Luckily for France, Louverture was an excellent general, and luckily for the people of the island, Louverture was also an able politician, and between 1794 and 1802, he successfully steered the colony toward independence. So although slavery was abolished, this didn't end the plantation system, because both Louverture and his compatriot André Rigaud believed that sugar was vital to the economic health of the island. Now at least people were paid for their labor and their kids couldn't be sold. Now you can compare it to Foxconn. But soon Louverture and Rigaud came into conflict over Rigaud's refusal to give up control over one of the southern states on the island, and there was a civil war, which Louverture, with the help of his able lieutenant Jacques de Salines, was able to win after 13 months of hard fighting. Louverture then passed a new constitution, and things were going pretty well on San Domingo, with the small problem that it was still technically part of France, which meant that it was about to be ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte. Let's go to the Thought Bubble.