Among the coloured residents in France was a young man named James Ogé, the son of a mulatto woman by a white man, whose mother owned a coffee plantation. He was a regular attendant at the meetings of the friends of the blacks, where, under such men as Lafayette and Robespierre, he had been initiated into the doctrine of the equal rights of men. On hearing of the vote of non-interference with the colonies, Ogé, maddened by the thought that the civil disabilities of people of his colour would be continued, resolved to go himself to Hayti. He was confident that the people there would join him, and going out by way of the United States he obtained there a good supply of arms, with which he arrived in October of the same year.
Six weeks after his arrival he wrote to the Governor, demanding that all the privileges of the whites should be extended to every other person, without distinction. As representing the coloured people he made this request, and if their wrongs were not at once redressed, he said, they were prepared to take up arms. He had already been joined by his two brothers, and they were busy calling upon their friends to insist, assuring them that France approved of their claim. But with all his efforts he could get but few followers, the same difficulty cropping up here as in most of the slave insurrections--a want of the power of combination under one of their own race. However, he at last got together two hundred, and, receiving no answer from the Governor, they commenced a series of raids on the plantations. Ogé cautioned them against bloodshed, but the first white man that fell into their hands was murdered, and others soon met with the same fate. Even mulattoes, who refused to join the insurgents, were treated the same way; one man who pointed to his wife and six children, as a reason for his refusal, being murdered with them.
The Governor now sent out a body of troops and militia to suppress the revolt, with the result that Ogé was defeated, and obliged to take refuge with the remnant of his followers in the Spanish colony of St. Domingo. The whites were now roused, and began to cry out for vengeance upon the coloured people in general, whether they had sympathised with Ogé or not. In self-defence they had to take up arms in several places, but by conciliation on the part of the authorities a general insurrection was averted for the time. A new Governor now arrived, and one of his first acts was to demand the extradition of Ogé by the Spaniards, which, being done, he was executed by breaking alive upon the wheel. In his last confession he is said to have stated that a plot was then hatching for the destruction of all the whites, but little notice was taken of this information. The whites believed that now the leader was dead things would go on in the old way, but, unfortunately for them, they were mistaken.