Secret History: or, The Horrors of St. Domingo and Laura

321 Pages·2007·17.081 MB·English

by  Lenora Sansay, Michael J. Drexler

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This electronic material is under
copyright protection and is
provided to a single recipient
for review purposes only.
SECRET HISTORY
AND
LAURA
broadview editions
series editor:L.W.Conolly
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SECRET HISTORY;
OR, THE HORRORS OF ST. DOMINGO
AND
LAURA
Leonora Sansay
edited by Michael J.Drexler
broadview editions
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© 2007Michael J.Drexler
Reprinted with corrections 2008
All rights reserved.The use of any part of this publication reproduced,transmitted in any form or by
any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise,or stored in a retrieval
system,without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying,a licence
from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency),One Yonge Street,Suite 1900,
Toronto,ON m5e 1e5—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Sansay,Leonora,b.1773
Secret history,or,The horrors of St.Domingo and Laura / Leonora Sansay ;edited by Michael
J.Drexler.
(Broadview editions)
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn 978-1-55111-346-3
1.Haiti—History—Revolution,1791–1804—Fiction. I.Drexler,Michael J. II.Sansay,Leonora,
b.1781.Laura. III.Title. IV.Title:Horrors of St.Domingo.V.Series.
ps2769.s35s42 2007 813'.3 c2007-902848-9
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Contents
Acknowledgements • 7
Introduction • 10
Chronology:Haiti/USA/France/Leonora Sansay • 38
Maps of Haiti (1853) and the Caribbean (2005) • 55
A Note on the Text • 57
Secret History;or,the Horrors of St.Domingo • 59
Laura • 155
Appendix A:Biographical Documents • 223
1. Letter from Leonora Sansay to Aaron Burr
(6 May 1803) • 223
2. Letter from Leonora Sansay to Aaron Burr
(6 November 1808) • 231
3. Letter from Leonora Sansay to Aaron Burr
(29 July 1812) • 232
4. William Wirt’s Speech at Aaron Burr’s Trial
(August 1807) • 236
5. Review of Laura from The Port-Folio (1809) • 239
Appendix B:Literary Selections • 243
1. Alexander Pope,“Eloisa to Abelard”(1717) • 243
2. From John Armstrong,The Oeconomy of Love
(1736) • 254
3. From Germaine de Staël,Influence of the Passions
(1796) • 262
4. From [Leonora Sansay?],Zelica,the Creole (1821) • 267
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Appendix C:Contextual Documents • 270
1. From Baron de Wimpffen,A Voyage to Saint Domingo
(1797) • 270
2. From Absalom Jones and Richard Allen,A Narrative of the
Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity
in Philadelphia (1794) • 271
3. [Anonymous],“Renewed War in St.Domingo”
(1802) • 276
4. Charles Brockden Brown,“On the Consequences of
Abolishing the Slave Trade to the West Indian Colonies”
(1805) • 278
5. Engravings from Marcus Rainsford’s Historical Account of the
Black Empire of Hayti (1805) • 286
6. From Condy Raguet,“Account of the Massacre in St.
Domingo”(1807) • 293
7. From [Condy Raguet],“Memoirs of Hayti”
(1809–12) • 294
8. Agostino Brunias,Scenes of the West Indies
(ca.1780) • 313
Works Cited and Recommended Reading • 316
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Acknowledgements
As I put the final touches on this edition I am reminded that today,
28July is the anniversary of the United States’invasion of Haiti.The
US Marines occupied Haiti for 19 years.Though they constructed
roads and distributed food and medicine,US military administrators
censored the press,tried political prisoners in military tribunals,and
trained the Haitian military,which after the invasion,brutally repressed
the population.Fifteen thousand Haitians died during the occupa-
tion.As native Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat wrote movingly in
the Miami Herald earlier this week,“While it takes American leaders
and their armed enforcers just a few hours,days,weeks,months to
rewrite another sovereign nation’s history,it takes more than 90years
to overcome devastations caused by such an operation,to replace the
irreplaceable,the dead lost,the spirits quelled,to steer an entire gener-
ation out of the shadows of dependency,to meet fellow citizens across
carefully constructed divides and become halfway whole again.”
Danticat’s voice has often been raised to remind Americans of the
intertwined histories of Haiti and the United States,a history that goes
back to the founding of the hemisphere’s first independent republics.
I hope this edition lends support to the important task of recording,
remembering, and reconnecting. In the years of the Haitian
Revolution,from both sides of the political spectrum came the call to
heed the lessons of St.Domingo.We can learn from the past only once
we are prepared to review it with eyes wide open.
First,I would like to thank Joanne Pope Melish for introducing me
to Secret History.Thanks,too,to Philip Gould and William Keach,who
supported my dissertation work on Sansay.I am grateful as well for
the help of Philip Lapsansky of the Library Company of Philadelphia,
who shared with me his extensive research on Sansay’s biography.
Harry Anderson and Phyllis Morales provided interesting biographi-
cal leads as well.Thanks to Kay Freeman for her sleuthing.Thanks to
my colleagues in the Society of Early Americanists.Conversations
with Michelle Burnham,Jeffrey Richards,Timothy Sweet,Stephen
Shapiro,Jared Gardner,Elizabeth M.Dillon,Bryan Waterman,Ed
Cahill,Monique Allewaert,Laura Stevens,Andy Doolen,Phil Round,
Eric Wertheimer,Chris Iannini,Duncan Faherty,and Robert Levine
secret history laura 7
and
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have enriched this project.Special thanks to Malini Schueller and Ned
Watts for including an essay of mine on Sansay in their collection,
Messy Beginnings:Postcoloniality and Early American Studies.And special
thanks are due to Colin (Joan) Dayan,who gave me permission to
reprint and adapt her chronology of the Haitian Revolution.Notes
to Pope’s “Eloisa to Abelard”(Appendix B1) © Broadview Press are
used by kind permission of Laura Cardiff and Broadview Press.And
it has been a pleasure to work with the editors at Broadview Press.
Thanks to the staff of the John Hay Library at Brown University,to
Special Collections at the Margaret Clapp Library at Wellesley
College, the New York Historical Society, the New York Public
Library,the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at New York University,and
the Yale Center for British Art.The support of Information Services
and Resources at Bucknell University has been indispensable.I also
benefited from a summer research fellowship at The John Nicholas
Brown Center for the Study of the American Civilization.Thanks to
the organizers of Bicentenary Conference on Haitian Independence
at the University of the West Indies in St.Augustine,Trinidad for
allowing me to share my research with and gain crucial insights from
pan-American Caribbeanist scholars,and to the Deans at Bucknell
University,who funded my travel to Trinidad.The St.Augustine
conference was illuminating in many ways,but fundamentally what I
valued most was my exposure to the rich diversity of reactions to Haiti
both from around the Caribbean and from Europe.I am grateful for
conversations with Wendy Sutherland,whose work on German liter-
ary responses to Haiti is especially exciting.
Thanks to my colleagues in the English Department at Bucknell
University,who have invited me to share my work publicly and given
me inestimable support,and especially to Saundra Morris and Harold
Schweizer for their encouragement.My students in English 301tried
out this edition before it was ready for prime time.For their enthu-
siasm,insight,and patience I am grateful.Thanks especially to Sean
Kirnan for helping with transcriptions and for inviting me to pres-
ent my work informally with the Bucknell graduate students,and to
Caleb Sheaffer as well for his help at the end.Linden Lewis has been
incredibly generous with his time and good humor.Conversations
with Linden brought the secondary literature on Caribbean history
to life for me.There’s so much more to read! Christopher Mayo
8 acknowledgements
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helped me wade into subtle complexities of textual editing.His
friendship and his insight have meant much to me.My frequent co-
author,Ed White,read multiple drafts of papers and dissertation chap-
ters on Sansay.His patience has surely been tested,but I’m blithely
unaware of it.To Kimberley,my best editor and best friend,and our
daughters,Hannah and Mariah,this work is dedicated with love.
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