Daguin was a major general in the West Province free-colored army who appears in Ardouin's Etudes at two critical moments: first among the officers of the Mirebalais political council alongside Bauvais, Rigaud, and Pinchinat; then, most sharply, at the Suisses crisis, where he drew his sword and cried 'Tambours, battez la générale!
' to demand general alarm rather than consent to the deportation of the enslaved auxiliaries back to their masters. Ardouin also records that he was among those imprisoned by Governor Blanchelande for corresponding with Vincent Ogé. His documented dissent inside the officer corps preserves evidence that the free-colored leadership was not politically uniform at its most consequential moments.
In the ScholarshipHow historians have read this figure.
How historians and scholars have interpreted this figure across different analytical traditions.
Dubois's Avengers of the New World places figures like Daguin within the free-colored military leadership of the western province during the commissioner era — officers whose careers exemplify the pattern of free-colored republican alliance that the commissioner system built through military incorporation. Daguin's trajectory within the revolutionary armies represents the broader structural shift that emancipation made possible: formerly restricted to the militia and the affranchis corps, free-colored officers could now advance within a republican military whose racial restrictions were formally abolished. Dubois's account situates these figures within the coalition politics of the commissioner era, where military alliance with the commissioners provided a path toward citizenship that the colonial order had structurally blocked.
Officers like Daguin represent the structural shift that emancipation made possible — free-colored military advancement within a republican army whose racial restrictions were formally abolished through commissioner-era coalition politics.
TimelineAcross the historical record.
- 1791
The Suisses
The Suisses
RelationshipsPeople connected to this life.
- OpposedBauvais
- OpposedAndré Rigaud
André Rigaud
- Related toLambert