Poetry of Revolution: Romanticism and National Projects

the spirit of capitalism, all redefining time as a commodity. It is the second half of this verse,

“Le crime aussi,” which reveals the consequences resulting from such a philosophy, the

subsequently adopted idea that money also equals crime, and that there is benefit if there is

monetary gain, even if crime is involved. The ruthlessly exclusionary nature of this implication,

in these stanzas as in others, is not only that the end justifies the means but also that aggression is

even the preferred manner of achieving monetary goals. Additionally, the coupling of this

obvious Shakespearean reference “être ou ne pas être” with the mention of gold also reduces

being, sheer existence, to monetary value. These ideas are reiterated a few stanzas later, when

the subject elaborates on the cavalier attitude which motivates American greed, as the French

word for sums of money (“sommes”) is the same as the conjugation of the verb “to be” with the

subject “nous.”

Et toujours de l’argent! Toujours de grosses sommes!

Beaucoup d’or pour l’Américain!

All right! droit vers le but, quel que soit, où nous sommes

Attirés par l’espoir d’un gain! ... (9-12)

The principal ideas of the poem are further expanded at the beginning of the next stanza

which begins with another saying in English “Cotton is King.” Originating from the American

civil war period, this phrase was coined by a southern senator during a debate over slavery. In

his congressional speech, Senator James Henry Hammond argued that the economy of the U.S.

and that of much of the Western world rested on the production of cotton, and that the black race,

being incapable of higher faculties, should appropriately provide the labor source for this and

other important crops.^281 For Coicou, the United States was still lauding its position of economic

power and social superiority even decades after American abolition; little had changed for Haiti,

(^281) James H. Hammond, Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond, of South
Carolina (New York: John F. Trow & Co., 1866) 311-322.