In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

FOUR THE SOUTHERN RESPONSE TO THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION Southerners were keen observers of what was happening in the Caribbean. They were anxious to defend their economic, political , and social system by applying what they saw as the lessons of the French West Indian experience to their own situation. Nor were they reticent about pointing out, for themselves and the rest of the nation, what they felt were threats to their security. Even though the slave insurrection in St. Domingue broke out only a short time after southerners participated in their own rebellion against a European power, they were not prepared to support a violent black struggle for freedom in an area so close to them. The notions of liberte and egalite, the catchwords for the French Revolution in Europeand in St.Domingue, were anathema to southern planters who lived in fear of a black revolt at home. Whatever revolutionary sentiment there had been in the South during the American Revolution soon lapsed into silence over the ominous events in St. Domingue. Southerners admitted refugees from St. Domingue as a humanitarian act; they cautiously excluded revolutionary ideology as an act ofself-preservation. Heeding the warnings of John Randolph, the Virginia congressman and states' rights advocate, against the "introduction of slaves into this country, or of the maroons, brigands, or cutthroats from St.Domingo," everysouthern state legislature passed laws designed to curtail the activities of the black population, free and slave, and to prevent the arrival of French West Indian blacks.1 Since New Orleans was part of Spanish Louisiana during the 17905, Virginia and South Carolina were the major American ports of entry for refugees fleeing St. Domingue. The French consul estimated that six hundred St. Domingans were living in Charleston by 1796. South Carolina charitablywelcomed the unfortunate refugees at first; however, it soon became clear that there were grave risks in admitting blacks—free or slaves—from the island. South Carolinians showed some enthusiasm for the i. Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 3rd Sess., 991, yth Cong., and Sess., 385. 107 io8 HAITI'S INFLUENCE ON ANTEBELLUM AMERICA French Revolution, but after the French abolished slavery in 1793 and the Jacobinsin France became increasingly antislavery, South Carolinians and other southerners became alarmed at the implications of what was happening in France and in its colonies. Not only did they fear blacks who had either witnessed orparticipated in the destruction of the white planter class in the Caribbean , they were quick to see the parallel between their situation and that of the besieged planters in St. Domingue. Consequently, South Carolina was the first state to take legislative action to abolish the slave tradewhen, in 1792, it prohibited the importation of all slaves. This ban was in part a reaction to an antislavery document published in London that same year by the Quaker abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who, in An Inquiry into the Causes of the Insurrection of Negroes on the Isle of Santo Domingo, concluded that the major reasons for the insurrection were the large-scale importation of blacks from Africa and the white minority's inability to maintain control over the more numerous blacks. While Clarkson's interest was in curtailing the slave trade, Carolinians were concerned about their safety. Legislators took an additional step toward this end by prohibiting free Negroes from Hispaniola from entering the state, and an articleof an 1803 statute specifically barred any Negro or man of color, free or bond, "who heretofore hath been, or now is, or hereafter shall be resident in any of the French West India islands." Two years later, South Carolinians were worried enough about the problem of whites helping blacks to revolt that they passed a law making it punishable by death for "any person in any way to aid in an insurrection ." Two witnesses were needed for a conviction. This law was aimed at white Frenchmen, suspected Jacobins,who might be in the state.2 The state of Georgia then prohibited the importation of blacks from the West Indies, though the African slave trade remained open for five more years. In a long statute passed in December, 1792, Virginia required that those entering the state had to take 2. John Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States (3 vols.; Boston, 1862), III, 95; South Carolina Statutes at Large (10 vols.; Columbia, 1836-41), V, 503; Acts of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina (2 vols.; Columbia, 1808), II, 511; Patrick Brady, "The SlaveTrade...

Share