Founded on August 20, 1789, the Hôtel Massiac Club intended to oppose with all its strength the current of sympathy for the blacks, which threatened to overflow the Assembly. Its members meant to prevent at any cost the concession of rights to the mulattos inhabiting the island, which would be the preliminary to granting similar rights to the slaves. And for three years the planters devoted all their energies to this task. Cormier, as a landowner in Saint-Domingo, was, of course, in accord with his compatriots. On August 24, 1789, he was made a member of the club, and a fortnight later he was occupying the position of vice-president. After a period of absence--his name disappeared from the proceedings for several months--he reappeared at the sittings at the commencement of 1791. From that time forth he played a foremost part in the club; had charge of all its correspondence and papers; and these, now lying in the National Archives, have yielded us a quantity of letters and speeches, and many memoranda covered with his microscopic handwriting. In the spring he was made president of the club; and the position was no sinecure. Tragic news arrived from Saint-Domingo during the summer. At the end of August there was a rising of the mulattos and negroes, and the angry populace burned and pillaged the plantations, and massacred the white folk, male and female. The Colonists, very inferior in numbers as they were, were powerless to resist them, and clamoured for help from their compatriots and for support from the Assembly. Letters came to the club, more terrifying every day; the planters were in despair. Many of them had their families out there, and they shuddered to think of their dear ones at the mercy of the blacks. The club held many extra meetings and discussions, but every effort that was made by its members met with furious opposition in the Assembly. At last, in desperation, they resolved to write and despatch an address to the King, pointing out to him the deplorable state of the Colony, and appealing for his intervention. The address, which was probably the work of Cormier, after having depicted the calamities which were overwhelming Saint-Domingo, hinted at the cause of these woes; they were (it pointed out) a direct sequence from the recent Decrees of the Assembly. “For three years it has been the untiring aim of the Assembly to sow broadcast in our midst the seeds of trouble and revolt. In vain we multiply our efforts to escape their snares; and now a society founded by foreigners and cranks for our ruin and the humiliation of France, and using ignorance and credulity for its pernicious ends, is inundating us with incendiary writings, and flaunting its emissaries in our very workshops.” The planters, for all their impassioned denunciation, had proved powerless to avert the detested action of the Friends of the Blacks; therefore they now brought the King to take their part.