the spirit of the white man, refugees flew in every direction, and Louisiana welcomed them, if not exactly with open arms, at least with more indifference than other colonies.  And these black refugees were her saviors.  For they had been prosperous sugar-makers, and the efforts to make marketable sugar in Louisiana, which had ceased for nearly twenty-five years, were revived.  Two Spaniards, Mendez and Solis, erected on the outskirts of New Orleans, the one a distillery, the other a battery of sugar-kettles, and manufactured rum and syrup.  Still, the efforts were not entirely successful, until Etienne de Bore appeared.  Face to face with ruin because of the failure of the indigo crop, he staked his all on the granulation of sugar.  He enlisted the services of these successful Santo Dominicans, and went to work.  In all American history there can be fewer scenes more dramatic than the one described by careful historians of Louisiana, the day when the final test was made and there was passed around the electrical word, “It granulates!"[36]

That year de Bore marketed $12,000 worth of super or sugar.  The agriculture of the Delta was revolutionized; seven years afterwards New Orleans marketed 2,000,000 gallons of rum, 250,000 gallons of molasses, and 5,000,000 pounds of sugar.  It was the beginning of the commercial importance of one of the most progressive cities in the country.  Imagination refuses to picture what would have been the case but for the refugees from San Domingo.

But the same revolution which gave to Louisiana its prestige to the commercial world, almost starved the province to death.  In the year 1791, the trade, which had flourished briskly between Santo Domingo and New Orleans, was closed because of the uprising, and but for Philadelphia, famine would have decimated the city. 1,000 barrels of flour were sent in haste to the starving city by the good Quakers of Philadelphia.  The members of the Cabildo, the local council, prohibited the introduction of people of color from Santo Domingo, fearing the dangerous ideas of the brotherhood of man.  But it was too late.  The news of the success of the slaves in Santo Domingo, and the success of the French Revolution, says Gayarre, had penetrated into the most remote cabins of Louisiana, and in April, 1795, on the plantation of the same Poydras who had sung the glory of the army of Galvez, a conspiracy was formed for a general uprising of the slaves throughout the parish of Pointe Coupee.  The leaders were three white men.  The conspiracy failed because one of the leaders was incensed at his advice not being heeded and through his wife the authorities were notified.  A struggle ensued, and the conspiracy was strangled in its infancy by the trial and execution of the slaves most concerned in the insurrection.  The three white men were exiled from the colony.[37] This finally ended the importation of slaves from the West Indies.

ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON