or little whites such as the lawyers, retailers, grocers, carpenters, and masons performed all other tasks. They came from any background however low in life and rose to be a privileged member of the white society. A common maxim of the time connoted the condition of superiority. "A white is never in the wrong vis-a-vis a black". (Fick 18). Due to the miscegenation of the whites with the slave females a new class of people emerged the affranchis, who were gaining economic stability and who were also gaining in numbers to the extent that they numbered as many as the white. The affranchis were usually free members of the black race who established themselves on the same level as the petit blancs whose status was becoming lower and lower. The affranchis were in fact rising in the ranks to positions in commercial enterprises, trading and military service. They became the white-like blacks who not only received an education outside of Haiti, but also became plantation owners and accepted the ways of the white man. Their numbers made them a threat to the white status quo. France, being the cradle of revolution, enjoyed the antithetical position of owning the wealthiest colony in the Caribbean, St. Domingue or Haiti, along with owning the greatest number of slaves being imported from Africa on a yearly basis. Thus, while to a degree inventing or redefining freedom at a global scale, France had also defined the slave as a 'socially dead person' or a person whose existence in social and political terms was no different from the horses and the pigs otherwise owned by the white colonists.The labor run economy of the colony and the lack of laws to protect the slaves led to atrocities to be committed against them including torture and murder among the worst and other kind of horrible acts all aimed at forcing the slaves to labor beyond human endurance. The Black Code gave rights to the black to prosecute those who committed the inhuman acts, b...
