THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

planter, Member of Parliament, and historian of the Caribbean, Edwards’s account of the
Haitian Revolution was the standard pro-slavery account of the revolution in the
transatlantic world well into the nineteenth century. Edwards’s history was widely
disseminated in Britain and the United States, going through several printings well into
the nineteenth century. According to Edwards, the Amis des Noirs, the French
abolitionist society, was responsible for the slave insurrection in Saint-Domingue.
Edwards’s theory was transformed by pro-slavery supporters into a general theory about
the relationship between abolitionist agitation and slave insurrection. 21
In writing Immediate Not Gradual Abolition, Heyrick was influenced by the
defense of Smith that developed in the religious press as well the Edwards’s thesis. Slave
rebellion, Heyrick claimed, was the result of enslavement not abolitionists’ agitation for
emancipation. Clearly confronting Edwards’s theory of slave insurrection, Heyrick cited
a pamphlet published by Clarkson in 1823 and an earlier work, published in 1814, by the
planter Malenfant. 22 Clarkson and Malenfant both noted the lack of violence after the
slave insurrection in Haiti. Malenfant, in particular, wrote that the freed slaves continued
to work after emancipation thus challenging traditional ideas that Africans would only
Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2004). See also Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation, 42-53.
21 Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation, 42-53. Though Rugemer focuses on Edwards’s
influence on the United States, his argument is also relevant to discussions of the British response.
22 Thomas Clarkson, Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Conditions of the Slaves in the
British Colonies, with a View to their Ultimate Emancipation; and on the Practicality, the Safety, and the
Advantages of the Later Measure, 2 nd edition corrected (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1823); [Colonel]
Malenfant, Des Colonies, Particuliérement de celle de Saint-Domingue; Mémoire Historique et Politique
(Paris: Audibert, 1819). Heyrick discussed Malenfant’s description of post-revolutionary Saint-Domingue;
however, she may have learned of his account by reading Clarkson’s discussion of Malenfant’s pamphlet.
See Clarkson, Thoughts on the Necessity, 22.
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