Letter on Captured Camps (March 13, 1796)

A military dispatch from Toussaint Louverture to French republican authorities reporting the capture of three enemy camps — La Terrasse Blanche, l'Acul du Sac, and La Tourne Broche — where his forces defeated free people of color fighting for England, and the decision to grant clemency to 700 women and children who surrendered. The letter is notable as an early document of Toussaint's deliberate self-construction as a merciful republican general, framing his act of clemency as the expression of 'a French heart and humanity.'