A secret brotherhood? The question of black Freemasonry before and after the Haitian Revolution

ABSTRACT

Late eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue produced both a thriving Masonic movement and the most successful slave uprising in modern world history. Scholars have suggested but never proven that these two movements were linked. One biographer hypothesizes that white planters who knew the future Toussaint Louverture from colonial Masonic circles helped him organize the slave uprising of August 1791. This speculation is inspired by the fact that in the late 1790s Louverture signed his name with a distinctive pattern of dots. Many colonists and free men of color used similar symbols, which have been described as Masonic signatures.

This article examines whether the approximately 300 men of all races who made such signatures in the 1780s and early 1790s were Masons. It finds little or no evidence that they were. It hypothesizes that men used these symbols to suggest their membership in secret societies that did not, in fact, exist.

KEYWORDS:

• Freemasonry
• free people of color
• Haitian Revolution
• Saint-Domingue
• Toussaint Louverture

Acknowledgements

Oscar Alleyne, Bernard Camier, Ken Loiselle, Peter P. Hinks, and Jessica Harland-Jacobs contributed greatly to this paper with comments, documents, and research ideas. All errors are my own. A Research Enhancement grant from the University of Texas at Arlington funded my collection of the archival data analyzed here. Mylynka Cardona coded the notarial contracts I discuss.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

John Garrigus is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in Saint-Domingue (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006) and co-author with Trevor Burnard of Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in Saint-Domingue and Jamaica (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016).

ORCID

John Garrigus http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1091-6122

Notes

1. Bell, Toussaint Louverture, 63, 77; Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History.

2. McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 106, says “One out of every twenty-five white males and probably more like one out of every three or four sociologically eligible white men was a mason.”

3. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood. This is a subject of controversy in Latin America. Simón Bolívar was initiated into a Parisian lodge, but scholars disagree about the masonic credentials of other Latin American independence leaders like Francisco de Miranda or Argentina's José de San Martín because their lodges were not formally connected to pre-existing masonic organizations. Ferrer Benimeli, “Bolívar y la masonería.” At least one of Miranda's biographers sees him unequivocally as a Freemason; Racine, Francisco de Miranda, 193–195.

4. Le Bihan, “La franc-maçonnerie,” identifies de Joly and Lafayette as Freemasons; Saunier, “L’espace caribéen,” 49, on the Amis des Noirs.

5. The example is from ANOM: SDOM, 0698, and is annexed to a document dated 1 messidor l’an 9.

6. The thesis that Toussaint was involved in a royalist plot has most recently been advanced by Girard, Toussaint Louverture, 106–120; Girard describes the evidence that Toussaint was a Freemason in 1791 as “thin.” See pages 63, 74, and 281.

7. Geggus, “Toussaint Louverture,” 112–132.

8. Bell, Toussaint Louverture, 77–78; for other scholarship see Cauna, “Thèse du complot” and Fouchard, “Toussaint Louverture était-il franc-maçon?”

9. Garrigus, Before Haiti, 291–306; Buck-Morss, “Hegel and Haiti,” 854–856, notes 108, 110, and 111.

10. This is the argument at the core of Dubois, Avengers of the New World.

11. Loiselle, “Living the Enlightenment,” 5; Bogdan and Snoek, “History of Freemasonry,” 20.

12. Le Bihan, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 45; Le Bihan, Loges et chapitres, 389; Escalle and Guillaume, Francs-maçons des loges françaises, 105–106.

13. Le Bihan, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 44–45.

14. Ibid., 45–6; Prinsen, Bonseigneur Rituals, 8–13.

15. McClellan, Colonialism and Science, 91–106, 181–191.

16. Begouën Demeaux, “Aspects de Saint-Domingue,” 29.

17. Saintard, Essai sur les colonies françoises, 135.

18. Beaurepaire, “Universal Republic.”

19. Saunier, “L’espace caribéen,” 42–55; Saunier, “Être confrère et franc-maçon.”

20. Taillefer, La franc-maçonnerie toulousaine, 91–92, provides a brief overview of the scholarly literature on Martinès Pasqually. For a description of his ideology and practices, see Nahon, Martinès de Pasqually, 138–139 and 143–144; when Martinism returned to Haiti, it was in the form of it was in the twentieth century. See Saint Victor Hérard, “Gnostic Church of Ambelain Martinism.”

21. Le Bihan, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 41; Cauna, “Thèse du complot,” 301.

22. Maurel, “Une société de pensée à Saint-Domingue,” 241; see also Pluchon, “Cercle des Philadelphes,” 157–185.

23. Cited in McClellan, “L’historiographie d’une académie coloniale,” 83 (translation by the author); for Baudry's lodge membership, Escalle and Guillaume, Francs-maçons des loges françaises, 248.

24. Le Bihan, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 41, 49.

25. “Nouvelles diverses du Port-au-Prince,” Affiches américaines, 10 July 1784, 436; [untitled announcement], Affiches americaines, 17 July 1788, 354; for a list of public Masonic activities, see Cauna, “Loges, réseaux et personnalités maçonniques,” 42–43; for the prominent role Freemasons played in public life in some eighteenth-century British North American colonies, see Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire, 51–52.

26. Moreau de Saint-Méry, Loix et constitutions des colonies, Vol. 6, 497.

27. Le Bihan, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 39–62.

28. Combes, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 156–157.

29. Escalle and Guillaume, Francs-maçons des loges françaises, 3, 167.

30. Beaurepaire, “Fraternité universelle.”

31. Garrigus, Before Haiti, 141–170.

32. Cited in Beaurepaire, “Fraternité universelle,” 211: “que des hommes intacts.”

33. Saunier, “L’espace caribéen,” 51.

34. Cauna, “Thèse du complot,” 306, cites “Lettre à Willermoz du 24 avril 1774,” in Le Forestier, La franc-maçonnerie occultiste, 502.

35. Debien, Lettres de colons, 232. Thanks to Bernard Camier, who alerted me to this quote.

36. Garrigus, Before Haiti, 70, 96, describes the history of the Hérard family.

37. Cauna, “Thèse du complot,” 312. Bernard Camier was kind enough to give me a photocopy of this document: “Tableau des F.F. composant la R. L. la Réunion Désirée […] à L’orient du Port-républicain,” 1800, from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Fonds maçonnique 2.

38. Escalle and Guillaume, Francs-maçons des loges françaises, 254, 411.

39. Combes, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 156, 161, states Bonnet's Freemasonry without proof; Mentor, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie, 168, reproduces this list with the addition of J.C. Imbert and Pierre Noël Léveillé. Mentor's sources are privately held.

40. Ardouin, Études sur l’histoire d’Haïti, Vol. 4, 492–493; Bernard Camier reports seeing Laplume's name on the 1801 membership register of the Frères Réunis lodge in Les Cayes, held in the Bibliothèque du Grand Orient in Paris; Camier, “[Newly Available Masonic Archival Documents],” 22 June 2007, personal email.

41. On Boyer's reception in Connecticut, see Hinks, “‘Perfectly proper and conciliating’”; also Harvey, History of Lodge No. 61; and an untitled article on prisoners from US Warship Trumbull in 1801 in Bulletin of the Connecticut Historical Society 26–30 (1961): 58–60.

42. Sheller, “Sword-Bearing Citizens.”

43. Cauna, “Quelques aperçus.”

44. According to one account, in 1806 Christophe was considering becoming a Freemason, until he became convinced, erroneously, that Haitian Freemasons had helped a handful of French hostages escape from Cap Haïtien, the city he commanded. See Condy Raguet, “Memoires of Hayti, Letter XXI, The Cape, May 1806,” The Port Folio, January 1811, 52.

45. White, “Prince Saunders”; for an alternative theory of why Christophe named his palace Sans Souci, see Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 31–69.

46. Hofman, “Illusion of Opinion.”

47. Bord, La franc-maçonnerie, 282–288.

48. Agulhon, Pénitents et francs-maçons, 207. Thanks to Ken Loiselle for this reference.

49. Guillaume, “Contribution rémoise,” 184–186; thanks to Bernard Camier for this reference.

50. Garrigus, Before Haiti, 48.

51. Garrigus, “Opportunist or Patriot?”; Combes, “La franc-maçonnerie,” 176 on de Joly.

52. Garrigus, Before Haiti, 121–122, 182–183, 293–294.

53. Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, 856.

54. Taillefer, La franc-maçonnerie toulousaine, 77 note 4, provides a reliable summary of the scholarship on Morin who is the subject of very different biographical treatments, especially in Masonic publications.

55. Seal-Coon, Historical Account, 23–26 is the basis for much of this paragraph.

56. Prinsen, Bonseigneur Rituals, 12.

57. For a full account, see Hinks, “‘Perfectly proper and conciliating’”; also Case, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, 18; Escalle and Guillaume, Francs-maçons des loges françaises, 132, show that the Grand Orient de France officially constituted a “Frères Choisis” lodge in Saint-Domingue in 1774, but that lodge was based in the mountain village of Fond des Nègres, not the port city of Jacmel. It is possible that the Connecticut Freemasons confused the two towns, which are about 40 miles apart.

58. Escalle and Guillaume, Francs-maçons des loges françaises, 141–146, 411.

59. Ménier, “Comment furent repatriés les griffes de Saint Domingue, 1803–1820.”

60. For Rigaud's signature, Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence (henceforth ANOM): SDOM, 0687, 13 September 1792, property inventory with attached instructions from Rigaud via a letter written signed Jacmel 12 September 1792; also SDOM, 0688, 9 March 1793, property inventory with attached letter from Rigaud signed 26 February 1793; for Toussaint, see SDOM, 0698, deed dated 1 messidor year 9 with an attached letter from Louverture to Frigouilla, dated 27 prairial year 9.

61. Escalle and Guillaume, Francs-maçons des loges françaises, 437.

62. Dessens, From Saint-Domingue to New Orleans, 51.

63. Isnard, Inventaire sommaire, 40, cites the Registre du greffe de Peyroules, 1739–1778; Agulhon, Pénitents et francs-maçons, 203, cites the Archives Départementales Bouches-du-Rhône 24, f. 36, “Necrologie des penitents noirs (1521–1954)” for Funel's death date.

64. ANOM: SDOM, 0684, 25 May 1790.

65. ANOM: SDOM, 0686, 26 January 1791.

66. ANOM: SDOM, 0682, 11 November 1789.

67. Ibid., 25 June 1789; SDOM, 0687, 26 February 1792; SDOM, 0687, 15 October 1792; SDOM, 0688, 31 January 1793.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Texas at Arlington: [Grant no. REP].