I’ve read that most of the normal people there wanted to convert the lands to subsistence farming, but due to just how profitable the sugar that came out of the slave plantations, nearly every authority wanted to keep it.
It's not just that they wanted to convert the lands to subsistence farming, they did do that. Pretty much every time the slaves got free, they went ahead and tore up the plantations and extended the existing subsistence farms. We know what a non plantation economy looks like because it's what happened every time there was no central authority, democratic workers societies and assemblies to organise labour sprung up pretty much everywhere and had to be actively broken up by the Haitian Government. And honestly they only had minimal success, by the time of 1820, they'd lost the ability to do that in most of the Island, hence the basically independent farmer's republics that existed in the south and on gonave.
In terms of the authorities wanting to keep it, Louverture and his Generals certainly did, but they weren't the only rebel leaders. They're the ones the French tend to focus on because they're the one who made the deal with France to come over to their side upon emancipation (the idea of remaining within the french empire only without slavery was sold to the french on the basis that the sugar export would continue which required plantations) but they represent only a small trend within the revolution, one dominated by free blacks and Haitian born elites focused upon the export trade and european recognition. Against that you had the strands led by African born slaves.
These were the ones who largely refused to go along with Louverture's 'remain french and keep the plantations' initiative. They were already in rebellion prior to Leclerc's attempted genocide and reintroduction of slavery, what you saw in 1802 wasn't the start of a new rebellion but Leclerc's leading non white generals switch sides from the French to the existing rebellion. Dessailnes, Petion and Henry essentially co-opted an anti plantation revolt to turn it into an anti france but we'll keep the plantations revolt.
The existing rebels against Louverture and Rigaud which the Generals joined when they defected in 1802 are fascinating figures. A lot of the smaller ones were little more than brigand gangs but the bigger rebel groups which held land are interesting for the way they did what you want, they rejected the Louverture idea of playing the European game and trying to develop an export trading economy entirely and set up self sufficient states.
Sans-Souci ran the largest of those groups but there's also Scylla and Macaya. Macaya is mostly notable for allegedly telling Dessalines during the period of negotiations between the rebels and the defectors that the only King of the Blacks he'd ever recognise was the King of Kongo. Which illustrates a crucial difference between the two groups. The rebels tended to have arrived as adults from Africa and had experience of the African political scene whereas Louverture and Rigaud's factions were primarily raised to adulthood in Haiti and so more influenced by Europeans.
Emperor Dessalines and King Henry both ruled as absolute monarchs in the style of the French Kings. African Kings tended to be much less powerful and much more bound by the views of their subchiefs. Hence the workers councils being far more prominent in the African rebel groups than they were afterwards.
The flip side to this is part of the reason Dessalines was accepted as the leader of the rebels was the African rebel groups tended to be divided by language, you had Kongo groups and Yoruba groups and Fon groups. It's arguable that you needed a Haitian born, French speaking figure to unite them as he'd be outside of that division. Prior to the defection there wasn't as much working together as there was afterwards.
The flip side to that flip side is that the negotiations that unified the defectors and the existing rebels only came to fruition after Henry flat out murdered Sans-Souci in a parley and the unity was at least partly achieved at gunpoint.
It is not impossible for the defectors to be killed by the French prior to defecting and so the existing rebels win without being coopted by the pro plantation leaders (though Dessailnes was a very good general who bought with him lots of trained men so certainly a rebel victory is a lot harder without that defection).
And after the French get kicked out, you had much the same. In that Dessalines and Henry both faced huge opposition to their land codes, as a result Petion ultimately came to the conclusion that he had to work with the plantation workers rather than against them (pretty much the only one from his generation who did) and leant into land reform and share cropping in order to win loyalty during his civil war with Henry (his men were paid in land). It's certainly not a conclusion it's impossible for the leaders to come to.
Also Louverture was undoubtedly the best politician of his generation but he and his faction (Dessalines, Henry, Belley, Rigaud) were not the original leaders of the revolt, that was Boukman, Jeannot, Papplion and Biassou. Louverture rose to power once the revolt had settled into stalemate, and Boukman had bene killed, as the man who could negotiate with the French. A more successful initial revolt (Boukman's original plan was to decapitate the Island's leadership before trying to free slaves but he abandoned that on fear he'd been caught) and you never see the pro plantation leaders get into power. It's almost certain that Boukman's lot would have leant firmly into extending the subsistence farms.
