Born sometime in the mid-1740s, Toussaint L'Ouverture was a
slave on
Haiti (then
Saint-Domingue) for most of his life. He was a personal servant to a humane master, who he actually helped to leave the
island safely during the slave uprisings of the early 1790s.
After his master left, L'Ouverture joined some of the rebelling slaves and eventually rose to lead one faction. He chose to ally with the French rather than the other countries whose European wars were spilling into the Western Hemisphere, and after the French won was appointed lieutenant governor of the colony and then commander-in-chief of all forces on the island (since other black leaders had supported the Spanish). L'Ouverture then did his best to ensure autonomous black government of the island, and once the French commissioners had been expelled, to ensure the economic stability of the country.
Since Haiti's independence had not been agreed to by the French, Napoleon Bonaparte (who felt they needed control over Haiti to exploit the Lousiana Territory) sent over French troops who attacked the colony, forced L'Ouverture to surrender, and shortly thereafter took him as a prisoner to France, where he died less than a year later on April 7, 1803.