"REVOLT WAS THE WORD; AND, WITH THE SPEED OF LIGHTNING, IT FLAMED OUT ON THE NEIGHBORING PLANTATIONS": 1792 ACCOUNT OF THE BEGINNINGS OF THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION

(HAITI) (SLAVERY). A Particular Account of the Insurrection of the Negroes of St. Domingo, Begun in August, 1791: Translated from the French [caption title, as issued]. [London: 1792]. Slim octavo, modern green cloth; pp. 32. $1800.

Fourth edition, published one year after the very rare first, of this sensationalistic account of the early months of the Slave Rebellion in Haiti, the beginnings of the Haitian Revolution, which ultimately led to the establishment of the first independent black state in the New World. The publishers of this polemic hoped to frighten the British public and turn them away from the abolitionists Wilberforce and Clarkson who were trying to put and end to slavery in the British colonies in the West Indies.

Translated into English, this is a speech to France's National Assembly "by the Deputies from the General Assembly of the French part of St. Domingo." The tract provides a frightening and grisly account of the August, 1791 Slave Rebellion, the result of "a plot to set fire to the plantations and to murder all the whites." The start of the insurrection by its "perfidious" leaders resulted in a catalogue of horrors and atrocities, as the rebels "spread over the plain, with dreadful shouts, set fires to houses and canes, and massacred the inhabitants." The "fury of the cannibals" is recounted in gory detail. The Speech is signed at the bottom of page 19 by six Deputies, who call the insurrection "the greatest calamity that has visited the human race in the course of the eighteenth century." An Appendix records Letters and Speeches concerning the Rebellion. ESTC T110428. Goldsmiths' 15167. See Sabin 58932 (1791 first edition); LCP 7460 (2nd edition, 1792); Work 349 (1832 printing).

First and last leaf slightly darkened, text quite clean. Trimmed irregularly along upper margin, affecting page numbers on two leaves but not any text. A very good copy of this scarce item.