Too many now understood that this was a war between slavery and freedom. In October 1802 Leclerc would make this fact unmistakably clear with a proclamation offering liberty to all those individuals freed in the colony by the emancipation decrees of 1793 who joined the French in fighting the insurgents. Planters promised to draw up notary acts assuring freedom to any of their former slaves who volunteered. These declarations made it undeniable that slavery was on the horizon, since otherwise no one in the colony would have any use for the individual freedoms that were being promised.

Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ …, loc. 419