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TWO: U.S. Involvement: “Even South Carolinians Voted for It”
- University of Georgia Press
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He did not wish to see this black population independent; and that the interest will be wholly black is clear. —Congressman Albert Gallatin, 1799 The political lobbying around Philadelphia for expanded DominguanAmerican relations by Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and Toussaint Louverture’s envoy, Joseph Bunel, had just begun. After gaining support from key congressional leaders over dinner, Pickering and Bunel had to sway an even more discerning ally: the president. Five days after their dinner, on 31 December 1798, the two made their way to the south side of Market Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets. The three-story home there, with its London-inspired four-bay asymmetrical facade, was one of the city’s largest private residences. The “President’s House” accommodated George and Martha Washington from 1790 to 1797 and John and Abigail Adams from 1797 to 1800, when the national capital moved to Washington, D.C. President Adams received the two diplomats in his third-floor office. It was fitting that the presidential office had large windows that afforded a commanding view of Congress Hall, only six hundred feet to the south. On the House and Senate floors a few days hence, legislators would begin a monthlong debate concerning the subject of this meeting: the future of bilateral relations between the United States and Saint-Domingue. In the stove-heated study, Pickering briefed the president on the plan to shepherd the legislation through Congress. Bunel presented Adams with Toussaint Louverture’s request to reopen bilateral commercial traffic and the leader’s personal promises to protect American vessels and respect U.S. sovereignty. The president’s meeting with the Louverturian envoy remained secret. CHAPTER TWO U.S. Involvement “Even South Carolinians Voted for It” [40] Chapter Two Clandestine conferences provided Adams with plausible deniability regarding potentially explosive policy initiatives, and treating with Africans in rebellion against France certainly qualified. The morning after the meeting, a city periodical reprinted an excerpt of a popular book by Francis Alexander Stanislaus, Baron de Wimpffen, A Voyage to St. Domingo, which extolled the virtue of the whip as a remedy for the “natural sloth and inactivity” of black Dominguans. Sentiments of diasporic African inferiority resonated throughout the white American population, regardless of region. They did not, however, represent a consensus about black Dominguans. News of “American disgrace” at the hands of French privateers in Saint-Dominguan waters continued to sway Americans toward a policy of cooperation with the burgeoning black-led government. The same issue that included Wimpffen’s excerpts also reported that Louverture, “beloved and respected for his talents, mild manners and good faith, is director in chief of that extensive, fertile, populous, and wealthy island.” The president assented to Dominguan-American diplomacy. Three days later, Harrison Gray Otis put into motion Pickering’s congressional strategy as constructed at the dinner planning session. On 3 January 1799, Otis introduced for debate “An Act Further to Suspend the Commercial Intercourse between France and the Dependencies Thereof, and for Other Purposes.” The bill was immediately tabled until the House began debating it in earnest two weeks later. But before events began to play out in Congress, the Adams administration needed to shore up its diplomatic strategy with Saint-Domingue. Adams invited Bunel back to the President’s House, this time for dinner. On 7 January 1799, the secretary of state, Bunel, and perhaps others joined the president in the first-floor state dining room, marking the first dining experience between a sitting American president and a representative of an African-led government. The men sat at the south end of the house in a room adorned with a large carpet featuring a center medallion of the Great Seal of the United States. They strategized about the framework for a multicultural foreign policy after Congress passed the Intercourse Act. They discussed prospective profits for American merchants and exporters, the need for a future tripartite treaty including Great Britain, Louverturian protection for American citizens, and the presence of U.S. representation in Cap Français. At this dinner meeting, the president, known both then and now for his candor , likely expressed apprehensions about how American engagement with an African-led colonial government in the midst of a revolution would complicate already-hostile Franco-American relations. Perhaps anticipating U.S. hesita- [44.200.196.38] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:23 GMT) U.S. Involvement [41] tion, Louverture had already instructed Bunel to assure the Americans “under the guarantee of my good faith and...