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Commentary: Toussaint L'Ouverture among those to thank for United States Purchase of Louisiana

John Winn Guest columnist

When the Haitian Revolution began, Toussaint L'Ouverture was an obscure carriage driver in the northern province of Haiti, where he had lived all of his life as a slave. He was literate in French and knew some Latin. He was, it seems, a model slave, but the fire of the Haitian Revolution transformed Toussaint - burning away the dross. Within two years, this grey-haired carriage driver electrified the world by defeating the English and Spanish armies.

He unified Haiti and held his own with Napoleon. England lost 40,000 soldiers in the attempt to take the Island from the Black General. After the English withdrawal, Toussaint annexed the eastern two-thirds of the Island, now the Dominican Republic.

Though Toussaint ruled nominally in the name of France, he was the military and political dictator of Haiti. This pained Napoleon, another small-statured man of great military ability. It irritated Napoleon that men compared Toussaint with him because he did not have a high opinion of men with black skin. Toussaint was in Napoleon's way because he had dreams of a vast empire in the Western Hemisphere. He needed Haiti and slave labor to complete that dream and plans for the Louisiana Territory.

Napoleon sent his brother-in-law, Victor Emanuel Leclerc, and 25,000 soldiers to defeat Haiti. Toussaint fell back into the mountains, burning the crops and poisoning the water as he retreated. Henri Christophe, one of Toussaint's top generals, defaulted and joined the French. Always the realist, Toussaint retired and appointed his trusted aide Jean-Jacques Dessalines. His military genius was second only to the master, Toussaint. The war continued - blow for blow, crime for crime.

Leclerc bombarded Napoleon with appeals for help. Time ran out on Napoleon's men Nov. 28, 1803, at Vertieres. The French lost some 60,000 men and a rich colony. Napoleon turned sour on the Western Hemisphere and sold the Louisiana Territory to America for four cents an acre, the biggest real estate bargain in history. It became America's as the indirect work of a despised Negro.

Praise the work of Robert Livingstone or Thomas Jefferson, if you will, but let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was indirectly the means for America's expansion by the Louisiana Purchase.

John Winn, president of the Vermilion Parish NAACP, is a U.S. Navy veteran and attended Solono County Community College Vallejo in California. Historical information in this column is from Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, the sixth revised edition, written by Lerone Bennett.