As Jean-Philippe Garran-Coulon, author of a long official report on the “troubles” of the colonies published in the late 1790s, argued, the slaves of Saint-Domingue (like those who followed Spartacus in Rome) had been moved to action not by the actions of instigators but rather by the “genius of liberty,” which had incited them to “break their chains.” If they had been encouraged by the talk of liberty in the colony, and by the “unthinking” statements of some whites, the slaves had no “instigator” other than “the love of liberty and hatred for their oppressors.”

Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ …, loc. 152