Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T18:42:50.625Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

International Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

John E. Baur*
Affiliation:
Los Angeles, California

Extract

No Revolution worthy of the name has stopped at its national borders. For good and for evil revolution is exportable. Numerous studies have been made of the international and even the global results of such modern upheavals as the English, American, French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions. Although several treatises have been published on the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, and its creation of the first Negro republic and second independent nation in the New World, there has appeared no full-scale survey of its foreign significance. Inescapably, many histories of the Dominican Republic indicate the pervasive postrevolutionary relations of Haiti and her eastern neighbor on Hispaniola. Dominican life has been moulded in every sense by reactions to Haitian events, particularly the Haitian attempt to assimilate that republic and several eastward migrations of Haitian people. Otherwise, studies of the Haitian uprising have been limited to internal changes or the extensive diplomatic relations of the Black Republic.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

* —"Haiti” is a term which was not used until the nation became independent of France in 1804. It was derived from the ancient Indian name meaning “highland.” Columbus, who discovered the island, called it “Española,” or “Hispaniola,” and the term is still applied geographically to the whole island. The term “Santo Domingo” was used by the Spaniards; thus was derived later the name for the Dominican Republic. When the French colonized the western third of Hispaniola they used the French form, “Saint Domingue.” To distinguish the French and Spanish colonies the terms “French Part” and “Spanish Part” are sometimes employed. Varieties such as “San Domingo” and “St. Domingo” are sometimes found in English-language works. After 1804, British and American writers frequently used the spelling “Hayti” and “Haytians,” now obsolete.

1 An excellent recent study of this is Logan, Rayford W., Haiti and the Dominican Republic (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

2 Ford, Paul Leicester (ed.), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1895), VI, 349.Google Scholar

3 Jones, Howard Mumford, America and French Culture, 1750-1848 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1927), pp. 134136.Google Scholar There were also refugees in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Wilmington, Delaware, and various communities in Massachusetts.

4 Scharf, J. Thomas and Westcott, Thompson, History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884 (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts and Company, 1884), I, 470.Google Scholar

5 Volney, C. F., A View of the Soil and Climate of the United States of America (Philadelphia, privately printed, 1801), p. 243.Google Scholar See also Butterfield, L. H. (ed.), Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), II, 738,Google Scholar and Clarke, T. Wood, Emigrés in the Wilderness (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941), pp. 165167.Google Scholar Many refugees found employment with the Du Ponts of Wilmington. See Rosengarten, J. R., French Colonists and Exiles in the United States (Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott, 1907), pp. 7388.Google Scholar

6 Just Roy, Jean Etienne, The Adventures of a French Captain, trans. Murphy, Blanche (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1878), p. 68.Google Scholar Another eagerly planned colony was Azyl, or “Asylum,” in Pennsylvania, populated by St. Domingans and Continental royalists. The colony failed after a ten-year endeavor, commenced in 1794, because of the lack of working people and an unwillingness to learn English or the ways of America. See Rosengarten, op. cit., p. 140.

7 Pomerantz, Sidney I., New York, An American City, 1783-1803: A Study of Urban Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), p. 204.Google Scholar The refugees in New Jersey gave a concert and ball to raise contributions to their cause.

8 Childs, Frances Sergeant, French Refugee Life in the United States, 1790-1800 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940), pp. 5056, 60–66.Google Scholar

9 Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784-1831 (New York City of New York, 1917), II, 306, 436-438, and VIII, 307.

10 Watson, John F., Annals and Occurrences of New York City and State in the Olden Time (Philadelphia: Henry F. Anners, 1846), p. 210.Google Scholar

11 Loc. cit.

12 Childs, op. cit., p. 128.

13 Arthur, Stanley Clirley and de Kernion, George Campbell Huchet, Old Families of Louisiana (New Orleans: Harmanson Publishers, 1931), pp. 381–82.Google Scholar Not many St. Domingans went to Rhode Island and the other New England states. Congress in 1794 granted only $1,000 for Rhode Island's 200 refugees, out of a total grant of $20,000 for all fugitives to America. Most of those in New England later removed to the milder clime of the Carolinas. See Oughrey, Mary Ellen, France and Rhode Island, 1686-1800 (New York: King's Crown Press, 1944), pp. 3940, 56, and 139.Google Scholar

14 Wertenbaker, Thomas J., Norfolk: Historic Southern Port (Durham: Duke University Press, 1931), p. 97.Google Scholar

15 de Puech Parham, Althéa (ed. and trans.), My Odyssey: Experiences of a Young Refugee from Two Revolutions (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), pp. 99100.Google Scholar This is the fascinating memoir of a sixteen-year-old creole from St. Domingue. He remains unknown, but internal evidence of his reminiscences shows much of the work to be credible.

16 Scharf, J. Thomas, History of Baltimore City and County (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), p. 82.Google Scholar

17 Sioussat, Annie Leakin, Old Baltimore. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1931), pp. 133134.Google Scholar

18 Griffith, Thomas W., Annals of Baltimore (Baltimore: William Wooddy, 1824), p. 140.Google Scholar

19 Berquin-Duvallon, M., Travels in Louisiana and the Floridas in the Year 1802 (New York, 1806), p. 74.Google Scholar

20 Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1867), III, 88. This remark was made in Madison's Address to the Agricultural Society of Albemarle, Virginia.

21 Sioussat, op. cit., p. 133.

22 Lesesne, Thomas Petigru, History of Charleston County, South Carolina: Narrative and Biographical (Charleston: A. H. Cranston, 1931), p. 76.Google Scholar

23 Mrs.Ravenel, St. Julien, Charleston: The Place and the People (New York: Macmillan Company, 1929), pp. 365 and 403.Google Scholar See also Rosengarten, op. cit., p. 93, and Winter, William, Life and Art of Joseph Jefferson (New York: Macmillan Company, 1894), p. 154.Google Scholar

24 Childs, op. cit., p. 186.

25 Gayarré, Charles, History of Louisiana: The Spanish Domination (New Orleans, James A. Gresham, 1879), III, 314315.Google Scholar

26 Berquin-Duvallon, op. cit., pp. 63 and 70-71.

27 Ibid., pp. 74-76. See also Robin, C. C., Voyages dans l'Intérieur de la Louisiane, de la Floride, Occidentale, et dans les Isles de la Martinique et de Saint-Domingue (Paris: F. Buisson, 1807), II, 112113.Google Scholar

28 du Lac, M. Perrin, Travels Through the Two Louisianas … in 1801, 1802, and 1803 (London: Richard Phillips, 1807), pp. 8791.Google Scholar See also, C. C. Robin, Voyages, op. cit., II, 226.

29 Robertson, James Alexander, Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, France, and the United States, 1785-1807 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1911), II, 170.Google Scholar

30 Kendall, John Smith, History of Louisiana (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1922), I, 86.Google Scholar

31 Martin, François-Xavier, The History of Louisiana, From the Earliest Period (New Orleans: A. T. Penniman and Company, 1829), II, 109.Google Scholar Berquin-Duvallon also describes this troupe, op. cit., p. 25.

32 Martin, op. cit., II, 109.

33 This journal expired in 1814. It has been suggested that the St. Domingan slaves may have forged the wrought iron railings so familiar even today in New Orleans' Vieux Carré. See Logan, Rayford W., The Diplomatic Relations of the United States With Haiti, 1776-1891 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), p. 48.Google Scholar

34 Arthur and de Kernion, op. cit., p. 342.

35 Ibid., p. 55.

36 Kendall, op. cit., I, 86. See also Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell, American Negro Slavery (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1927), p. 165.Google Scholar

37 Gayarré, op. cit., III, 314 and 355, and also Martin, op. cit., p. 266. This explains in part the fears of the citizens of Pointe Coupée when in November, 1804, they petitioned Governor William C. C. Claiborne of Louisiana to protect them against a slave uprising they had heard rumors was about to break out as the news of the victories of Dessalines spread through the plantations. See Robertson, op. cit., II, 300.

38 Beirne, Francis F., The War of 1812 (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1949), p. 353.Google Scholar

39 Du Bourg, Louis Guillaume Valentin,” Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1930), V, 473475.Google Scholar

40 Johnson, Willis Fletcher, The History of Cuba (New York: B. F. Buck and Company, 1920), II, 183.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., II, 191.

42 Abbot, Abiel, Letters Written in the Interior of Cuba (Boston: Bowles and Dearborn, 1829), p. 135.Google Scholar

43 Corbitt, Duvon C., “Immigration to Cuba,Hispanic American Historical Review, 22, (May, 1942), pp. 280308.Google Scholar

44 Johnson, op. cit., II, 191.

45 Aimes, Hubert H. S., A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511-1868 (New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907), pp. 5760.Google Scholar In 1792, Cuba had 136,559 whites, 54,852 free Negroes, and 84,590 slaves. See also Clausson, L. J., Précis Historique de la Révolution de Saint-Domingue (Paris: Chez Pillet Ainé, 1819), p. 120.Google Scholar

46 Hassal, Mary, Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo, In a Series of Letters Written By a Lady at Cape François to Colonel [Aaron] Burr (Philadelphia: Bradford land Inskeep, 1808), p. 137.Google Scholar José Antonio Saco, the champion of abolition in the Spanish West Indies, said that Cuba should have called for the end of the slave trade at this time. See Corbitt, op. cit., p. 286.

47 Jones, op. cit., p. 147. See also Abbot, op. cit., p. 21.

48 Dauxion-Lavaysse, Jean François, A Statistical, Commercial, and Political Description of Venezuela, Trinidad, Margarita, and Tobago (London, 1820), p. 222.Google Scholar

49 Robin, op. cit., I, 91. See also Garrett, Mitchell Bennett, The French Colonial Question, 1789-1791 (Ann Arbor: George Wahr, 1916), p. 134.Google Scholar

50 Stephens, James, The Opportunity; or, Reasons for an Immediate Alliance with St. Domingo (London: J. Hatchard, 1804), pp. 1013, 20-31.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 42.

52 Addington, Henry, The Crisis of the Sugar Colonies (London: J. Hatchard; 1802), pp. 28, 90, 118, 154.Google Scholar

53 Edwards, Bryan, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies (London: John Stockdale, 1793), II, 30.Google Scholar See also, Madden, Richard Robert M.D., A Twelvemonth's Residence in the West Indies (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1835), I, 125.Google Scholar

54 Mathieson, William Law, British Slavery and Its Abolition, 1823-1838 (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1926), p. 9.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., p. 75.

56 See Laborie, P. J. LL. D., The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1798).Google Scholar See for tables of Haitian exports, Mackenzie, Charles, Notes on Haiti (London, 1830), II, 298.Google Scholar

57 Madden, op. cit., I, 125.

58 Ibid., I, 82.

59 Stark, James H., Stark's Guide and History of Trinidad (Boston, privately published, 1897), p. 13.Google Scholar

60 Courlander, Harold, “Vodoun in Haitian Culture,” in Stoddard, Theodore L. (ed.), Religion and Politics in Haiti (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Cross-Cultural Research, 1966).Google Scholar

61 Bridges, George Wilson, The Annals of Jamaica (London: John Murray, 1828), II, 201211.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., p. 214.

63 Madden, op. cit., II, 169.

64 Harvey, W. W., Sketches of Hayti, from the Expulsion of the French to the Death of Christophe (London: L. B. Seeley and Son, 1827), pp. 335336.Google Scholar A plan to arm the Jamaican slaves at Black River was discovered by a St. Domingan overseer. It was said that 250 slaves were involved, and a Negro from Haiti had been active in the scheme. Lewis, Matthew Gregory, Journal of a West India Proprietor, Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica (London: John Murray, 1834), p. 227.Google Scholar

65 Klingberg, Frank Joseph, The Anti-Slavery Movement in England: A Study in English Humanitarianism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1926), pp. 9294, 100–103, 121.Google Scholar

66 Clarkson, Thomas, Thoughts on the Necessity of Improving the Condition of the Slaves in the British West Indies (London: Society for Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery, 1824), passim.Google Scholar

67 Klingberg, op. cit., p. 194.

68 Hernández, Juan E. y Dávalos, (ed.), “Memoria Cristiana Politica,Colección de Documentos para la Historia de la Guerra (México, 1882), III, Doc. 145, p. 754.Google Scholar

69 Quoted in de Madariaga, Salvador, The Fall of the Spanish American Empire (New York: Collier Books, 1963), p. 295.Google Scholar

70 Logan, , Diplomatic Relations, pp. 223, 231–232.Google Scholar

71 Quoted in Hosmer, James K., A History of the Louisiana Purchase (New York: D. Apple-ton and Company, 1904), p. 71,Google Scholar from Adams' History of the United States During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, I, Ch. XIII.

72 Brant, Irving, James Madison: Secretary of State, 1800-1809 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1953), pp. 93, 180, 328.Google Scholar

73 McColley, Robert, Slavery and Jeffersonian Virginia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964), p. 113.Google Scholar Jefferson himself had said in 1793: “I become daily more & more convinced that all the West India islands will remain in the hands of the people of colour, & a total expulsion of the whites sooner or later take place. It is high time we should foresee the bloody scenes which our children certainly, and possibly ourselves (south of Potommac,) Kave to wade through, & try to avert them.” See Ford, (ed.), The Writings, VI, 349.Google Scholar

74 Logan, , Diplomatic Relations, pp. 72, 154.Google Scholar See also Jarvey, Theodore D., Robert Y. Hayne and His Times (New York: Macmillan Company, 1909), p. 192.Google Scholar See my “ Machiavelli, Mulatto; Boyer, Jean Pierre,” Journal of Negro History 32, (July, 1947), pp. 324328 Google Scholar for a brief narrative of the American Negroes in Haiti, Boyer's, and Boyd, W. D., “James Redpath and American Negro Colonization in Haiti, 1860-1862,The Americas, 12, (October, 1955), pp. 169182,Google Scholar for a later campaign.

75 Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1896), pp. 7172.Google Scholar Ber-quin-Duvallon tells us that during the flight of St. Domingans to Baltimore, the State of Maryland, which had outlawed the slave trade, made a special exception of those brought in by the émigrés because of “a law more sacred, the caritas humani generis, love of the human species” {!} op. cit., p. 72. See also Lloyd, Arthur Young, The Slavery Controversy, 1831-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939), p. 18.Google Scholar

76 Jenkins, William Sumner, Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), p. 63.Google Scholar

77 Mudge, E. T., The Social Philosophy of John Taylor of Carolina: A Study in Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), p. 207.Google Scholar

78 Lloyd, op. cit., p. 103.

79 Morse, Samuel F. B. (ed.), “Emancipation and Its Results,” Number 6 of Papers from the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge (New York: The Society, 1863), pp. 1011.Google Scholar

80 Ibid., p. 6. Perrin du Lac concluded that the “cruel experience of St. Domingo” demonstrated that a relaxation of the “chains of slavery” would mean that the colonies would be lost in the West Indies, op. cit., p. 94. Some clergymen echoed this. See Rev.Fuller, Richard and Rev.Wayland, Francis, Domestic Slavery Considered As a Spiritual Institution (New York: Lewis Colby and Company, 1847), p. 148.Google Scholar

81 Periodical and newspaper alike ridiculed Haitian royalty for half a century. Perhaps typical is Cobb, Thomas R. R., An Inquiry Into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America, To Which is Prefixed an Historical Sketch of Slavery (Philadelphia: T. and J. W. Johnson and Company, 1858), p. cxcvii.Google Scholar Seldom did these writers seriously attempt to analyze the careers of Dessalines, Christophe, or Soulouque. For example, Evrie, J. H. Van M.D., in his Negroes and Negro Slavery (New York: Van Evrie, Horton and Company, 1861), p. 331,Google Scholar called Soulouque “a serpent worshipper and Obi-man.”

82 Dew, Thomas, et al., The Pro-Slavery Argument (Charleston: Walker, Richards and Company, 1852), p. 430.Google Scholar

83 Ibid., pp. 464-1465. According to Stewart, J. in A View of the Past and Present State of the Island of jamaica (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1823), p. 352,Google Scholar the fear-filled Jamaicans had attempted to keep their slaves from knowing any “more of the events which have been passing there [in Haiti] for the last thirty years than the inhabitants of China — though the two islands are but a day's sail distance from each other.” This was written in 1821, but it seems that already the effort had been in vain.

84 Jenkins, op. cit., pp. 88 and 246.

85 Craven, Avery, An Historian and the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).Google Scholar

86 Adams, Ephraim Douglas (ed.), “British Correspondence Concerning Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 19, (April, 1916), p. 438.Google Scholar See also Clark, B. C., A Flea for Hayti, With a Glance at Her Relations With France, England, and the United States (Boston: Eastburn's Press, 1853), p. 40.Google Scholar

87 Thomas R. R. Cobb, An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America, p. cxcvii.

88 Clark, Calvin Montague, American Slavery and Maine Congregationalists (Bangor, Maine, privately printed, 1940), p. 28.Google Scholar

89 Jay, William, Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery (Boston: J. J. Jewett, 1853), p. 182.Google Scholar

90 Seeber, Edward Derbyshire, Anti-Slavery Opinion in France During the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1937), p. 195.Google Scholar For a discussion of the faring of St. Domingue's refugees in Toulouse, France, 179-1-95, see Adher, J., “Les colons réfugiés d'Amérique pendant la Révolution,” in Bulletin de la Société Géographique de Toulouse, 34, 1915, pp. 152168.Google Scholar

91 Carroll, Joseph Cephas, Slave Insurrections in the United States, 1800-1865 (Boston: Chapman and Grimes, 1938), pp. 44, 88, and 95.Google Scholar

92 Aptheker, Herbert, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), pp. 9697.Google Scholar

93 Ibid., p. 98.

94 Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for freedom in America (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), pp. 112113.Google Scholar

95 Ibid., p. 113.

96 Carroll, op. cit., pp. 88–89.

97 See Grimke, A. H., Right on the Scaffold; or, The Martyrs of 1822 (New York, 1901);Google Scholar and also Logan, , Diplomatic Relations, p. 196.Google Scholar

98 SCarroll, op. cit., p. 148.

99 Hinton, Richard J., John Brown and His Men (New York: Funk and W agnails Company, 1894), p. 183.Google Scholar

100 Dubois, W. E. Burghardt, John Brown (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs and Company, 1909), p. 97.Google Scholar

101 Filler, Louis (ed.), Wendell Phillips on Civil Rights and Freedom (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965), p. 184.Google Scholar See also Sears, Lorenzo, Wendell Phillips: Orator and Agitator (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1902), p. 244.Google Scholar

102 See Redpath, James, Echoes of Harper's Ferry (Boston: Thayer and Eldredge, 1860).Google Scholar

103 Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), April 2, 1860, and Seward, Frederick W., Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat, 1830-1914 (New York, 1916), p. 322.Google Scholar