It would be tedious to relate the disturbances, popular executions, and ferocious acts which took place in every quarter of the island. Murder was inaugurated by the colonists themselves: the provincial faction avenged their previous defeat, and were temporarily masters of the colony. On the 15th of May, 1791, the National Assembly had passed a decree, admitting, by a precise designation, all enfranchised of all colors who were born of free parents to the right of suffrage. When this reached the island, the whites were violently agitated, and many outrages were committed against the people of color. The decree was formally rejected, the mulattoes again flew to arms, and began to put themselves into a condition to demand the rights which had been solemnly conceded to them. In that decree not a word is said of the slaves: the _Amis des Noirs_, and the debates of the National Assembly, stretched out no hand towards that inarticulate and suffering mass. The colonists themselves had been for months shaking a scarlet rag, as if they deliberately meant to excite the first blind plunge of the brute from its harness. The mulattoes now brought their slaves into headquarters at Croix-des-Bouquets, and armed them. The whites followed this example, and began to drill a body of slaves in Port-au-Prince. Amid this passionate preoccupation of all minds, the ordinary discipline of the plantations was relaxed, the labor languished, the negroes were ill-fed and began to escape to the _mornes_, the subtle earth-currents carried vague disquiet into the most solitary quarters. Then the negroes began to assemble at midnight to subject themselves to the frenzy of their priestesses, and to conduct the serpent-orgies. But it is not likely that the extensive revolt in the Plaine du Cap would have taken place, if an English negro, called Buckman, had not appeared upon the scene, to give a direction to all these restless hearts, and to pour his own clear indignation into them. No one can satisfactorily explain where he came from. One writer will prove to you that he was an emissary of the planting interest in Jamaica, which was willing to set the fatal example of insurrection for the sake of destroying a rival colony. Another pen is equally fertile with assurances that he was bought with the gold of Pitt to be a political instrument of perfidious Albion. It is shown to be more probable that he was the agent of the Spanish governor, whose object was to effect a diversion in the interest of royalism. According to another statement, he belonged to the Cudjoe band of Jamaica maroons, which had forced a declaration of its independence from the governor of that island. Buckman was acquainted with Creole French, and was in full sympathy with the superstitious rites of his countrymen in San Domingo. Putting aside the conjectures of the times, one thing is certain beyond a doubt, that he was born of the moment, and sprang from the festering