The Age of Revolution: Founding Fathers Dreamed of Uprisings, Except in Haiti
For the American Revolution initiated an age of democratic revolutions
in the 18th century. It shares the Atlantic stage with the French and
Haitian revolutions that followed. While each uprising has its own
character and results, the course and significance of each depends, in
part, on the larger history they shared. There is a general awareness of the French Revolution and its relation
to the American uprising. By contrast, the Haitian Revolution of 1791 is
rarely mentioned in discussions of this age of revolution. Yet it was
present in the imaginations of the founding fathers and played a large
role in the American project of nation-making. Consider one curiosity of the American Revolution: enthusiasm for
revolution waned rather quickly in the new nation. No doubt the
establishment of stable government with the Constitution and the
successful transfer of power in 1800 were factors. In addition, historians
cite the example of the French Revolution, particularly its hostility to
religion and disintegration into the Terror. That, too, is plausible. Yet Haiti is surely part of this story. Could it be that after 1791 the
specter of a revolution of slaves against white masters -- a revolution led
by a former slave, Toussaint Louverture, who claimed for the former slaves
a universal human right to freedom and citizenship -- made Americans cool
to revolution? Thomas Jefferson, who readily accepted violence as the price of freedom
in France, was not so relaxed about the black revolutionaries in
Saint-Domingue -- as Haiti was called until its formal independence in
1804. Timothy Pickering, the irascible Federalist who served in the cabinets
of both George Washington and John Adams, took note. How, Pickering
demanded of Jefferson, could he praise the French Revolution and refuse
support for the rebels on Saint-Domingue because they were "guilty" of
having a "skin not colored like our own"? Jefferson's difficulty was not unique. This revolution of black slaves
claiming universal rights was, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot, a Haitian
anthropologist, has argued, unthinkable. Thus it was silenced. The silence continues. But it is in the interest of Americans to break
it. Doing so will enrich the understanding of the epochal meanings of the
American Revolution. Just as Jefferson's noble words in the Declaration of
Independence crystallized a new way of thinking, so, too, do the actions
of those Africans in the Caribbean who produced the largest slave
rebellion in history. YET Jefferson, who had no sympathy for the Haitian revolution, owed to
it the most important achievement of his presidency. The purchase of
Louisiana, which set the United States on course to become a
continent-wide nation, became a possibility because the French defeat in
Haiti encouraged Napoleon to sell Louisiana at a bargain price. The Haitian Revolution also played a part in heightening the divisions
between the Adams Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. Though
their positions were complex and shifting -- driven by the ever-changing
Atlantic diplomacy caused by the contest between Britain and Napoleonic
France -- it is fair to say that Adams and the Federalists were generally
sympathetic to Toussaint's hopes for Saint-Domingue, while Jefferson was
consistently less so. This division contributed to the tensions that
resulted in the invention of the American system of political parties,
something not anticipated in the Constitution. The Adams administration was in fact quite friendly to Toussaint. Adams
appointed a consul general in 1799, instructing him to emphasize
friendship as well as trade. He even suggested that the consul informally
assure Toussaint that the United States was not opposed to independence
and recognition. Jefferson also welcomed trade, but close relations between the two
societies worried him. In a letter to James Monroe, he speculated that the
insurrectionary violence on Saint-Domingue probably forecast the future in
the United States. Too much contact, he feared, might advance that day.
With trade, he wrote to James Madison in 1799, "we may expect . . . black
crews, & super cargoes & missionaries thence into the Southern
states." It was an unwelcome prospect and, for Southern planters,
disturbing. The contagion of freedom, they insisted, must be quarantined
on Saint-Domingue. Jefferson's refusal to recognize the independence of Haiti in 1804 was
emulated by Madison and Monroe, the Virginians who succeeded him. When, in
the 1820's, the issue was again debated in the Senate, Southern senators
refused to acknowledge a nation formed by black slaves who rebelled
against white slaveholders. "Our policy with regard to Haiti is plain,"
insisted Senator Robert V. Hayne of South Carolina. "We never can
acknowledge her independence." It was not until 1862, in the midst of the
Civil War, that the Lincoln administration finally recognized Haiti. Black Americans have long recognized the relevance of the Haitian
Revolution. Gabriel Prosser, who led a slave conspiracy in 1800, and
Denmark Vesey, who organized another in 1822, both well knew what had
happened in Haiti. Much later, in 1893, soon after returning from his
service as American minister to Haiti, Frederick Douglass, the escaped
slave who became a prominent writer and reformer, celebrated the Haitian
Revolution for advancing "the cause of liberty and human equality
throughout the world." Even if, as he recognized, there was much to criticize in Haiti's
history, he was right in his call for all Americans to include Haiti in
the revolutionary heritage of the 18th century. When we consider the American Revolution in this broader way, it
becomes larger and richer. American history is embedded in a complex and
continuing history that has redefined human rights, freedom and
citizenship. The founding fathers contributed much to that history, as did the other
18th century Atlantic revolutions. Yet it is the message Haiti carried
during the age of democratic revolution, the aspiration for equality
across the color line, that remains the necessary hope of the unfinished
American revolution.
MERICANS celebrate the Fourth of July Americana- style, much
like the way the nation thinks about the revolution it commemorates. The
rituals of family picnics, parades, fairs, fireworks, stories of midnight
rides and tea parties reinforce a sense of the Revolution's Americanness:
singular, exceptional, unrelated to any history beyond the territory that
would become the United States. Yet when Americans isolate the Revolution,
they diminish it. It becomes parochial.
Thomas Bender is University Professor of
the Humanities at New York University, where he teaches American
history.
Page Top