By: Elliot Kriegsman - HaitiAnalysis.com

Napoleon once said that nothing could be as insulting as adding irony to injury. For more than a quarter century, Haitian “boat people” have been making headlines in our country risking their lives to escape the crushing poverty of theirs. Many, if not most, have been arrested, placed in detention centers, deported, interdicted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, repatriated to Haiti, or have drowned in their desperate attempts to reach our shores. That is the injury.

The irony is that the first Haitian “boat people” sailed north from what was then the French, slave colony of Saint Domingue to fight for our independence during the American Revolution, twelve years before their own. Two hundred and twenty-eight years later, their contribution has been officially acknowledged. On October 8th, the city of Savannah, Georgia, along with the Haitian American Historical Society, unveiled a monument in the city’s Franklin Square commemorating the courage and sacrifice of Les Chasseurs Volontaires. The ceremony was attended by local and regional politicians including Savannah mayor, Otis S. Johnson; former mayor, Floyd Adams, Jr.; congressmen John Barrow (D-Georgia) and Miami-based Kendrick Meeks (D-Florida). Representing the Haitian government were several members of its senate and Jean V. Geneus, Minister of Haitians Living Abroad.

“It had to take a special vision to fight for the political independence of a slave holding society,” announced Rep. Barrow. “For men of color from another country to fight alongside the cause of American freedom required vision and far sightedness exceeding most men and women of that time.”

On August 16, 1779, a militia of five hundred and forty-five, free blacks and mulattoes from Saint Domingue accompanied their former governor, Vice-Admiral Charles-Henri Le Comte d’Estaing, more than three thousand French troops, and an additional contingent of white and volunteers of color from the other French West Indian colonies: Grenada, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. The mission was to render military assistance to American insurgents, led by General Benjamin Lincoln, attempting to regain the British-held port of Savannah. It was France’s initial, land-based foray in a war that would reach its ultimate conclusion, and victory, at Yorktown. The British were not expecting them.

“Nothing seemed further from Savannah than England’s hereditary enemies, “wrote Alexander A. Lawrence in his 1951 book, Storm over Savannah, “those giddy opportunists who had taken the side of the Americans for no better reason than to avenge Britain’s rape of the Bourbon Empire.”

For twenty-three days, the combined forces laid siege to the city while the British gained reinforcements and fortified their defenses. On October 9th, the allies, including some but not all of the chasseurs, finally attacked what they thought was the weak point of the British fortifications, the Spring Hill Redoubt. The attack failed. In less than an hour, hundreds were killed or wounded. Retreat was sounded. Attempting to demolish the enemy, the British mounted a counter attack. The balance of chasseurs, as part of the French reserves, came between them, stood their ground, and repulsed the onslaught. Their courage saved thousands of French and American lives allowing Lincoln to regroup and eventually push north.

Franklin Square is a small park nestled in Savannah’s historic district surrounded by pecan trees and live oaks festooned with Spanish moss. The monument is an octagonal, granite pillar, six feet high by sixteen feet wide. Each facet of the octagon is engraved with a portion of the story of the Siege of Savannah focusing on the chasseurs’ contribution. Crowning the pillar are four, life-size, bronze statues depicting the chasseurs in action: a young drummer boy represents Henri Christophe, who would one day become Haiti’s first king; a wounded soldier kneels clutching his chest; a third soldier fires a musket while the fourth reloads. Two additional statues have yet to be installed once the final $250,000 has been raised through additional, private contributions.

Rep. Meeks praised Chairman Daniel Fils-Aime, Sr. and other members of the Haitian American Historical Society for “…mortgaging their homes for us to be here on behalf of pride and commitment, to telling a story the way it should be told.”

The chasseurs mission was far more daunting. To members of Georgia’s slave-holding society, seeing this corps of free blacks and men of color, marching with rifles on American soil, must have been nerve wracking; a threat to their very existence. Among the French regulars, the idea of fighting beside the rebel army was so distasteful they arrested any American who dared set foot in their camp. As for the men of Saint Domingue, d’Estaing felt compelled to issue orders stating “the people of color” would “be treated at all times like whites. They aspire to the same honor and they will exhibit the same bravery.”

Upon leaving their island home, they had been told only that they would be joining American insurgents in their war for independence. The exact destination had been kept a secret by d’Estaing, as was his custom. Geographically, Savannah was approximately six hundred and fifty miles west but eight hundred miles north of Saint Domingue, nearly half way to Canada. For men who had spent the entirety of their lives in the tropics, their tolerance to Georgia’s cooler climate proved remarkably resilient.

“It is extraordinary,” wrote d’Estaing soon after the battle, “that there were so few sick among the three thousand men who came from the islands and Saint Domingue, who were constantly at arms for nearly a month, most of them without tents, dressed only in linen, suffering from heat in the daytime and freezing to death at night.” (Muskets, Cannon Balls & Bombs: the Revolution in Georgia, Benjamin Kennedy, Ed.)

The chasseurs’ heroics have been largely ignored by American historians since the revolution. Except for a few advocating the patriot cause, like The Boston Gazette and The Charleston Gazette, most newspapers at the time were tools of propaganda controlled by the Crown. Reports on important events, such as the siege of Savannah were repressed for political reasons. Regardless of which side a paper supported, however, the agenda rarely included discussion of blacks except as slaves or criminals.

Students in Haiti still learn of Les Chasseurs Volontaires in grammar school although no firsthand documentation from Saint Domingue has survived. Haiti’s historical archives were destroyed by a series of fires and explosions in the National Palace and other ministry buildings during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Limited accounts of the chasseurs that did survive first appeared in the journals of a few military men present at the siege, nearly all of whom were French, American, or English. None were chasseurs.

At the ceremony, Jean V. Geneus, Minister of Haitians Living Abroad, reiterated what students in Haiti have always been taught. “In 1849, Sir Richard Rush, the American minister to Paris, wrote that blacks and mulattoes saved the French and American troops that day at Savannah; covering themselves with glory.”

Ultimately, the chasseurs returned to Saint Domingue bearing something far more valuable than glory. They brought back first hand knowledge of how the French made war: their hubris, the petty jealousies within the ranks, poor provisioning, and strategic blunders. All this knowledge gleaned from Savannah would serve the men of Saint Domingue during their own revolution twelve years later.

By 1802, Thomas Jefferson had become deeply concerned that if Napoleon could quell the rebellious slaves, he might afterwards shift his troops to the Louisiana territory. A master manipulator, Jefferson promised not to infringe on French sovereignty in Saint Domingue while simultaneously turning a blind eye toward private merchants delivering contraband arms, ammunition, and provisions to the rebellion behind France’s back.

Saint Domingue defeated the French, declared its independence in 1804, and changed its name to Haiti. With his war chest near depletion, Napoleon had already sold the Louisiana territory to the U.S. the year before. No longer threatened by France, Jefferson responded to pressure from America’s slave-holding states poised to expand into the nation’s vast, new real estate. Fearing its influence, Jefferson chose not to recognize the fledgling, black republic. His decision, which remained the official, U.S. position until1862, established the exclusionist and paternalistic policies toward Haiti that persist to this day. As for Haiti’s “boat people”, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service, their mass migration by sea …”threatens our national security because it diverts the Coast Guard and other resources from their homeland security duties.”

Fortunately, the Haitian “boat people” who came to fight for our freedom in 1779 were not turned away. Had they been, said Floyd Adams, “We might all be speaking with an English Accent.”