Laveaux argued, however, that those who had been “wrenched from their native country and transported to Saint-Domingue” should not be considered foreigners. Because they had been taken across the Atlantic against their will, the colony became a “new place of birth.” How could planters—who had “fertilized their sugar plantations” with the work of black men, having stolen them from their wives, children, and homeland, and who had “fattened” their fields with the “corpses of their predecessors”—have the audacity to consider these men foreigners? These were the men who had made the colony grow through their labor. “They have therefore done more for France than all the French who have settled in the islands.”

Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ …, loc. 306