By the late 1700s, Saint Domingue (what is now Haiti) was the world center of sugar. So many sugar plantations dotted the landscape that slaves called commanders managed other slaves. On the night of August 14, 1791, commanders from the richest sugar plantations in Saint Domingue gathered in a place called Alligator Woods and swore a solemn oath. They would rise up against their white owners, "and listen to the voice of liberty which speaks in the hearts of all of us." That voice told them to destroy everything related to sugar. Sugar made the Africans slaves, so sugar must be wiped off the island, now a vast sugar factory to the world. By the end of August, the French colony was in flames. So many cane fields were on fire that the air was filled with "a rain of fire composed of burning bits of cane-straw which whirled like thick snow." Smashing mills, destroying warehouses, setting fields on fire, the freedom fighters demolished some one thousand plantations—and that was just in the first two months of their revolution. The fight against sugar and chains soon had a leader, Toussaint, who called himself “L’Ouverture”—the opening. Toussaint was making a space, an opening, for people to be free. –Sugar Changed the World, Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos How do the historical details in this passage support the authors’ claim? The text describes a revolt in detail to show that enslaved people took action against their treatment on sugar plantations. The text illustrates the difficult conditions that L’Ouverture and other workers faced while enslaved in Saint Domingue. The text uses primary sources to emphasize how absentee plantation owners had little control over their plantations. The text shows that the Haitian slave revolt gave slaveholders cause to increase the number of enslaved laborers on plantations.