Word: toussaint
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...with the French Revolutionists' declaration of the Rights of Man, the black slaves of Haiti, in all consistency, revolted against their masters-rich Creoles, and supercilious whites. A slave born of slave parents, Pierre-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture, First of the Blacks, established in 1801 an independent constitution. He was well under way with a promising period of reconstruction when Napoleon took time to consider his refractory colonies. A swift intelligent military campaign subdued Toussaint's able generals. Toussaint himself was taken unscrupulously by ruse, and imprisoned in France-to be mourned in lines by Wordsworth...
Tropical fever was meanwhile ravaging French troops, and, Napoleon being engrossed by troubles at home, Toussaint's best general was able to declare independence. Only 13 years before, all the land and 90% of the population was owned by a small oligarchy of whites. Now no white owned land, and all the havocked property passed to ex-slaves. Making himself emperor in the grand manner, Jean Jacques Dessalines governed these ignorants by the universally understood authority of force, but he was murdered for brutal abuse of power. Among his simultaneous successors was black King Christophe, most picturesque of Haitians...
...failure of the rebellion was the beginning of a tragic and surprising war; battles were fought under the smoky sky, fugitives hid in the soft stillness of the mountains. A succession of dark generals led their ebony soldiers to cruel and bewildering victories. Ugly Toussaint, who beat a Napoleonic army, was captured and sent far away to die. Clumsy Jean Jaques Dessalines made himself emperor of the black island and imported two ballet masters to teach him how to dance; before he had time to learn, a soldier murdered him. Henry Christophe, the billiard marker, during all this time...
Haiti. One island: two republics. Republic of Haiti: blacks and French mulattos. Dominican Republic: Spanish Creoles, scrambled mulattos, Indians. Dominicans speak Spanish, Haitians hear French. Santo Domingo seems still a 16th Century Spanish town and is the oldest European settlement in the Western Hemisphere. Toussaint L'Ouverture, "The Black Bolivar," won Haitian independence from Emperor Napoleon. Today the U. S. maintains a nebulous protectorate to check the once incessant revolutions at Port au Prince, Haiti. In back country Haiti are congo folk, who practice voodoo rites. Columbus discovered the island and named it "Hispaniola," (Espagnola) Little Spain...
...Minis, Ala., presented by Representative Hill of that state, one to the President, one to Mrs. Coolidge. The third was a bushel of potatoes, "large Idaho russet," sent by the Idaho Chamber of Commerce and presented, on the anniversary of Idaho's admission to the Union, by Miss Toussaint Dubois (daughter of the first Senator from Idaho) and by Senator Gooding...