The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

SEPTEMBER 21.

INSURRECTION OF THE NEGROES IN THE FRENCH WEST-INDIES.

ALMOST every day adds to the number of Rumors of Wars, Tumults and Insurrections, and the last report is generally attended with more melancholy circumstances than the one which preceded it. This is strictly true, as applied to the distressing tidings of the devastations committed by the Negro slaves, in the Island of Hispaniola. In tracing the cause of this calamity we have nothing to fasten on, but the Decree of the National Assembly of France, admitting the Free people of colour, to the rights of citizenship; or rather to the opposition of the whites of the West-India islands, to this decree. The machinations of the Free Blacks were to be dreaded--Desirous, as they were, of enjoying the Rights of Men, the powerful opposition made to this desire, must naturally be supposed, to create a spirit of revenge--and to this we attribute the insurrection. We hazard the conjecture, and shall proceed to our narrative.

On Tuesday last week, Messrs. Rustan and Fauras, arrived at New-London--deputed, among others by the Municipal Authority at Cape Francois, to repair to the United States to solicit succours of provision and ammunition. They inform that on the 23d of August, a general INSURRECTION OF THE NEGROES took place, in the quarter of Cape-Francois.--The plan was laid, to strike on the 25th, but a Negress, having discovered the plot to her master, they immediately rose, commenced their depredations, and the entire destruction of all the plantations by fire-and the indiscriminate slaughter of the whites, male and female, were the consequences. That the number of the insurgents, though exaggerated by reports, were to be estimated to at least 50,000; but not all armed.--To oppose these, the citizens of the Cape, the white fugitives, and mulattoes of the city, amounting to eight or nine thousand, with near a thousand National troops, have assembled in arms :--Who, we learn, had fortified all the passes to the city, impressed the seamen of the vessels of all nations lying in the port, for military service-had confined the negroes owned in the town, under a strong guard in the gaol and the church-- sent all the women and children on board the shipping and had dispatched expresses for succour to the United States, Havannah and Jamaica .-That the day they sailed the village of Petit Acre, within three miles of the Cape, had been destroyed, and that the light of the flames was visible in the night in the town. The Cape, from its natural situation, is well calculated for defence, and from the spirit of the inhabitants, the discipline of a large body of them, and the succour they will probably receive, we have hopes that the progress of the rioters will be checked; and that the fears of many for the safety of the town, will be done away, in their subjugation either by force or famine.