Vincent Ogé Vincent Ogé ( c . 1755 – 1791 ) was a wealthy free man of color and the instigator of a revolt against white colonial authority in French Saint - Domingue that lasted from October to December 1790 in the area outside Cap - Français , the colony ' s main city . The Ogé revolt of 1790 foretold the massive slave uprising of August 1791 that began the Haïtian Revolution . Biography . Ogé was a wealthy and educated free man of colour born in Saint - Domingue , probably of one - quarter African descent and three - quarters French ancestry ( a " " quadroon " " ) . He was the third son of Jacques Ogé , a white man and Jacqueline Ossé , a free woman of color . With eight children , the Ogé family was large , and Vincent is often confused with his older brother Jacques , who was also involved in what as known as the Ogé revolt . The family owned a coffee plantation in Dondon parish and his mother later held a contract to supply meat to the town ' s butchers . Educated in Bordeaux , Ogé returned to work with his uncle and namesake Vincent Ogé , a merchant in the major colonial city of Cap Français ( today ' s Cap - Haïtien ) . Vincent Ogé " jeune " ( the younger ) , as he was called for most of his life , eventually took over his uncle ' s business . He leased valuable urban properties , traded coffee and imported French products to the colony . In 1789 he was in Paris on business when the French Revolution broke out . By August of that year he had approached a group of colonial planters living in Paris to propose changing racial laws in the colony that discriminated against light - skinned men regardless of their wealth and education . Independently Julien Raimond , from a similar background in " Saint - Domingue " , spoke to the group of planters about the same time . When the planters ( called " grands blancs " ) rebuffed their ideas , Ogé and Raimond began to attend meetings in Paris of a group of headed by Étienne Dejoly , a white lawyer . He was a member of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks ( " Société des Amis des Noirs " ) , an anti - slavery society founded in 1788 in Paris by Jacques Pierre Brissot . Together with Dejoly , Raimond and Ogé quickly became the leaders of this group . They began to pressure the French National Assembly to give them representation and to force the colonists to allow voting rights for wealthy free men of color . Like others of their class , both men owned slaves in " Saint - Domingue " , and they claimed they did not intend to weaken slavery . Instead , they said , making free men of color equal to whites in political rights would strengthen their devotion to France and make the system of slavery more secure . In October 1790 Ogé returned to " Saint - Domingue " determined to obtain voting privileges for free men of color , whether by persuasion or force . He believed that an amendment passed by the General Assembly of France in March of that year asserted the equality of free men of property . It read " all the proprietors . . . ought to be active citizens . " Ogé believed this gave him the right to vote in upcoming colonial elections . He put pressure on the colonial governor and other authorities to guarantee the voting rights of wealthy free men of color ; the colonial governor Count de Blanchelande refused . While free men of color had become educated and some were wealthy property owners , colonial laws excluded them from voting and holding office , and limited them in other ways . After his return to " Saint - Domingue " , Vincent Ogé sent this letter from Grande Rivière , his camp in the Department of the North , to the President of the Assembly of that department : With support Ogé obtained from the British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in London , Ogé returned to Saint - Domingue via Charleston , South Carolina . Though planters accused him of purchasing firearms in the United States , there is no evidence of this . In October 1790 , he arrived in Saint - Domingue . Meeting with Jean - Baptiste Chavannes , another free man of color , militiaman , and veteran of the American Revolution , Ogé soon gathered a force of about 250 to 300 free men of color . This group men successfully defeated or frightened away several detachments of colonial militia sent out from Cap Français . Ogé and his rebels were flushed out by a larger force of professional soldiers and forced across the border into the Spanish colony of " Santo Domingo " . On 20 November 1790 , Ogé and 23 of his associates , including Jean - Baptiste Chavannes , were captured in Hinche , then part of the Spanish controlled part of Hispaniola . They surrendered after receiving guarantees of safety , but the Spanish authorities nevertheless returned Ogé and his men to the colonial government of de Blanchelande in Le Cap . Vincent Ogé was brutally executed by being broken on the wheel in the public square in Le Cap on 6 February 1791 . Dozens more of his men were severely punished in February 1791 . Their treatment served only to heat up the already boiling cauldron of dissatisfaction among free men of color and slaves in the colony . Ogé became an important symbol of the injustices of a colonial slave society that wanted to restrict the benefits of the French Revolution to whites only .