Petion’s reply was as follows: "You know, general, my sentiments toward the cause that you have the valor to defend and also toward yourself personally. You surely must feel how ardently I desire to see the oppressed delivered from the yoke of bondage; but because of certain diplomatic obligations which I am under toward a nation that has not as yet taken an offensive attitude toward the republic, I am obliged to ask you not to make public the aid I have given you, nor to mention my name in any of your official documents." Toussaint L’Ouverture in his first proclamation to the self-emancipated slaves of his country, and to those still in bondage, says: "It is my desire that liberty and equality shall reign in Saint Domingo. I am striving to this end. Come and unite with us, Brothers, and combat with us for the same cause." Liberty and equality then reigned in the French mind and however vague the idea which had found lodgment in the brain of the San Domingo blacks and mulattos, it was nevertheless sufficiently entrancing to call them from the depths of the inferno in which they were cast and to tempt them to essay the dizziest heights. At a later period this most remarkable man in explaining the object for which he was contending, defined his idea of liberty in words worthy of that greatest statesman, soldier and patriot that has adorned the Negro Race in modern times.³ He said: "It is not a liberty of circumstance, conceded to us alone, that we wish; it is the adoption of the principle absolute that no man, born red, black or white, can be the property of his fellow man." ³ "But Bonaparte’s plans were doomed to encounter an obstacle in the most remarkable man of negro blood known to modern history. Toussaint L’Ouverture was the descendant, he claimed, of an African chieftain. Highly endowed by nature, he had obtained an excellent education, and had gradually, though born a slave, cultivated his innate power of leadership until all the blacks of San Domingo regarded him with affection and awe."—Sloan’s Napoleon, Vol. II, pages 236-237. Thus spoke Toussaint L’Ouverture, the man of whom Lamartine says: "After God, this man was a nation;" thus he spoke in 1799, a time when all the nations of the earth were themselves slaves to slavery. To this black man was given to see the truth; to them it was not given.