The above account is far beyond any thing that could have been expected. Indeed, it is most gratifying. We find that the liberated Negroes, _both in the South and the West_, continued to work upon their _old plantations_, and for their _old masters_; that there was also _a spirit of industry_ among them, and that they gave no uneasiness to their employers; for they are described as continuing to work _as quietly as before_. Such was the conduct of the Negroes for the first nine months after their liberation, or up to the middle of 1794. Let us pursue the subject, and see how they conducted themselves after this period. During the year 1795 and part of 1796 I learn nothing about them, neither good, nor bad, nor indifferent, though I have ransacked the French historians for this purpose. Had there, however, been any thing in the way of _outrage_, I should have heard of it; and let me take this opportunity of setting my readers right, if, for want of knowing the dates of occurrences, they should have connected _certain outrages_, which assuredly took place in St. Domingo, _with the emancipation of the slaves_. The great massacres and conflagrations, which have made so frightful a picture in the history of this unhappy island, had been all effected _before the proclamations_ of Santhonax and Polverel. They had all taken place _in the days of slavery_, or before the year 1794, that is, before the great conventional decree of the mother country was known. They had been occasioned, too, _not originally by the slaves themselves_, but by quarrels between _the white and coloured planters_, and between the _royalists_ and the _revolutionists_, who, for the purpose of reeking their vengeance upon each other, called in the aid of their respective slaves; and as to the insurgent Negroes of the North, who filled that part of the colony so often with terror and dismay, they were originally put in motion, according to Malenfant, under _the auspices of the royalists_ themselves, to strengthen their own cause, and _to put down the partizans of the French revolution_. When Jean François and Biassou commenced the insurrection, there were many _white royalists_ with them, and the Negroes were made to wear the _white cockade_. I repeat, then, that during the years 1795 and 1796, I can find nothing in the History of St. Domingo, wherewith to reproach the emancipated Negroes in the way of outrage[8]. There is every reason, on the other hand, to believe, that they conducted themselves, during this period, in as orderly a manner as before.