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 whírled
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 author’s claim?