Moreover, he warned, any project to reestablish the old order would require a massive army, for the people of Saint-Domingue would have no choice but to “defend the liberty that the constitution guarantees,” even if it meant fighting France itself. Would not the French take up arms if their freedom was threatened? What would the white planter Vaublanc do, Louverture wondered, if he was, “in his turn, reduced to slavery”? “Would he endure without complaint the insults, the miseries, the tortures, the whippings? And if he had the good fortune to recover his liberty, would he listen without shuddering to the howls of those who wished to tear it from him?” Defending freedom, Louverture suggested, was a universal and inalienable right. And those who fought for it in Saint-Domingue would have little choice but to win, or to die trying. Louverture reminded the French government that there were maroons in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica who had forced the English to grant them “natural rights.”

Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ …, loc. 301