  The Friends of the Blacks were “prepared to sacrifice everything for the success of their cause,” and the Massaic Club colonialists “were just as dedicated to their detestable cause” (SFHR, 71). Barnave presented a decree (March 1790), which contained the principle that the colonies were to provide their own constitution, thereby ending arbitrary administration.  The colonists then demanded independence, but “Without making any distinction between the whites and the colored men, without even mentioning one or the other, they contented themselves in the famous Article IV, with conferring civil rights upon ‘all property owners of twenty-five years of age,’ who possessed real estate, or lacking such property, had been domiciled in and had contributed to the parish for two years” (SFHR, 71). Cooper notes that the ambiguity of the article allowed landholding mulattoes to hope that these civil rights applied to them “without assuring them any benefit” (SFHR, 72). Furthermore, colored men in Paris were alarmed by the silence of the decree on their particular rights. Just as mulattos were seeking the same rights as whites, Blacks would go on to claim the same rights as mulattos. The result of the decree was resistance and insurrection. “In spite of all of these measures,” Cooper notes, “it was in vain that the Constituent Assembly and its Colonial Committee had hoped to save the colonies from danger of insurrections,” (SFHR, 77).  The decree of May 15, 1791 which accorded political rights to mulattoes born of free parents and recognizing them as active citizens was a defeat for the colonists, yet they refused to comply with it (SFHR, 80). The white colonists revolted, the decree was retracted (though not altogether annulled), and the Friends of the Blacks and the Jacobin Club were brought closer together.