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

Three: Toussaint's Image in Antebellum America

THREE TOUSSAINT'S IMAGEIN ANTEBELLUMAMERICA Henry Adams' observation is as valid today as when he made it almost a century ago: "The story of Toussaint Louverture has been told almost as often as that of Napoleon, but not in connection with the history of the United States although he exercised on their history an influence as decisive as that of any European ruler." Toussaint has become a footnote to American history, and that seems an irony given the primacy his contemporaries accorded him both inside and outside the United States during the late 17903 and early iSoos. More than anyone else, Toussaint personified for Americans the bewildering events in the French West Indies that had such important consequences. Even after General Leclerc finally captured Toussaint, he warned Napoleon that "the man has fanaticized this country to such a degree that his appearance would set everything once more aflame."' Leclerc's concern was prophetic: Toussaint died in 1803, but Napoleon's hopes for a French empire in America went forever unfulfilled . His soldiers were decimated by yellow fever and defeated by Toussaint's army. Napoleon turned his attention elsewhere, selling the faltering colony of Louisiana to the United States in the meantime. Toussaint thus helped change the course of the history of the Americas and perhaps the map of the United States as well. While most Americans viscerally disapproved of rebelling slaves violently overthrowing a white European power, they still displayed a genuine admiration for Toussaint Louverture, a man with whom all factions could identify and for quite different reasons. St. Domingue was a partisan issue in the United States because domestic policies and foreign affairs were inextricably interwoven in the early days of the Republic. The American trade with St. Domingue was extensive, ranging from lumber, food, and fish to manufactured goods, gunpowder, and arms. Anxious to continue and expand this trade, American Federalists saw that Toussaint i. HenryAdams, History of the United States Duringthe First Administration of Thomas Jefferson (NewYork, 1889), 378; Leclerc quoted in George Tyson, Jr. (ed.), Toussaint Louverture (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,1973). 84 TOUSSAINT'S IMAGE 85 represented the instrument for disassociating St. Domingue's trade policies from revolutionary France. Even though the British expeditionary force collapsed in 1798, having been unable to take possession of the island, the Federalist merchants did not find it difficult to switch their hopes to Toussaint, who helped defeat the British.2 The Jeff ersonian Republicanswere caught in a dilemma because their pro-French and antiblack attitudes were in conflict with American national interests. Byitself, Louisiana was not a viable possession for France unless the colony could maintain control and become as agriculturally productive as St. Domingue has been; yet French control of St. Domingue depended upon subduing Toussaint and reestablishing slavery, as Napoleon did in Guadeloupe and Martinique. In this curious way, President fefferson found himself at least partially reliant upon a former slave in revolt against France to secure American interests in both the Mississippi Valley and the Caribbean. The president made no meaningful attempts to hinder American merchants supplying the rebels until the fate of St. Domingue had been decided. Only then did Jefferson yield to French pressure for an embargo on St. Domingue.' Southern editors, aware of Toussaint's role in freeing Louisiana for American expansion to the southwest, paid tribute to his military prowess and, in spite of his color, referred to him with the same propriety as northern newspapers did. For instance, one southern tabloid acknowledged that Toussaint "must be a man of no inconsiderable talent, since he has both conceived and executed so great a project as that of rescuing his unhappy country from the miseries with which it was afflicted by the tyranny of France." And this from a southern newspaper referring to a rebellious former slave. Southern Federalists especially admired his military accomplishments; in his struggle against the oppression of his people, they portrayed him as the Caribbean counterpart of George Washington—wise, talented, and in the vanguard, yet ever 2. See Rayford Logan, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776-1891 (Chapel Hill, 1941), 118-21; Adams, History, 378-94; Thomas Ott, The Haitian Revolution, 1789-1804 (Knoxville, 1973); and David Geggus, Slavery, War,and Revolution: The British Occupation of St. Domingue, 17931798 (Oxford, 1982]. 3. Linda Kerber, Federalists in Dissent: Image and Ideology in feffersonian America (Ithaca, 1970), 23-66. 86 HAITI'S...