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1801 |
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| Previous Hispanola: January 26, 1801; With Rigaud out of the way Toussaint invades eastern Hispanola and enters Santo Domingo.
Toussaint now controls the whole island and persuades the Central Assembly to declare him Governor-General for life with the right to name a successor.
All males 14-55 are required to join the militia. Slavery is abolished.
Toussaint revives the plantation economy and orders the importation of black workers.
In one decade of war one third of the population of Saint Domingue has perished.
Despite Toussaint’s proclamations the Constitution of 1801 permits a reintroduction of the slave trade because those running the plantations are desperate for labor.. The expertise of the former white planters is also needed and Toussaint invites the white planters to return.
Toussaint further ingratiates himself to Napoleon by restoring Josephine’s plantation at government expense and sends her profits..
Toussaint now runs Saint Domingue as a military state.
October 1801; Toussaint’s nephew leads a small rebellion in the North in which 300, mostly whites, are killed.
The economy remains viable but blacks are understandably confused about their social situation.
Napoleon, the United States and the British fear a Saint Domingue that is too independent.
Napoleon readies an invasion force of 20,000 troops, mostly Swiss and Polish conscripts. He believes that Toussaint has demonstrated his infidelity by invading the eastern part of Hispanola and by denying native ports to French shipping. The final proof is the Constitution of 1801 which made Toussaint a dictator on a French island. In the artistry of deception Napoleon is Toussaint’s superior. In 1800 he had made blacks free French citizens and Toussaint commander-in-chief and in March 1801 he made Toussaint Captain-General, third in command of the island after himself and the minister of marine. But his plan was to again enslave the blacks and fully restore the plantation economy that had made Saint Domingue so prosperous before the wars started.
Next South America & Caribbean: |
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| North America:Thomas Jefferson becomes president of the United States. Alexander Hamilton begins the New York Evening Post as a Federalist newspaper. John Chapmen spreads his apple seeds in the Ohio Valley. Eli Whitney struggles with a contract for weapons using interchangable parts, but is given an extension by the U. S. government. | |||||||||||
| Europe: Napoleon conquers the Holy Roman Empire and spurs the manufacture of beet sugar to compensate for the loss of crops from Saint Domingue. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland established. A short peace exists between England and France. Nelson and the British fleet destroy the Dutch navy at Copenhagen. Rothschild helps to bankroll the efforts to defeat Napoleon. London population is close to 600,000 and Paris 550,000. New York 60,000, Pittsburgh 1,600 Steam engines, gas lighting, the metric system and the Jacquard automatic loom are in their infancy. Paganini, Beethoven and Haydn make music. | |||||||||||
January 1801
 Spanish Officials: Alcaldes Ordinarios Primer - Nicolas Forstall Segundo -Francisco Caiserguez Sindico Procurador General Pablo Lanusse Mayordomo de Proprios Juan de Castañedo. (Juan Bautiste Labatut (Francisco Duplessy?) elected first, rejected when he wanted higher fees for the office. Juan Ventura Morales serves as Intendant from 1801 until the end of the Spanish Era in November 1803. |
February 1801
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March 1801
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April 1801
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May 1801
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June 1801
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July 1801
July 15,1801 Manuel Juan de Salcedo, a 58 year old colonel, arrives and assumes the office of governor. Nicolas Maria Vidal has been acting civil governor of Louisiana while the Marques deCasa Calvo has been acting military governor of the colony. Salcedo will be the last Spanish governor of Louisiana, serving until the transfer of the territory to France on November 30, 1803. His administration is actually run by a small clique consisting of his older son Domingo, Vidal and Lopez de Armesto which continued Vidal’s attitude of confrontation with the Cabildo. Casa Calvo immediately sails for Havana. |
August 1801
In August 1801 a report gives the names of six unlicensed physicians in New Orleans. Five of them are warned to cease practicing until they are qualified. The sixth is a free black named Santiago Derum (James Durham) was allowed to continue in his specialty with the throat. He had been aborn a slave in Philadelphia in 1762 and had learned his knowledge from an expert in the field. He was bought by New Orleans Dr. Robert Dow of New Orleans but soon bought his freedom. He is described as the first known licensed African American physician in what is now the United States. |
September 1801
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October 1801
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November 1801
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December 1801
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| The Cabildo notes that the city’s gutters are in a poor state of repair. The new meat and flour taxes are bringing in ample revenues so Vidal supports sindico procurador general Paul Lanusse’s opinion that they all needed to be rebuilt. The Cabildo again accepts responsibility for the gutters that the law still forbids them to repair. Wooden gutters are still being used and repaired through 1822 under American administration. | By 1801 an endowment started by Galvez
that used rent from 17 government owned properties has a surplus of 7,000
pesos. The money is loaned to the Intendency to cover a shortfall in Royal
revenues.
In 1801 the Cabildo recovers money from the estate of Gayoso. After his death it was discovered that he had been using money from a Royal endowment meant to build a grainery. Governor Salcedo urged the council to loan the funds to the Royal treasury, because of delays in delivery from Spain. Spain had already conceded Louisiana to France by treaty, but has kept it from the colony. The grainery is never built. |
In 1801 construction of Daniel Clark’s twine factory blocks access through Royal Street into the second ward. The Cabildo compels him to open it immediately. In 1801 wood sellers are gouging the public. The price for firewood had been set in the 1769 tariff by O’Reilly. The cabildo granted a monopoly and imposed a ceiling on pricing, but both were unsuccessful. By the summer of 1801 rum bottled in bond is the only liquor that remains untaxed. Sure enough the merchants import only bonded rum. A weakened Cabildo tries to stop this latest circumvention of taxes, but governor Salcedo does nothing. |
In 1801 Don Francisco Balthazar Languille buys lots at the corner of St. Ann and Royal Streets. The buildings at this corner were built by him for his family and were the first to have a full third story, a full ten years before the skyscraper building at the corner of Royal and St. Peter. Languille belonged with the political-social-economic axis dominated by Daniel Clark and often dealt with the Baratarians at the Temple auctions and the Royal Street warehouse of the Lafittes. A few years later he will buy the Antoine Bienvenu plantation on the river and the Clark house on Royal where Captain Davis was a guardian to Myra Clark before taking her back east with him. The buildings at 808-810 Royal were sold to Pierre Maspero of the exchange fame. |
Bocage Plantation is built in Ascension
Parish by Marius Pons Bringier as wedding gift for his daughter Fanny
(Françoise), who married Christophe Colomb, a French refugee. Remodeled by Architect James Dakin in 1837, the architect who designed the Old State Capital in Baton Rouge and restored by Dr. & Mrs. E.G. Kohlsdorf 1941. It is a private residence today. An excellent example of the French Colonial raised cottage, with sixteen foot wide galleries on each side, Homeplace Plantation house, also known as Keller, is a National Historic Landmark and has been owned by the Keller family since the 1880s. |
Solomon Weathersbee Downs (1801-1854) is an attorney and politician who serves as United States Senator (1847-1853) is known as the political spokesman of North Louisiana. He supported Andrew Jackson, advocated universal manhood suffrage and opposed high tariffs and the Bank of the United States. |
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