Case M2, Drawer 15, Folder 50: Early Haitian commission signed by the Jacobian Commissioner

Stuk

Case M2, Drawer 15, Folder 50: Early Haitian commission signed by the Jacobian Commissioner

• 1793 (Vervaardig)

"[ Printed Commission, Completed in manuscript, signed by Légér-Félicité Sonthonax, appointing the Mulatto General Villate as Commander of Cap-Français ]. Cap-Français, Oct. 10, 1793. Broadside, 18 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches, completed in manuscript. During the early years of the French Revolution, Sonthonax was the civil commissioner of Saint Domnigue, which would soon become Haiti. A radical Jacobin, he presided over a chaoiic period of conflicts between royalists and revolutionaries and between whites, free people of color, and slaves in full revolt. He is most remembered for freeing the colony's slaves on Aug. 29, 1793 in an effort to gain the support of Toussaint L'Ouverture's forces against the Spanish. This document appoints the mulatto general, Villate, a rival of Toussaint's, as military commander of the city. It is signed by Sonthonax and countersigned by French military leader Etienne LaVeaux, who later assumed the governorship for himself, but he held power only briefly before deposed by Toussaint. A large woodcut vignette proclaiming 'La Republique Française, Une et Indivisible' heads the document. All early printed material from Saint Domingue is, in and of itself, rare by nature. A handsome and important piece, signed by two important figures in the early Haitian revolution, formalizing the rise to power of a third." -William Reese Company