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Rosalie of the Poulard Nation: Freedom, Law, and Dignity in the Era of the Haitian Revolution
- Texas A&M University Press
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116 Rosalie of the Poulard Nation Freedom, Law, and Dignity in the Era of the Haitian Revolution REBECCA J. SCOTT AND JEAN M. HÉBRARD For Marie Louise (Loulou) Van Velsen, kin-keeper O n December , , the ninth day of the convention to write a new post– Civil War constitution for the state of Louisiana, delegate Edouard Tinchant rose to make a proposal. Under the Congressional Reconstruction Acts of , the voters of Louisiana had elected ninety-eight delegates—half of them men of color—to a constitutional convention charged with drafting a founding document with which the state could reenter the Union. Edouard Tinchant was a twentysix -year-old immigrant to New Orleans, principal of a school for freed children on St. Claude Avenue. Having made something of a name for himself as a Union Army veteran and vigorous proponent of equal rights, he had stood for and won election from the multiracial Sixth Ward of New Orleans. In this speech on the floor of Mechanics’ Hall, Tinchant proposed that the convention should provide “for the legal protection in this State of all women” in their civil rights, “without distinction of race or color, or without reference to their previous condition.”Over the next weeks, Tinchant plunged into additional debates on voting rights and public accommodations, staking out a position in favor of a wide suffrage and the same “public rights” for all citizens. Then, in the last days of the convention, he returned to the topic of women’s rights, and particularly the recognition of conjugal relationships that had not been formalized by marriage. He proposed that “to prevent concubinage in this State, the General Assembly shall enact such laws that will facilitate all women, without distinction of race or color, to sue for breach of promise [of marriage]. The General Assembly shall also provide to compel to marriage upon application of one of the parties, such persons who may have lived together not less than one year consecutively.” Rosalie of the Poulard Nation 117 This eagerness to compel men to marriage is surprising in a twenty-six-year-old male, and his implicit call to formalize interracial unions is notable for its boldness. Who was this brash young man? Tracing the French-born Edouard Tinchant back through the surviving archival record, we find him studying in public schools in the city of Pau in the south of France during the revolution and then emigrating with his parents to Belgium after Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup d’état. Drawing on experience from New Orleans, Edouard’s older brothers developed an international cigar-trading business based in Antwerp. Edouard himself turned up in New Orleans in early , in the midst of the Civil War, ostensibly to work with his brother Joseph, a tobacconist there. After the city was taken by Union forces in April, Edouard made his abolitionist beliefs public, and volunteered to serve in a newly constituted Union Army regiment of men of color. Demobilized in August of , he returned to the cigar trade, but wrote exuberant letters to the editor of the New Orleans Tribune laying out his vision of citizenship and equality. These youthful experiences help to explain the intensity of Edouard Tinchant’s refusal of legalized caste distinctions and of what he called “aristocratic tyranny.” But there is more. In addition to building on his political education in Europe, and invoking his service in the Union Army,Tinchant also described himself in a letter to the editor in as a “son of Africa,”and he later referred to himself as of “Haitian descent.” These hints led us to the French colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence, where we located documents that reveal a still-deeper story, that of Edouard Tinchant ’s enslaved grandmother, a woman first called “Rosalie of the Poulard nation,” and later Rosalie Vincent. Examining each of the surviving documents in which Rosalie Vincent intervened, one discerns her efforts to achieve freedom and to protect her sons, her daughters, and her grandchildren.Edouard Tinchant’s conceptions of citizenship and of women’s rights can from this perspective be anchored in three generations of experience, with enslavement and the Haitian revolution as the points of departure.This family’s story, in turn, becomes part of a history of vernacular concepts of rights and dignity in the Atlantic world, concepts rooted in the awareness of individual and family vulnerability. The family’s multiple encounters with administrative and legal writings—including manumission papers, baptismal...