French National Convention abolishes slavery in all French colonies

The Legislative Assembly reaffirmed full political rights for free men of color born of free parents and extended the measure to free women of color. It addressed racial inequality among free...

Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Étienne Polverel, and Jean-Antoine Ailhaud arrived in Saint-Domingue with troops to enforce the rights of free people of color and restore French authority. They initially...

As French republican forces faced revolt and foreign intervention, commissioner Sonthonax issued a measure promising freedom to enslaved people who joined the republican army. The offer was limited...

Under pressure from the uprising and the struggle to retain the colony, Sonthonax proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in the northern province. The decree was a decisive local abolition, won in a...

Commissioner Étienne Polverel issued emancipation measures covering the colony’s western and southern provinces, completing the local abolition begun in the north. Proclamations differed in timing and...

Under the treaty ending Spain’s war with France, Spain ceded its eastern colony of Santo Domingo to France. This diplomatic transfer brought the whole island under nominal French sovereignty, but...

The constitution promulgated under Toussaint Louverture declared that slavery could not exist in Saint-Domingue and made the ban permanent. It granted Louverture governorship for life and gave the...

A French expedition commanded by Charles Leclerc reached Cap-Français to reassert metropolitan authority over Saint-Domingue and displace Louverture’s autonomous government. Napoleon’s government...

Napoleon’s law maintained slavery in colonies returned to France where the 1794 abolition had not been implemented. Its wording did not itself reinstate slavery in Saint-Domingue, where abolition...

After negotiations and military reversals, French forces arrested Louverture and sent him to France, where he was imprisoned at Fort de Joux. His removal did not end resistance. Reports of French...