Haiti – Birth of a Land Sale`

For geography nerds, Haiti is the western portion and roughly one-third (10,700 square miles) of the island that used to be known as Hispaniola. The 18,700 square miles of the eastern two-thirds is the former Spanish colony we know as the Dominican Republic. In Haiti, the languages are French and Creole, and Spanish is spoken in the Dominican Republic.

In 1697, Spain ceded the island’s western half to France, which named it Saint Dominique. The island’s plantations produced sugar, a valuable commodity, to make rum and molasses along with cocoa, coffee, and indigo were also grown on farms that used slave labor.

Inspired in part by our Founding Fathers’ success in winning independence and a desire to free themselves from the yoke of slavery and French rule, Saint Dominique’s slaves revolted in 1791. Led by Toussaint Louverture, himself an ex-slave, this was the largest slave uprising since Spartacus fought Rome around 103 B.C.E. Not only did Louverture want an end to slavery, but he wanted independence from France.

Within weeks, plantations and crops were destroyed, and white plantation owners were killed. Casualties on both sides were horrific.

Independently, the Spanish and British sent armies to put down the revolt because they feared it would spread to their colonies, but both withdrew. France abolished slavery in 1793, but the war for independence, which killed 350,000 whites and blacks and another 50,000 French, British, Spanish, and Polish soldiers, went on.

By 1802, the French Army had lost 37,000 men either from disease or battle. This was more than twice its casualties on the killing fields of Europe and Egypt, causing Napoleon to decide to wash his hands of North America and the Caribbean.

In the United States, the fight for independence by Haitian slaves presented a conundrum for President Washington and then President Jefferson. Both were slave owners, yet both led the American Revolution, which gained the same freedoms the Louverture and his followers wanted. Both dithered between supporting the Haitian Revolution and supporting France and the slave owners.

When Adams, who was in the anti-slavery camp, took office in 1796, he faced a growing refugee crisis. Thousands had packed into French ships in Port-au-Prince and other island harbors. They were offloaded in Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia.

The difficulties of determining who the U.S. should let in; how they would be vetted; and what the path was to citizenship helped force Congress to pass The Naturalization Act of 1795, The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and The Naturalization Act of 1798. All were designed to clarify U.S. citizenship laws.

Adams wanted to maintain trade with Saint Dominique/Haiti but also did not want to support the French. He sent military aid to Louverture in the hopes of encouraging him not to support piracy or the French Navy during the Quasi-War.

Once in office, Jefferson cut off aid to Louverture. However, Jefferson had long coveted the Louisiana Territory. Strategically, he wanted to remove a potential European power from the Western boundary of the U.S. and gain control of the port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River. Napoleon needed money for his wars in Europe, and he was smarting from the defeat of his army in Haiti.

In France, James Monroe and Robert Livingston found a pair of receptive ears in France’s Finance Minister, François Barbé-Marbois. Discussions went quickly from purchasing the area around the city of New Orleans to the entire Louisiana Territory.

After Haiti became independent, Jefferson, with the acquiescence of the Federalists, refused to recognize Haiti primarily because Jean Jacques Dessalines, Louverture’s successor, ordered the execution of any whites who supported France during the Haitian Revolution. The U.S. did not recognize Haiti until Lincoln ordered it in 1862.

Map of Hispaniola copied from the World Atlas.