Many gens de couleur (mixed-race residents of the colony) asserted that they could form the military backbone of Saint-Domingue if they were given rights, but Sonthonax rejected this view as outdated in the wake of the August 1791 slave uprising.

[4] Born in Oyonnax, France on March 7, 1763, the son of a prosperous merchant, Sonthonax was a lawyer in the Parlement of Paris who rose in the ranks during the French Revolution.

In August 1791, a slave rebellion (the Haitian Revolution) broke out in the northern part of Saint-Domingue, the heart of the island's sugar plantation economy.

In 1792, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Étienne Polverel and Jean-Antoine Ailhaud were sent to the colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haïti) as part of the First Civil Commission.

[8] The commissioners found that many of the white planters were hostile to the increasingly radical revolutionary movement and were joining the royalist opposition.

Sonthonax and Polverel were sent to Saint-Domingue, as they proclaimed when they arrived, not to abolish slavery but to give to the free men, regardless of the color of their skin, equality of rights, granted to them by the decree of April 4, 1792.

He declares his never ending belief that civil rights should be granted to these Africans and defends his decision to free the slaves was not erroneous to do.

He was committed to make drastic decisions to prevent Britain and Spain from succeeding in their attempts to assume control over Saint-Domingue.

On 20 June 1793 a failed attempt to take control of the capital by a new military governor sympathetic to whites, François-Thomas Galbaud, led to the bombardment and burning of Cap-Français (now Cap-Haïtien).

Sonthonax made General Étienne Laveaux governor and expelled Galbaud from the colony after a promise of freedom for ex-slaves who agreed to fight on behalf of the commissioners and the French republican regime they represented.

[13] It was during this time, and due to the new trend of conceding rights to blacks, that Toussaint Louverture began reforming his political philosophy to embrace France rather than Spain; however, he was cautious and awaited French ratification of emancipation before officially changing sides.

Upon his arrival in the summer of 1794, he argued that the free people of colour, whom he had been originally sent to defend, were no longer loyal to France, and that the Republic should place its faith in the freed slaves.