rom the neighboring Spaniards with the money and other possessions that they acquired from the burning plantations. Their initial rage of vengeance was followed by more tactical militarism and guerrilla warfare of retreat to the mountains and counterattack and continuous burning of plantations. "What the slaves lacked in military hardware they compensated for with ruse and ingenuity. They camouflaged traps, fabricated poisoned arrows, feigned cease fires to lure the enemy into ambush, disguised tree trunks as cannons, and threw obstructions of one kind or another into roads to hamper advancing troops; in short, any means they could invent to psychologically disorient, frighten, demoralize, or otherwise generally confuse the European units in order to defend their own positions." (Fick 110). Acting ludicrously in a time of war, Jean -Francois the man who eventually lead the negotiations with the white civil commissioner from Europe, had Jeannot killed. A general of the slaves and a judge whose thirst for vengeance lead him to commit the same atrocities that he had learned from the white man. This appeared most troublesome in light of the fact that after killing the leader Boukman the whites at le Cap had staked out his head at the public square with an inscription that read: "The head of Boukman, leader of the rebels" (Fick 113). Although Toussaint Louverture emerged as a leader, he was unable to convince the black leaders that the whites were interested in ending slavery and the war raged on beginning on January 15, 1792.The slaves of the West and south had not reached the point of revolting and were caught between two forces manipulating them each for their own interest. The free blacks and the mulattoes were attempting to get their own political rights independent of the abolition of slavery. They attempted to get their rights peacefully by negotiating with the whites. Having failed, they took arms against the whites and began ...
