Toussaint L'ouverture Is Born

François-Dominique Toussaint L'ouverture Fr-François-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture.ogg pronunciation (help·info), also Toussaint Bréda, Toussaint-Louverture (May 20, 1743–April 8, 1803) was a leader of the Haitian Revolution.

Born in Saint Domingue , in a long struggle for independence Toussaint led enslaved Africans to victory over Europeans, abolished slavery, and secured native control over the colony in 1797 while nominally governor of the colony. He expelled the French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, as well as the British armies; invaded Santo Domingo to free the slaves there; and wrote a constitution naming himself governor-for-life that established a new polity for the colony.

Especially between the years 1800 and 1802, Toussaint L'ouverture tried to rebuild the collapsed economy of Haiti and reestablish commercial contacts with the United States and Great Britain. His rule permitted the colony a taste of freedom which, after his death in exile, was gradually destroyed during the successive reigns of a series of despots. Translated from French, his name means "the awakening of all saints" or "all souls rising". His last words were to his son in France, "“My boy, you will one day go back to St. Domingo; forget that France murdered your father.”

Political conflicts in Guadeloupe and in Saint-Domingue grew with the restoration of slavery on May 20, 1802, and the defection of leading French officers, like Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black general Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the mulatto officer Alexandre Pétion in October 1802, within the context of an ongoing guerrilla war. The French had successfully captured, and deported to France Toussaint L'Ouverture in June 1802, but the revolutionary war and the yellow fever were destroying most of the Leclerc's army of European soldiers. Leclerc himself died of yellow fever in November 1802, and Rochambeau, his successor, failed, despite being sent a further 20,000 troops from Europe, and the use of genocidal tactics, to avoid complete defeat by the forces led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines.