Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean

Introduction

INTRODUCTION "Negro entered into white man as profoundly as white man entered into Negro—subtly influencing every gesture, every word, every emotion and idea, every attitude." These incisive wordsof southerner Wilbur f.Cash, written in the 19405, foreshadowed the interest in black history and the recognition of its importance to the American experience. In pre-World War II America, the primary perspective from which whites viewed blacks was that of the master, atop his horse, overseeing his slaves toiling below. Slavery bequeathed a state of mind about the color line that precluded white Americans, and especially southerners, from perceiving the validity of Cash's observation. Happily, this distorted image is changing—due in part to the recognition that Cash was correct. Whites' and blacks' destinies have been intertwined, and black history is an intrinsic part of American history. The influence of the Caribbean, particularly of Haiti, on the United States remains a neglected area of historical scholarship despite this new awareness of blacks' role in American history. Interest in Haiti becomes evident only when spectacular events, such as the American occupation during the early twentieth century or the Haitian refugees' desperate flight from poverty and oppression in the early 19805, cause Americans to pause momentarily to consider the black republic. For the most part, however, Americans are not aware of Haiti's historical significance and its influence on American life. Haiti provides a useful tool to get behind whites' fears and blacks' aspirations in the early nineteenth century. Further, the history of that republic suggests that in many ways the lower South, particularly the South of literary and political imagery, was the northern extremity of Caribbean culture . To view the South as an aberrant version of traditional American society (asis the opinion in the Northeast) is to misunderstand its history and to diminish the role that the Caribbean played in the development of the South up to the Civil War. During the first half of the nineteenth century, many Americans , poets as well as politicians, used images of natural catastroI HAITI'S INFLUENCE ON ANTEBELLUM AMERICA phe—particularly hurricanes, volcanoes, and violent storms—to characterize the times. No single event more suited these images than did the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791 as a slave revolt in the French colony on the island of St. Domingue, and was unique as a servile insurrection because of the nature of the conflict, its duration, and its outcome. For thirteen years, the black population struggled against intransigent masters andforeign invaders to establish, in 1804, an independent blackrepublic symbolically recaptured by rejecting its colonial name, "St. Domingue ," in favor of its aboriginal name, "Haiti." This revolution had a significant impact upon both America and France, and provided the focal point for American attitudes toward the French Revolution, black freedom, and slavery. Although many Americans expressed a lively interest in the insurrection in St. Domingue, slaveholding southerners were most concerned with the ominous events that led to the establishment of the first black republic in the New World. Indeed,that successful revolt may well have been the most important event causing slave owners to become increasingly recalcitrant about the abolition of slavery in the United States during the early nineteenth century. Vivid reports of the massacres in St. Domingue convinced southerners that the only thing they could expect from freed slaves was vicious retaliation. A Virginia newspaper stated that "between five and six hundred white persons fell under the bloody hatchet of the Haitians, and the warm stream of blood which ran from them, quenched the thirst of their murderers, who went to their knees to receive it."' Thus three generations of white southerners believed that race war would be the only result of the universal emancipation of slaves. Furthermore, southerners used the example of St. Domingue in support of their conviction that blacks were incapable of civilization on their own. To those looking for failure in the emancipation of the former French colony, Haiti represented an affront to the laws of nature and the republic was therefore doomed to fail. These lessons of the Haitian Revolution helped forge an ideology that differed significantly from the humanistic traditions of Western civilization, one that denies the ultimate humanity of blacks. This proslavery interi . Richmond Enquiiei, June 9, 1804. There were hundreds of such newspaper accounts between 1791 and 1804. 2 INTRODUCTION 3 pretation was based not on a sense of paranoia but rather...