LCV Winter 2012 - (Page 28)

Aerial view of Destrehan Plantation during the historic site’s annual Fall Festival, November 2007. mother country. as an added layer of complication, it could be argued that Louisiana had two mother countries: spain, which governed Louisiana, and france, the country with which most of the non-slave population identified in both language and custom. france’s revolution of 1789 was felt throughout its diminished colonial empire, but perhaps nowhere as much as in st. domingue, the western half of the Caribbean island of hispaniola, and the most lucrative of all the colonies. st. domingue’s chief product was sugar, manufactured on plantations operated with slave labor. the revolutionary principles embodying the rights of man reached the enslaved population of st. domingue in the early 1790s, triggering a decade of revolution there and plunging its sugar-based economy into chaos. hoping to regain control in st. domingue, napoléon Bonaparte pressured spain into returning Louisiana to france, planning to use it as a base of operations to re-establish 28 Louisiana EndowmEnt for thE humanitiEs • Winter 2012-13 french authority on the island. the ultimate failure of this strategy resulted in creating the independent nation of haiti and had a great effect on Louisiana and on the fortunes of Jean noël destrehan. up until the early 1790s, Louisiana’s (and destrehan’s) major cash crop was indigo. not only the growing of indigo, but the value-added process of making it a manufactured product — a dye — was something that distinguished a plantation operation from one of simple farming. attempts to cultivate and process sugar in the region had been made earlier in the 18th century, but these met with little predictability or success. in the early 1790s, crop failures and indigo blight in Louisiana along with the revolution’s disruption of sugar production on st. domingue prompted Louisiana’s planters to give sugar a second look; some planters began to pursue sugar production in Louisiana with renewed zeal. success was assured through the introduction of enhanced granulating techniques, giving the sugar a stability that permitted it to be shipped long distances without spoiling. Louisiana’s sugar production helped fill a commodity vacuum left by the st. domingue void. destrehan, the man and the plantation, embraced sugar as indigo’s replacement and rode this wave of prosperity from the end of the spanish period, through the brief transition of Louisiana to france and into the era signaled by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. By this date, destrehan was one of the largest sugar-producing plantations in the parish and Jean noël a leading citizen of the region. Jean noël’s good character and reputation were corroborated by credible testimony from people who met him. these included william dunbar of natchez, a friend of thomas Jefferson, and Pierre Clément Laussat, french colonial prefect, resident in Louisiana from the spring of 1803 until early 1804. though destrehan did not speak English and had little formal education, those involved in orchestrating the transition of Louisiana from french colony to american territory sought his advice and opinion on a variety of matters. Laussat appointed him first deputy (destrehan’s brother-in-law Boré was appointed mayor) during the brief french governmental period in december 1803. once transfer of Louisiana to the united states occurred on december 20, the youngest son of Louisiana’s last french treasurer returned to his plantation. But Jean noël was not entirely finished with politics. initially a spokesman for the Creoles on issues of slavery and an immediate path to statehood for the new 

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LCV Winter 2012

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