ciples of liberty of the blacks more denied and more
profaned than ever. He raised the standard of insurrection, but with the
forms and rights of legality. At the head of a body of two hundred men
of colour, he demanded the promulgation in the colonies of the decrees
of the National Assembly, despotically delayed until that time. He wrote
to the military commandant at the Cape, "We require the proclamation of
the law which makes us free citizens. If you oppose this, we will repair
to Leogane, we will nominate electors, and repel force by force. The
pride of the colonists revolts at sitting beside us: was the pride of
the nobility and clergy consulted when the equality of citizens was
proclaimed in France?"

The government replied to this eloquent demand for liberty by sending a
body of troops to disperse the persons assembled, and Oge drove them
back.

XI.

A larger body of troops being despatched, they contrived, after a
desperate resistance, to disperse the mulattoes. Oge escaped, and found
refuge in the Spanish part of the island. A price was set upon his head.
M. de Blanchelande in his proclamations imputed it as a crime to him
that he had claimed the rights of nature in the name of the Assembly,
which had so loudly proclaimed the rights of the citizen. They applied
to the Spanish authorities to surrender this Spartacus, equally
dangerous to the safety of the whites in both countries. Oge was
delivered up to the French by the Spaniards, and sent for trial to the
Cape. His trial was protracted for two months, in order to afford time
to cut asunder all the threads of the plot of independence, and
intimidate his accomplices. The whites, in great excitement, complained
of these delays, and demanded his head with loud vociferations. The
judges condemned him to death for a crime which in the mother-country
had constituted the glory of La Fayette and Mirabeau.

He underwent torture in his dungeon. The rights of his race, centred and
persecuted in him, raised his soul above the torments of his
executioners. "Give up all hope," he exclaimed, with unflinching daring;
"give up all hope of extracting from me the name of even one of my
accomplices. My accomplices are everywhere where the heart of a man is
raised against the oppressors of men." From that moment he pronounced
but two words, which sounded like a remorse in the ears of his
persecutors--_Liberty! Equality_! He walked composedly to his death;
listened with indi