Toussaint's Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution

Diplomats and Diplomacy

by Gordon S. Brown

In its formative years, America, birthplace of a revolution, wrestled with a volatile dilemma. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and many other founding fathers clashed. What was to be the new republic's strategy toward a revolution roiling just off its shores? From 1790 to 1810, the disagreement reverberated far beyond Caribbean waters and American coastal ports. War between France and Britain, the great powers of the time, raged on the seas and in Europe. America watched aghast as its trading partner Haiti, a rich hothouse of sugar plantations and French colonial profit, exploded in a rebellion led by former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture. Toussaint's The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution narrates the intricate history of one of America's early foreign policy balancing acts and one of the nation's defining moments. The supporters of Toussaint's rebellion against France at first engineered a bold policy of intervention in favor of the rebels. But Southern slaveholders, such as Jefferson, eyed the slave-general's rise and masterful leadership skills with extreme alarm and eventually obtained a reversal of the policy-even while taking advantage of the rebellion to make the fateful Louisiana purchase. Far from petty, the internal squabbles among America's founders resolved themselves in delicate maneuvers in foreign capitals and on the island. The stakes were mortally high-a misstep could have plunged the new, weak, and neutral republic into the great powers' global war. In Toussaint's Clause, former diplomat and ambassador Gordon S. Brown details the founding fathers' crisis over Haiti and their rancorous struggle, which very often cut to the core of what America meant by revolution and liberty.

Genres: History

321 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jud Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title refers to the legislation passed by Congress in 1798 that modified terms of an embargo of St. Domingue, which had been approved six months earlier in response to "rampant acts of violence, brigandage, and piratry by French-flagged corsairs" operating around the island.

Toussaint Louverture wrote to President John Adams in November of 1798 "asking for an exemption." Besides the privateering, this was after the XYZ Affair when anti-French sentiment in the US had put the two nations in a state of "quasi-war." Toussaint promised that US merchants trading with ports under his control would be protected and secure, despite the fact that St. Domingue was still officially French, as was the generalship of Louverture.

Adams proposed--in a bill to extend the embargo for the duration of the sitting Congress (through 1800)--that he be allowed to suspend the embargo for Domingan ports "with which a commercial intercourse may safely be renewed." With passage, and with Toussaint in control of the island, this in effect re-opened trade with St. Domingue. This portion of the bill was named "the Toussaint Clause."

p. 137-8: "The title of the clause was helpful of the chances of passage. Bad as the image of St. Domingo had become after years of bloody civil war, massacres, atrocities, Jacobinism, and abolition, Toussaint himself had come to enjoy a much more positive reputation. His piety, the honesty of his dealings, his competence, and his moderation had all been noted favorably since his rise to prominence, in correspondence and in the press."

During debate, Republicans raised the bugbear of a piratical regime and an "asylum for renegadoes" from the South (p. 141). Federalists countered that normalized trade would produce the opposite result--dependence on US trade and cooperation. Yes, argued southern Federalist Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, the clause did in fact promote St. Domingan independence, but that independence would be more beneficial even to the Southern states than would continued status as a French colony.

The bill passed and was signed into law 2/8/1799, thus providing at least tacit contemplation of an independent St. Domingue under Toussaint. This sentiment of course did not survive long: the French government softened its stance, and a French sympathizing, anti-Federalist, Virginia slave-owning Thomas Jefferson replaced John Adams in the White House. However, although this administration was the opposite of supportive for Toussaint, it also turned a blind eye to American trading even when France complained that this was supporting a rebellion. Even these opponents of Toussaint saw that it was possible he would come out on top.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author worked hard on the historical research, but sometimes he talks as if making huge profits from slavery, as the French did during St. Domingue’s glory days (he used some term like that), were just fine. The extraordinary profitability of the colony was the flip side of the extreme exploitation of its slave labor force. U.S. elites also had a very profitable trade with the colony, and notably John Adams, who was supposedly against slavery, praised “Providence” (Jefferson, an Enlightenment guy, praised “Nature”) for putting them in a geographical position to reap such riches from provisioning a slave colony and importing their molasses, which fed rum distilleries in the North. This is not a complete review, but I wanted to say something about why I give the book a middling rating.

[Sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book that is both concise and comprehensive in its coverage of an important but under-discussed part of history: the Haitian Revolution. Highly recommend!

[Derek Kreider · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, but pretty dry format. This is a helpful book for a look at how American interests influenced their interactions with Haiti.