Madison and the Jefferson Administration Prepare to Prohibit U.S. Trade With Haiti

The French Revolution of 1789, with its promise of "liberté, egalité, fraternité", had a powerful impact on the slaves in French-held Saint Domingue (now Haiti). When their hopes for freedon were thwarted by the great sugar plantation owners, the slaves revolted. Led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, a black army successfully fought the French in 1793. He then turned his attention to the Spanish, who owned the adjacent colony of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), and the British (who were seeking to dominate the entire island of Hispaniola, which the two colonies shared). Toussaint's army defeated them all, winning seven battles in one week against the British. Spain ceded its colony in 1795 to France, and Toussaint and his followers, considering that they had replaced the French government, claimed the entire island. Thus a black leader and a black army ruled a black de facto nation (still technically in revolt against France) just a stone’s throw from the United States. Many poweful people in Europe and the Americas, including slaveholders in the American South, eyed these events with extreme alarm.

After John Adams became president in 1797, the U.S. became engaged in a quasi-war with France, which was plundering American trade on the high seas. This resulted in a suspension of trade between the U.S. and both France and its dependencies. Seeing an opportunity, Toussaint approached Adams with a promise that if the U.S. would support him, he would deny France the use of Haiti as a platform for maneuvers in North America. This offer was attractive to Adams and his Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, both of whom in any event sympathized with the former slaves’ aspirations for freedom. On May 22, 1799 Toussaint signed a trading treaty with the Americans, and on June 13, a secret treaty blocking France that stated, "No expedition shall be sent out against any of the possessions of…the United States of America." And that was not all. On June 26, Adams issued a Proclamation Regarding Commerce with St. Domingo, allowing U.S. trade to resume with the lands under Toussaint’s control. It referenced “the arrangements which have been made for the safety of commerce of the United States, and for the admission of American vessels into the island,” and opened the ports of Cape Francois and Port Republican. In October 1799, with the aid of American arms and ships, Toussaint defeated an insurrection (Pickering even instructed Navy Capt. Silas Talbot to give "protection to every part of the island under Toussaint's control”). Then Toussaint turned his forces against the remaining Spanish in Santo Domingo and defeated them. By May 1800, he held sway over the whole of Hispaniola. To take this into account, on May 9, 1800, Adams issued a second proclamation expanding American trade “to all ports and places on the said island of Hispaniola.” This was followed in September 1800 by a third Adams proclamation, setting up a procedure that all vessels engaged in the trade must have passports issued by Toussaint’s government and the U.S. consul.

This policy was not to last long, however. In March 1801, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson became president. He promptly reversed Adams' de-facto recognition of Toussaint's government and began to work towards a prohibition on American trade with Haiti. Moreover, he told Napoleon, against whose regime the rebellion was theoretically taking place, that if he wanted to crush Toussaint, America would help him. Napoleon wanted colonists to return France's Caribbean territories to their earlier profitability as plantation colonies. So while denying he was trying to reinstate slavery, Napoleon sent General Leclerc to regain French control of the island in 1802. He had some initial success and managed to kidnap Toussaint, who died in captivity. One of Toussaint's chief lieutenants, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, led the continuing black uprising, and in 1804 declared Haiti independent.

Meanwhile, to avoid a contagion of ideas, President Jefferson got Congress to enact legislation to ban from the U.S. all African slaves who had witnessed the Haitian Revolution or who had made a stopover in Haiti. In 1805, he instituted restrictions on trade with Haiti. These proved ineffective, as many vessels evaded the restrictions and continued to carry on the profitable sugar trade. The French foreign minister, Talleyrand, complained to the U.S. minister to France in August, that despite Jefferson's policies to the contrary, American ships from the northern states were leaving from Philadelphia or Boston, cleared for shipment to the English colonies, and then traveling on to the ports of Haiti. He expressed his opinion that the American government was not doing enough to stop this trade. Going farther, in January 1806, General Turreau, the French minister to the U.S., wrote Secretary of State James Madison that "…trade with Saint Domingue undermines the rule of law."

The Jefferson administration determined to stop trade with black Haiti once and for all, and asked Congress to pass a law prohibiting it. Any such law would, of course, abrogate the three Adams proclamations authorizing the trade. Likely to have the texts of the proclamations at hand when drafting the new prohibition, James Madison was asked for certified copies of them, which he provided.

Document Signed, 7 pages, Washington, February 20, 1806, certifying “that the writing on the three annexed sheets of paper has been compared with the three several proclamations whereof it purports to be copies and is found to agree therewith exactly.” Madison attached copies of the Adams proclamations. The State Department seal and blue tie-ribbons are still present on these papers, which represent an important instance of the impact of slavery on U.S. policy. By the end of the year, Congress banned trade with Haiti, joining the French and Spanish boycotts. These embargos crippled the Haitian economy, and helped prevent the new black nation from making a success of its independence.