In the year 1791, the People of Colour petitioned the Assembly again, but principally for an explanation of the decree in question.  On the 15th of May, the subject was taken into consideration, and the result was another decree in explicit terms, which determined, that the People of Colour in all the French islands were entitled to all the rights of citizenship, provided they were born of free parents on both sides.  The news of this decree had no sooner arrived at the Cape, than it produced an indignation almost amounting to phrensy among the Whites.  They directly trampled under foot the national cockade, and with difficulty were prevented from seizing all the French merchant ships in the roads.  After this the two parties armed against each other.  Even camps began to be formed.  Horrible massacres and conflagrations followed, the reports of which, when brought to the mother-country, were so terrible, that the Assembly abolished the decree in favour of the Free People of Colour in the same year.

In the year 1792, the news of the rescinding of the decree as now stated, produced, when it reached St. Domingo, as much irritation among the People of Colour, as the news of the passing of it had done among the Whites, and hostilities were renewed between them, so that new battles, massacres, and burnings, took place.  Suffice it to say, that as soon as these events became known in France, the Conventional Assembly, which had then succeeded the Legislative, took them into consideration.  Seeing, however, nothing but difficulties and no hope of reconciliation on either side, they knew not what other course to take than to do justice, whatever the consequences might be.  They resolved, accordingly, in the month of April, that the decree of 1791, which had been both made and reversed by the preceding Assembly in the same year, should stand good.  They restored therefore the People of Colour to the privileges which had been before voted to them, and appointed Santhonax, Polverel, and another, to repair in person to St. Domingo, with a large body of troops, and to act there as commissioners, and, among other things, to enforce the decree and to keep the peace.

In the year 1793, the same divisions and the same bad blood continuing, notwithstanding the arrival of the commissioners, a very trivial matter, viz. a quarrel between a Mulatto and a White man (an officer in the French marine), gave rise to new disasters.  This quarrel took place on the 20th of June.  On the same day the seamen left their ships in the roads, and came on shore, and made common cause of the affair with the white inhabitants of the town.  On the other side were opposed the Mulattos and other People of Colour, and these were afterwards joined by some insurgent Blacks.  The battle lasted nearly two days.  During this time the arsenal was taken and plundered, and some thousands were killed in the streets, and more than half the