PLANTER AND MERCHANT 49 



live, we must follow the whirlwind of political events 

 already set in motion in the island colony. In the spring 

 of 1789 the white colonists of Santo Domingo took ad- 

 ministrative matters into their own hands, and without 

 vestige of legal authority, elected and dispatched eight- 

 een deputies to the States-General, then sitting in 

 France. These men reached Versailles in June, a month 

 after that body had declared itself the National Assem- 

 bly, but only six were ever admitted to its counsels. 

 For a long time opposition to the planters had been 

 fomented in Paris by the "Friends of the Blacks," the 

 abolition society to which we have referred; stories of 

 cruelty to the slaves, colored and intensified in passing 

 from mouth to mouth, as invariably happens when 

 atrocity tales are used as partisan weapons, added to 

 the arrogance and extravagant habits of many planters 

 when resident in the mother country, did not tend to 

 soften the prejudice of the public towards their class. 

 The planters could get no consideration at home, and, 

 as we have seen, the Declaration of Rights followed 

 promptly in August, while a legislative Assembly was 

 ordered in September. Meantime the mulattoes on the 

 island were clamoring for the political rights which the 

 decree had promised them, and, to make matters worse, 

 some of the influential whites espoused their cause, even 

 preaching the enfranchisement of the blacks, from whom 

 up to this time little had been heard. In short, the 

 whites were divided as effectually as were blacks and 

 mulattoes. 



The dominant party in Santo Domingo, led by the 

 Governor-General, were determined to uphold the old 

 despotic regime, while the General Assembly, which met 

 at Saint Marc in obedience to orders from the mother 

 country, on April 16, 1790, drafted a new constitution. 



