Slavery Biographies | Toussaint L'Ouverture Biography

Born May 20, 1743
Cap Francais, Saint Domingue
Died April 7, 1803
Fort de Joux, France

Former slave, Haitian general, revolutionary

As leader of Saint Domingue's slave revolution, Toussaint L'Ouverture oversaw the expulsion of the French from their New World colony and the establishment of Haiti as the Western Hemisphere's second independent republic in 1804 (the first was the United States).

Royal beginnings

François-Dominique Toussaint (pronounced too-SAHN) was born a slave in 1743 on a sugarcane plantation two miles outside of Cap Francais, a city in Saint Domingue (a French colony occupying the western third of the Caribbean island, Hispaniola; the eastern two-thirds was a Spanish colony known as Santo Domingo). Toussaint was the grandson of a West African king whose son—Gaou-Guinou—had been captured...