Toussaint L'Ouverture
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Toussaint L'Ouverture. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
too'saN' loo'ver-tur', a patriot of Haiti. He was a fullblooded negro, the child of slaves. The details of his early life are unknown. In 1791 the Haitian negroes broke out into open revolt. Toussaint joined them, but not until he had exerted himself to secure the escape of the family of his old master. During the time of the French Republic, Haiti was a French possession. The leaders of the French Republic, recognizing his ability, placed him at the head of the negro troops in the island. Toussaint defended Haiti successfully against an invasion of the British, but, instead of remaining loyal to France, he declared the independence of the island. He framed a constitution under the provisions of which he was named president for life of the Republic of Haiti. Although a man of quiet habits and of controlled appetites, he deemed it necessary to maintain a court of considerable magnificence. When Napoleon came into power, he sent a powerful force of soldiers to subdue the Haitian Republic. Toussaint showed himself a master of military strategy, but was overcome finally by overwhelming numbers. He took the oath of fidelity to France and retired to his estate, but later he was arrested on a charge of conspiring against the authority of France. He was sent to France in irons and died in prison. Napoleon has been charged with making away with him by means of poison, but there is no proof of the fact. The following quotation is from the pen of Wendell Phillips: 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 England, 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. See Haiti
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
DOM- INIQUE FRANCOIS (surname added for his bravery in once making a breach in the ranks of the enemy), one of the liberators of Haiti; born a slave in 1743; joined the negro insurgents in 1791; and 1795, for his services against the Spaniards, was made by the French Convengeneral of brigade, in 1797 general tion of division, and a little later chief of the army of Santo Domingo. Soon after he cleared the British and Spaniards entirely out of the island, quickly restored order and prosperity, and about 1800 began to aim at independence of France. Bonaparte having, after the peace of Amiens, proclaimed the re-establishment slavery in Santo Domingo, Toussaint declined to obey, whereupon General Le Clerc was sent with a strong fleet to compel him. The liberator soon submitted, but was treacherously arrested, sent to France, and flung into a damp, dark dungeon at Fort de Joux, near Besançon, where he died after 10 months, April 27, 1803.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 remark that "the details of his early life are unknown" no longer holds: archival work, notably the discovery of manumission documents in the 1970s, established that Toussaint was freed in the 1770s, well before the 1791 uprising, and that he leased land and worked enslaved labourers himself — a complication the older heroic portrait had no room for. Aiton also has him "declare the independence of the island"; in fact his 1801 constitution made him governor-general for life of a colony still nominally French, and independent Haiti was proclaimed by Dessalines on 1 January 1804, after Toussaint's death. He died at Fort de Joux on 7 April 1803, not 27 April as Collier's has it, and the poisoning story the 1910 entry raises is still unproven. Wendell Phillips's prediction that history would rank him above Washington has come closer to fulfilment than either editor expected: C. L. R. James's The Black Jacobins (1938) and later scholarship made the Haitian Revolution a central episode of Atlantic history rather than a colonial footnote.
Written for this edition, 2026.