Soon an aristocracy based on the old French model arose. The lower-class whites, or petits blancs, also formed their own caste. These two parasitic elements, saw, as usual, that they could enjoy leisure and luxury only by having a still lower caste to produce for them. In France, it had been other white people, but here, in the tropics, nature had been most kind: It had provided a caste specially colored—a caste that could be kept separate as long as its hue lasted, and so they established what did not exist in France, what had never existed in France, a color-line—a rigid color line—a contempt, outward at least for any mixture, or reported mixture, of African strain. Hilliard d’Auberteuil expressed the spirit of the times when he said, “Policy and safety require that we crush the race of blacks by a contempt so great that whoever descends from it even to the sixth generation shall be covered with an indelible stain.”
The result was that in 1724, the provision in the Black Code which permitted a master to marry his black slave, was annulled. It now read, “Article VI. We forbid our white subjects of either sex to contract marriages with the blacks under penalty.”3
In 1749 and 1763, another influx of aristocrats arrived in Haiti, bringing about such a tightening of the color line that it exceeded that of Virginia and the Carolinas.
The discrimination continued. In January 1767, an order which had already been in vogue in Martinique was sent to the governor of St. Domingue, the purpose of which was to create a distinct line of demarcation in social circles: the aristocrat born in the mother country was to have a superior status to the one of mixed blood born in the colony. This order read, “His Majesty having already excluded those who are descended from a Negro race of any species from all public functions in the colonies, he has excluded them with even stronger reason from the nobility and you ought to be scrupulously attentive to learn the origin of those who will present to you their titles to be registered.”
On May 27, 1771, came an even stronger decree to the governor to do nothing that would “weaken the state of humiliation attached to such noblemen having Negro ancestry in any degree,” and that “under no pretext whatever was the marriage of whites and mulatto women to be favored.” One marquis, who had married a Negro girl in France was informed that he could no longer serve as captain of dragoons. In 1777, the French king sent the following message through the Count de Nolivos, “Noblemen who are descended in any degree whatever from a woman of color can no longer enjoy the prerogatives of nobility. The law is hard but wise and necessary in a country where there are fifteen slaves to one white. One cannot place too great a distance between white and black.”4
Striking out still further against the mixed bloods, the king, on the advice of his councillors, “forbade all his white subjects of both sexes to marry blacks, mulattoes, or other colored people … and that no licenses for same should be issued under penalty.” White parents could no longer leave their money and lands to their colored children.
At these and other restrictions numbers of white men sold their estates and returned to France with their colored wives and children. But even there the Haitian slaveholders pursued them. They caused several anti-Negro laws, hitherto unknown in France, to be passed, one of which forbade “the marriage of Negroes and white women which had been strongly encouraged since 1716.”5 This was in 1763. In 1777 another law forbade all mulattoes and blacks, slave or free, to enter France at all.
In 1768, mulattoes who were officers in the militia had their commissions taken away. A law of the governor-general, June 30, 1762, had already decreed jim-crow regiments for the rank and file. It read: “Nature having established three different classes of human beings: whites, near-whites, and mulattoes or free Negroes, this difference will always be observed in the composition of the militia and under no pretext or denomination must the different species be mixed.”6
Not yet satisfied, the whites determined to pursue the color-line to its limit. In the colony were a number of mixed-bloods, some of them indistinguishable from white, who had been made “white” by law. The next step was to proceed against these by refusing to associate with them and snubbing them whenever possible. To be an officer in the militia was then one of the highest honors, and such “whites-by-law” who were officers were refused places of command in the white militia even though they were the sons of noblemen. Vassiere says, “Le Sieur Baldy was refused a place of command at Port-au-Prince because his maternal grandfather had married a Negro woman; another was refused Sieur de Brethon because he had married Marie Roumat, whose grandmother was a Negro woman of Madagascar.
FAMOUS MIXED BLOODS OF THE FRENCH WEST INDIES.
XXXII. 1. General J. C. Dugommier (1736-1794), Martinique, great Napoleonic commander. 3. General Alexander Petion, first President of Haiti. 2. General Andre Rigaud, valiant leader of the mulattoes in the struggle against the whites. 4. General Boyer, ruler of Haiti during its “Golden Age,” and who brought the whole Island under his rule.
‘The Sieur Chapuzet was barred from a command in the militia because his great-great-grandmother had been a Negro woman. Some enemies of his who didn’t want him into the militia dug into the parish registers and found that one of his ancestors in 1624 was a Negro woman. He claimed that she was an Indian. But the government did not declare him wholly white because of the large number of citizens who were in the same boat and wanted the same consideration.”7
Determined to humble the mixed-bloods still further, some of whom were very wealthy, the white plantation owners went on to enact laws against all of Negro ancestry that could be paralleled only by the caste system of ancient India. Among the things they were forbidden to do were: Not to use any French name or surname for their children but only African ones, under heavy penalty—those having such names were given three months in which to change them; not to wear the same color of clothing as white people nor to be as richly dressed—those who wore jewelry in public ran the risk of losing them; and not to dress their hair in the same style as white people. If a free mulatto struck a white man for any reason he was to be whipped, branded, and sold into slavery.8
As for the illegitimate free mulattoes, the provision in the Black Code which had been made for the protection of mixed-bloods, was used against them and they were seized and sold as slaves. If such had property left them by their white fathers it was seized and given to a white next of kin.
Not in any part of the New World, not even in the Southern States at their very worst, were laws so drastic passed against Negroes or any other people. However, retribution the most awful was to overtake the whites, innocent and guilty alike.
The Negroes, too feebly armed then to revolt openly, resorted to a powerful secret weapon: poison, in the use of which they had been skilled in Africa. Scores of whites, young and old, male and female, died in great agony and their cattle with them. The Negroes, when caught, were burnt alive, inch by inch. In 1777, one of them, Jacques, was burnt alive for poisoning his master and one hundred head of cattle.
To bolster up these cruel laws against the blacks, an attempt was made to increase the white population by bringing in white labor. . This ended in disastrous failure. In 1764, three thousand two hundred and eighty-eight whites were imported of whom 2470 were German, 418 Acadians of Nova Scotia, and the remainder French. Of these 2370 died in one year, 531 returned home, with only 387 remaining. Of 7535 white soldiers also brought out, 75 per cent died in four years.9 On the other hand of 550 free black and mulatto soldiers “only three died in two years.” It became clear that the experiment of white labor would not work.
One governor, Count d’Estaing, realizing that the whites could not retain their power without the support of the mixed-bloods, or gens de couleur, proposed to lift the restrictions from the quadroons and octoroons, “eager enemies of the blacks,” but the king rejected the proposal. The color line should be absolute, he said.
This brings us to the question: Why was an absolute color line needed, and who were the most eager supporters of it? Answer: The white women. Yes, and they had abundant cause for complaint. Neglect was their lot; they were but so many castaways in the