Editing Toussaint Louverture (section)

=== Education ===
Louverture gained some education from his godfather Pierre-Baptiste on the Bréda plantation.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lee |first1=Eunice Day |date=November 1951 |title=Toussaint Louverture |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44212502 |journal=Negro History Bulletin |volume=15 |issue=2 |pages=40–39 |jstor=44212502}}</ref> His extant letters demonstrate a moderate familiarity with [[Epictetus]], the [[Stoicism|Stoic philosopher]] who had lived as a slave, while his public speeches showed a familiarity with [[Machiavelli]].<ref name="Bell, p.61">[[#Bell|Bell (2008) [2007]]], p. 61.</ref> Some cite [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] thinker [[Abbé Raynal]], a French critic of slavery, and his publication ''[[Histoire des deux Indes]]'' predicting a slave revolt in the West Indies as a possible influence.<ref name="Bell, p.61" /><ref name=":1" />{{Rp|30–36}}{{efn|group=note|The wording of the proclamation issued by then rebel slave leader Louverture in August 1793, which may have been the first time he publicly used the name "Louverture", possibly refer to an [[Abolitionism|anti-slavery]] passage in Abbé Raynal's ''A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies''.<ref name="Bell 2008 p. 18">[[#Bell|Bell (2008) [2007]]], p. 18.</ref><ref>[[#Blackburn|Blackburn (2011)]], p. 54.</ref>}}

Louverture received a degree of theological education from the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries through his church attendance and devout Catholicism. His medical knowledge is attributed to a familiarity with the [[Traditional medicine|folk medicine]] of the African plantation slaves and Creole communities, as well as more formal techniques found in the hospitals founded by the Jesuits and the free people of color.<ref>[[Madison Smartt Bell|Bell]], 2007, pp. 64–65.</ref> Legal documents signed on Louverture's behalf between 1778 and 1781 suggest that he could not yet write at that time.<ref>[[#Bell|Bell (2008) [2007]]], pp. 60, 80.</ref><ref name=":2" />{{Rp|61–67}} Throughout his military and political career during the revolution, he was known to have verbally dictated his letters to his secretaries, who prepared most of his correspondences. A few surviving documents from the end of his life in his own hand confirm that he eventually learned to write, although his Standard French spelling was "strictly [[Phonetics|phonetic]]" and closer to the Creole French he spoke for the majority of his life.<ref name="Bell, p.61" /><ref>[[#James|James (1814)]], p. 104.</ref><ref name="richardjcallahan">{{cite book |title=New Territories, New Perspectives: The Religious Impact of the Louisiana Purchase|author=Richard J. Callahan|year=2008|publisher=University of Missouri Press|pages=158}}</ref>