We are now, I trust, prepared to estimate that thirteen years’ struggle which went on in that island, during which the tidal wave of destruction, torture, and death, swept the land from side to side, and from end to end, inundating everything except the indomitable spirit of the humble people to whom the heavens of freedom had been opened. Truly does MacMaster class it among the noblest struggles for liberty. I cannot detail that mighty struggle here. For the history of those thirteen eventful years, for the instructive and thrilling story of those heroic black men who garlanded our race, I must refer you to my book on the Haitian Revolution from 1791 to 1804. We may pause here at the close of this awful period and stand in the proud presence of these triumphant black heroes, as the last of their enemies sail slowly away as prisoners of war. With the new flag floating over the fortresses of the Cape, and the victorious army well-equipped and intact, it is Dessalines, the intrepid Dessalines, never beaten in battle, never surprised in camp, who in the name of the black people and Men of Color of Saint Domingo announces: "The Independence of Saint Domingo is Proclaimed. "Restored to our primitive dignity, we have asserted⁴ our rights; we swear never to yield them to any power on earth." These were the words of war-worn veterans with swords still unsheathed. ⁴ "Asserting their liberties as men, he (Toussaint L’Ouverture) and his fellow slaves rose against their masters and a servile War insued." Sloan, ibid. They have proclaimed independence, they must now take up the task of government. For this work their training hitherto had been the worst possible, while their anthropological and sociological condition was most unfavorable. Among them were represented fourteen different African tribes,—coming from widely separated territory in their native land and differing in customs and language.⁵ Besides these diversities there was also a positive and assertive element of mulattos, some of whom had been slaveholders, and, what was worse still, the country had but recently emerged from a war of caste, a war between blacks and mulattos, more cruel than the war between the Lancastrians and Yorkists in England, and much more pernicious in the hates it bequeathed.