1795 Pointe Coupee Conspiracy

Turmoil Between the French and Spanish

As the French and Spanish battled it out for the territory of Louisiana, is was “the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789” that created turmoil and chaos in Louisiana and “by early 1795, disorder reigned in New Orleans,” [mob attacks and fires] which was felt throughout the entire state of Louisiana (317). “Louisiana was a Spanish colony with a French population” when the conspiracy happened (317).
 
“The opposition to the Spanish regime was called Jacobin” (317). This was a person considered “the most radical and ruthless” of the political groups and was formed in the wake of the French revolution.
 
“The French Revolution has an immediate, drastic impact upon Louisiana’s economy” (318). So during the 1790s the “Pointe Coupee post was hard hit because its two major export crops could no longer be sold,” people were hungry and starving.
 
Hall states the “slave control, never easy in colonial Louisiana, became increasingly difficult during the 1790s” (318). So, “masters in Pointe Coupee built upon several themes in order to divided and rule their slaves” (318). For example, “they created and tried to maintain a hierarchy status, placing mixed-blood slaves over black creole slaves and all creole slaves over in a privileged position over Africans” (318).
 
Yet, this proved to be disadvantageous to the master, when in 1791 there was a plot “that the Mina slaves were about to rise up and kill their masters” (319). “The uprising did not take place,” but interestingly enough the “Mina conspiracy was revealed a month before the first major slave revolt erupted in St. Domingue” – which as we all know was the start of the Haitian Revolution where slaves gained their freedom by force (319).

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