greater the
probability that slaves would take the risk of starting a revolt. All of
the islands in the West Indies had a history of slave rebellion.

Undoubtedly, the most outstanding slave revolt in the western hemisphere
took place in Haiti. During the French revolution, concepts of the rights
of man spread from France to her colonies. In Haiti, the free mulattoes
petitioned the French revolutionary government for their rights. The
Assembly granted their request. However, the French aristocrats in Haiti
refused to follow the directives of the Assembly. At this point, two
free mulattoes, Vincent Oge and Jean Baptiste Chavannes, both of whom had
received an education in Paris, led a mulatto rebellion. The Haitian
aristocrats quickly and brutally suppressed it.

By this time, however, the concepts of the rights of man had spread to
the slave class. In 1791, under the leadership of Toussaint l'Ouverture,
the slaves began a long and bloody revolt of their own. Slaves flocked
to Toussaint's support by the thousands until he had an army much larger
than any that had fought in the American revolution, This revolt became
entangled with the French revolution and the European wars connected with
it. Besides fighting the French, Toussaint had to face both British and
Spanish armies. None of them was able to suppress the revolt and to
overthrow the republic which had been established in Haiti.

After Napoleon came to power in France, he sent a gigantic expedition
under Leclerc to reestablish French authority in Haiti. While he claimed
to stand for the principles of the revolution, Napoleon's real interest
in Haiti was to make it into a base from which to rebuild a French empire
in the western hemisphere. Toussaint lured this French army into the
wilderness where the soldiers, who had no immunity to tropical diseases,
were hit very hard by malaria and yellow fever.

Toussaint was captured by trickery, but his compatriots carried on the
fight for independence. Finally, Napoleon was forced to withdraw from the
struggle. One of the results of his failure to suppress the slave revol