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Sonthonax, Léger-Félicité

Léger-Félicité Sonthonax

Born

7 March 1763

Died

23 July 1813

A lawyer and member of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, Sonthonax was sent to Saint-Domingue in 1792 as a civil commissioner charged with enforcing the rights of free men of colour and suppressing the slave insurrection. When the colony’s governor attacked Cap-Français in June 1793, he offered freedom to slaves who would fight for the Republic, and on 29 August proclaimed general emancipation in the northern province; his colleague Polverel did the same in the west and south. Historians differ over how far the measure was forced on him by the emergency and how far it followed from his abolitionist convictions. Recalled and acquitted, he returned with a second commission in 1796 and was put aboard ship by Toussaint Louverture in August 1797. He died at Oyonnax in 1813.

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