Victor Schoelcher photographed by Étienne Carjat. Plate from the Contemporary Gallery (Paris, L. Baschet, 1876-1884) • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS He rests in the Pantheon, has several statues bearing his effigy in mainland France and in the overseas departments, and a town in Martinique even bears his name... Victor Schœlcher certainly occupies a place of choice in the French national memory, and this for a precise reason:he is the one who, on April 27, 1848, signed the decree abolishing slavery. Born in 1804 in Paris, into a family of the Catholic bourgeoisie, he committed himself to abolitionism following a business trip. In 1828, his father sent him to America and the Caribbean as a sales representative for the family porcelain business. He returns horrified by the fate of Cuban slaves. For a time, however, he was not in favor of an immediate abolition of slavery. In 1830, in an article entitled “Des Noirs” and published by the Revue de Paris , he vigorously denounces the situation of slaves, but is in favor of a gradual abolition. "The negroes left the hands of their masters with ignorance and all the vices of slavery would be good for nothing, neither for society nor for themselves", he wrote before specifying:"The only thing whose what we have to do today is to dry up the source of it, by putting an end to the slave trade. » Having become a journalist, he made several trips to America and the Caribbean, in particular to study the future of the British colonies after the disappearance of slavery. He then became a supporter of immediate abolition, which he defended in the Republican and Freemason circles he frequented. After a new trip to the eastern Mediterranean to observe slavery in the Muslim world, he brings together the many articles he has published in a book entitled History of slavery during the last two years , which appeared in 1847. In the aftermath of the revolutionary days of February 1848, he was appointed president of the Commission for the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, and was therefore responsible for preparing the decree which would emancipate the slaves. A few months later, he was elected deputy in both Martinique and Guadeloupe and, in the National Assembly, he notably took a stand against the death penalty. Forced into exile under the Second Empire, Victor Schœlcher became a parliamentarian again under the III th République, while devoting himself to the writing of several books, including one on Toussaint Louverture. He died in 1893, and his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in 1949.
