[Haiti]: Montalembert, Jean-Charles, baron de: Wigglesworth, John:

$850 · Offered by William Reese Company

[PARTIALLY-PRINTED BILL OF EXCHANGE FOR SUPPLIES, SIGNED BY BARON DE MONTALEMBERT, COMMANDER OF THE GRENADIERS BRITANNIQUES, AND JOHN WIGGLESWORTH, AGENT TO THE COMMANDER OF THE 1796 BRITISH ... A rare pay order for supplies made out to Baron Jean-Charles de Montalembert on behalf of the invading British occupation force in Haiti. The document is signed by John Wigglesworth, agent to the Commander of the British forces in Haiti and later Britain's envoy to the leader of the Haitian Revolution, Touissant Louverture. By early the next century, Louverture would become, ever so briefly, chief of the first free Black Republic in Haiti. The payee, Montalembert, has docketed the verso, with an additional docket in French transferring the funds to Dutilh & Wachsmuth, a Philadelphia mercantile house.Saint Domingo, the French part of Haiti, was a highly prosperous sugar, coffee, and cotton slave-estate island whose produce was described as exceeding that of the whole of the British Leeward and surrounding islands. In 1789 it was said to consist of 10,000 white people, 24,000 free mixed-race people, and 455,000 negro slaves. Although free, local laws decreed that mixed-race individuals could not accept any office or employment other than as planters. As news spread of the revolution, this group revolted but were roundly defeated. Part of the white response to the uprising was to create their own local assembly which excluded those of mixed race and resolved to transfer the island's alle

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