Law of 4 February 1794

In 1788, Jacques Pierre Brissot and Étienne Clavière founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, an organization dedicated to the abolition of slavery.

Brissot had spent time in England and was inspired by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a British abolitionist organization founded just a year earlier.

[5][6] These circumstances forced commissioners sent by the French First Republic to the colony to gradually abolish slavery in Saint-Dominigue in order to win its Black population to their side.

[7][8] Although Sonthonax and Polverel were both abolitionists, they had not come to Saint-Domingue with the intention of abolishing slavery in the colony, having received no such orders from the National Convention in Paris.

[7] Their proclamations abolishing slavery were not universally well-received even among the Black population of Saint-Domingue; Toussaint Louverture, a former slave who was allied with the Spanish at the time, doubted its sincerity.

[11] While the delegates were briefly arrested by opponents of Sonthonax, they were well-received by the National Convention, where they justified the earlier proclamation on both practical and moral grounds.

[17] In Saint-Domingue, as well, French Republican officials attempted to maintain the colony's plantation economy, which caused conflict with the newly freed slaves, who wanted autonomy.