Jean-Baptiste Belley

Belley - a former slave - eloquently argued as a Deputé that slavery must be eliminated in all of France and its colonies

Jean-Baptiste Belley (1746 – 1805) was a Saint Dominigue and French politician. A native of Senegal and formerly enslaved in the colony of Saint-Domingue, in the French West Indies, he was an elected member of the Estates General, the National Convention, and the Council of Five Hundred during the French First Republic. He was also known as Mars.

Belley was said to have been born on the island of Gorée, Senegal. At the age of two, he was sold to slavers sailing for the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Extremely smart and industrious, with his savings he later bought his freedom.

In 1791, Saint Dominican Creoles began the French Revolution in Saint-Domingue; they incited a slave rebellion, aimed at the overthrow of the Bourbon Regime. As their fellow revolutionaries in France thought the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, they began to see that slavery would need to be abolished.

In 1793, Belley was a captain of infantry, fought against the Bourbon forces of Saint-Domingue, and was six times wounded. In September of 1793, he was one of three members (Deputés) elected to the French National Convention by the northern region of Saint-Domingue, together with Jean-Baptiste Mills, of mixed race, and Louis-Pierre Dufaÿ, a European, thus becoming the first black deputy to take a seat in the convention

From Slave to Planter to Deputé

On the 3rd of February 1794. Belley gave an eloquent address, moving the French revolutionary government to proclaim the abolition of slavery in all of France and its colonies.