The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture

A newly typeset edition of the classic 1853 biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the brilliant military leader who defeated Napoleon's generals and liberated the slaves of Haiti.

The life which is described in the following pages has both a permanent interest and a permanent value. But the efforts which are now made to effect the abolition of slavery in the United States of America, seem to render the present moment specially fit for the appearance of a memoir of Toussaint L'Ouverture. A hope of affording some aid to the sacred cause of freedom, specially as involved in the extinction of slavery, and in the removal of prejudices on which servitude mainly depends, has induced the author to prepare the present work for the press. If apology for such a publication were required, it might be found in the fact that no detailed life of Toussaint L'Ouverture is accessible to the English reader, for the only memoir of him which exists in our language has long been out of print. --Rev. John R. Beard, 1853