February 4, 1794

Law of 4 February 1794

The National Convention abolishes colonial slavery and grants citizenship regardless of color

Henri Grégoire objected when colleagues wanted the ugly word left out of the text: without naming slavery, he warned, people could later pretend the decree meant something else.

16 Pluviôse, Year II

On 16 Pluviôse Year II — 4 February 1794 — Louis-Pierre Dufay, a deputy from Saint-Domingue, addressed the National Convention about the colony and urged it to secure freedom and equality there. René Levasseur and Jean-François Delacroix demanded immediate abolition.

Henri Grégoire insisted the word "slavery" stay in the operative text so its meaning could not be evaded. The Convention rose by acclamation and proclaimed slavery abolished throughout the colonies.

The decree did more than end bondage: it made all men residing in the colonies, without distinction of color, French citizens entitled to the rights guaranteed by the constitution.

The three deputies who were embraced

Dufay had entered the Convention on 3 February with Jean-Baptiste Mills and Jean-Baptiste Belley, one day before the debate. The delegation contained the colony's racial order in a single group: Dufay was white, Mills a free man of color, Belley a formerly enslaved Black man and the first Black deputy in France's legislature.

Immediately after the proclamation, deputies embraced all three.

The familiar picture of a frictionless unanimous vote is too simple. The official record describes acclamation, while the historian Yves Bénot found disputes over wording on 4 February and a counterattack in the Convention the following day.

A law that still had to cross the Atlantic

This was not the first emancipation in Saint-Domingue. Enslaved people had already fought themselves free across large areas after the uprising that began in August 1791, and the civil commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax proclaimed emancipation in the colony's north on 29 August 1793.

The decree legally covered every French colony, but occupation, distance and planter resistance obstructed it in several territories, including British-held islands and the Indian Ocean colonies.

Napoleon restored slavery and the slave trade in 1802; a second, definitive French colonial abolition decree followed on 27 April 1848.

Sources

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What the sources leave uncertain

The date and decree are secure. However, the familiar description of a completely spontaneous and frictionless unanimous vote is too simple: the official record describes acclamation, while historian Yves Bénot found disputes over wording on 4 February and a counterattack in the Convention on 5 February.