PLANTER AND MERCHANT 49 
tive, 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 régime, 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. 
