Before people answer about antebellum America, here is a note about the use of cultivateur in Saint-Domingue. It was not used as a euphemism for "slaves": before 1793, the term referred to the (mostly white) landowners involved in land cultivation. See for instance the report of Hilliard d'Auberteuil of 1776 where he recommends that the State help the 3000 Cultivateurs of Saint-Domingue. The word cultivateur only appeared attached to slaves in the Proclamation of abolition of slavery of 29 August 1793 signed by Civil Commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax. The proclamation lists the various types of enslaved persons and explains their new rights and duties as free people: domestic servants, factory workers, soldiers, cultivators, and foremen.

The status of the cultivators remained a harsh one - and this is where the term can be perceived as euphemistic: the subsequent Haitian governements, starting with Toussaint before the independence, were always worried that the workers who toiled in the sugar and coffee plantations that formed to core of Saint-Domingue/Haiti's economy would leave and practice subsistence farming instead. Sonthonax had written in the Proclamation that the cultivateurs were meant to stay on the land of their former master, and could not leave before one year, and only if a judge of peace agreed to it. Later, Toussaint-Louverture and Dessalines kept enforcing similar rules, treating the cultivateurs not less harshly and sending the military when they revolted (one revolt was led by Toussaint's own nephew Moïse, and he had him executed). The cultivateurs were technically free and paid, but they were still hunted down and punished if they left "illegally" the plantations. The whip, so symbolic of the slavery era, was no longer used against them, but the hardwood cocomacaque club was... The cultivateur situation was not that better under King Christophe, and President Boyer established a Rural Code in 1826 that strongly limited the freedoms of rural labourers and made them second-hand citizens. By that time, however, rural populations knew a thing or two about resisting coerced labour and evading State officials.