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She is humbled to the dust.
The iron eats into her flesh; the insult breaks her heart.
She is no longer bold of brow.
Thrown to the ground, her high and scornful spirit sank into the earth like water poured along a field of grass.
For many a year to come she will not slip those fetters from her limbs, but she is easing herself under them, trying to feel her feet and free her arms.
The civil war was marked by many new and striking features, most of all in the practical results.
A wealthy aristocracy was crushed; a vast community of slaves was freed.
What other war has done so much?
In servile wars, the slaves have always suffered by defeat.
No servile war succeeds.
Until the fall of Richmond, it is doubtful whether the sword had ever freed a single slave.
Slaves rose in Sparta and Syracuse, in Alexandria and Rome, but they were crushed with merciless rigour.
Gallic slaves rose under Clovis, and Tartar slaves under Alexis; but the end of every rising was a deeper fall, a sterner punishment, a harder rivetting of the servile chain.
From Spartacus to Pugacheff, the leaders of servile insurrections have always failed.
The case of Toussaint l'overture is no exception to
1875.
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