Thomas Jefferson and Black Rebellion
Plastrik, Stanley
... prejudice of race alone blinded the American people to the debt they owed to the desperate courage of 500,000 Haitian Negroes whowould not be enslaved. —Henry Adams, History of the...
...9 Winthrop D. Jordan, ed., White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), p. 458...
...I would suggest that some of the psychic roots of white racism in America can be found in this great man in a form that explains much of our history...
...Rid us of these gilded Africans, and we shall have nothing more to wish .7 Later, after virtually two French armies (17,000 and 28,300 men respectively) had 7 Henry Adams, op...
...Napoleon had a larger if grimmer vision: If he [Toussaint] and his blacks should succumbeasily to their fate, the wave of French empirewould roll on to Louisiana and sweep far upthe Mississippi...
...He even gave the French minister to believe that the United States would join with France in putting down therebellion...
...In the words of Henry Adams, the First Consul's orders were "positive, precise and repeated": Follow exactly your instructions and the mo ment you have rid yourself of Toussaint, Christophe, Dessalines, and the principal brigands, and the masses of the blacks shall be disarmed, send over to the continent all the blacks and mulattoes who have played a role in the civil trouble...
...s Henry Adams, History of the United States, Vol...
...The rest of the tale is a familiar if tragic one...
...NOTEBOOK President Adams, though a conservative and Federalist successor to Washington, had extended de facto recognition, in the form of a commercial treaty and other diplomatic steps, to the independent government of Toussaint L'Ouverture in 1799...
...Henry Adams, History of the United States, Jefferson, Vol...
...9 8 Ibid, p. 53...
...We mustdestroy all the Negroes in the mountains, menand women, keeping only infants less thantwelve years old...
...Less well-known, but increasingly a part of our national history in the light of modern scholarship, is the role of the United States under Thomas Jefferson, after his assumption of the presidency in 1801, with respect to later phases of the Haitian rebellion and the downfall of L'Ouverture...
...One of the better standard texts sums this up as follows: With respect to Santo Domingo, however, he[Jefferson] did not continue the policy of Adams, who had cooperated with the Britishin recognizing and supporting the rebel regime of Toussaint...
...NOTEBOOK sented by such a policy...
...Jefferson thought in terms of the slave insurrection's possible effect upon our own Southern slavery...
...b) the new American policy will be antiToussaint...
...Recognition of a successful Negro revolution, such as President Adams's earlier action had implied, would create a dangerous precedent...
...Ultimately, Toussaint will put himself into General LeClerc's hands, relying on his and Napoleon's honor...
...From Napoleon's "secret and confidential instruction" to the general assigned to destroy L'Ouverture—the notorious LeClerc—we know how Jefferson's parochial view of the Haitian crisistook form: Jefferson has promised that the moment theFrench army sets foot in the colony all necessary measures will be taken to starve out Toussaint and to aid the [French] army.4 Step by step, the new administration's policy of supporting the French and undermining the "Black Jacobin" leader unfolded...
...Jefferson assured the French minister in Washington that the American people, especially those of the slaveholding states, did not approve of the Negro revolutionary who was setting a bad example fortheir own slaves...
...New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955...
...An act of Congress pushed through by Jefferson ended all trade (except where the French were in control) with the island of Santo Domingo...
...The French army that was originally to reoccupy Louisiana was diverted to Haiti by the slave rising and there met its end...
...Here is my opinion on this country...
...For instance, one of his pseudoscientific writings discusses the albino Negro and, after dismissing as unimportant the cause of pigmentation (color as such is the reality for Jefferson), repeats familiar folk tales of his time to the effect that the Negro male lusts after white women, that black women prefer relations with apes, etc...
...Robert N. Current, T. Harry Williams, andFrank Freidel, American History: A Survey (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), p. 197...
...we must also destroy halfof those of the plain, and leave in the colonynot a single man of color who has worn anepaulette...
...1, Jefferson (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963),p.48...
...been destroyed, LeClerc, in the midst of a new insurrection, will write to his master: . . . it is necessary to blame here only themalady [yellow fever] which has destroyed my army, the premature reestablishment of slaveryat Guadeloupe, and the newspapers and lettersfrom France, which speak only of slavery...
...As C. C. Tansill explains, Jefferson had little liking for the Negro dictator, and he had no scruples about laying plansfor his destruction...
...he simply failed to grasp Napoleon's long-term perspectives...
...if St...
...A study in depth of his contradictory attitude toward the Negro is long overdue...
...For Jefferson, black was decidedly not beautiful...
...AT THIS POINT it is clear that Jefferson was blind to the future danger to Louisiana repre 4 Ralph Korngold, Citizen Toussaint (New York: Hill & Wang, 1965), p. 246...
...It became clear that Bonaparte intended to crush Toussaint and to restore slavery in Santo Domingo...
...If Napoleon wished to restore the French Empire in the Caribbean hewould have no more sincere well-wisher than Jefferson...
...The United States must help repress the spirit of revolt...
...to historians, it is also clear that Jefferson scarcely understood the global meaning of Napoleon's strategy, while the British at least grasped the situation in part...
...Finally, to reaffirm Adams's view as well as that of Congress, the Act of February 27, 1800, which suspended commercial relations between the United States and France and her possessions, specifically exempted Haiti...
...From March 21, 1801, onward, after Napoleon's coup d'6tat and his assumption of the office of First Consul, France dealt directly with Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States...
...According to Samuel Bemis,2 Adams's action delayed France's reoccupation of the island and the repossession of New Orleans until at least "the decisive year" of 1801...
...I LARGELY THANKS TO the writings of C. L. R. James, Ralph Korngold, and others, the great Haitian Negro revolutionary leader Toussaint L'Ouverture has in recent years become familiar to American students...
...Without this the colony will neverbe quiet 8 There is little reason to doubt that Jefferson was generally familiar with these views and that he shared them to a considerable extent...
...At that time the island, under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, was in a new phase of its rebellion against the French planters and slave owners...
...6 Ibid, p. 85...
...c) The United States will aid France to regain control over her colony...
...on April 7, 1803, he will expire miserably...
...prejudice of race alone blinded the American people to the debt they owed to the desperate courage of 500,000 Haitian Negroes whowould not be enslaved...
...The French charge d'affaires at Washington, Louis Pichon, obtained the following guarantees from Jefferson in an interview reported to Talleyrand: (a) The Adams policy of cooperating with England to help the insurrectionary Haitians will be reversed...
...Scenting what was in the wind, Toussaint reacted sharply and bitterly to this snub...
...In conventional American history texts, it is now even customary to acknowledge Toussaint's role in forcing Napoleon to disgorge the Louisiana Territory, contrary to his imperial ambitions of setting up an empire west of the Mississippi...
...Jefferson's first actions were withdrawal of the Adams de facto recognition, cancellation of the trade agreement, and the removal of the American consular representative on the island...
...5 When the new American, Jefferson-appointed Consul-general arrived shortly thereafter in Haiti he came without the normal courtesy of a personal letter from Jefferson to the Haitian leader...
...This was considered a blow at the French while simultaneously contributing toward a desired rapprochement with the British...
...d) in line with this, Toussaint will receive no further American aid...
...5 Charles C. Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 1798-1873 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1938), p. 81...
...There remains but to point out the secret fate already in store for the Haitians and contained in the instructions of Napoleon to his general...
...Jefferson's attitude stemmed from his reaction to the sight of rebellious blacks murdering their slave masters...
...Great figure of the American Enlightenment that he was, Jefferson embodied the ambivalence toward blacks which runs through American history...
...Then, suddenly arrested on Napoleon's orders, he will be placed on a ship and sent to suffer his final agony in a remote French dungeon located in the mountains near the Swiss frontier...
...Domingo should resist, and succeed in resistance, the recoil would spendits force on Europe, while America would beleft to pursue her democratic destiny in peace.' 2 Samuel F. Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States, 4th ed...
...his prejudices were powerful enough not only to shape his hostile attitudes toward Toussaint but to blind him even to what was the best national interest of his country...
...cit., p. 49...
...The continued struggle in Haiti under new black leaders will lead to the abandonment of Santo Domingo by the French and, despite Jefferson's miscalculations, to the sale of Louisiana to the United States...
...e) if France should make peace with England, the United States "would furnish your army and fleet with everything and . . . reduce Toussaint to starvation...
Vol. 17 • July 1970 • No. 4
