Milton meltzer has a first hand account of an eye witness observer that was in haiti in the period. And they describe what the slavery is like on these back breaking sugar plantations. Sunday was my only leisure time, he wrote. I spent this in a sort of a beast like stupor between sleep and wake, under some large tree. My sufferings on this plantation seeme now like a dream, rather than a stern reality in slavery o world history. The part that begins to feel so wrong is the era that we're in where this is still happening. This seems like an ancient institution that is out of place here.