"Finding Toussaint L’Ouverture in Tennessee" by Brandon Byrd

Marlene Daut Discussion
Finding Toussaint L’Ouverture in Tennessee
Toussaint L’Ouverture meeting General Thomas Maitland, Saint-Domingue, 1790s.

In the summer of 1777, as musket balls flew about New York’s battlefields, José de Gálvez felt confident. The American Revolution had unsettled the entire Atlantic World, raising new questions for the Minister of the Indies. But, amid the uncertainty of international war, he, the man charged with not only reforming but also strengthening the Spanish Empire, thought he had the right answers.

So, less than a year later, ships began leaving the Canary Islands bound for New Orleans. The packetboats and frigates and polacres that arrived just before Spain declared war against Great Britain held more than 1,600 passengers, immigrants who Gálvez expected would populate Spanish Louisiana and bolster its defenses. Some Isleños, the bachelors especially, became soldiers. Other colonists, particularly the artisans, stayed in New Orleans. Most including the married men and their families moved to the settlements of Galveztown, San Bernardo, Terre-aux-Bouefs, and Valenzuela. In those places, they defined, sought and sometimes found prosperity in the same way as the Anglo-Americans who won their independence in 1783.

 

 

 

Read more here: http://www.aaihs.org/finding-toussaint-louverture-in-tennessee/