Haiti and the United States: Fear, Trade and Recognition

The United States had a complicated relationship with revolutionary Haiti. Merchants traded actively with Saint-Domingue, and President John Adams's administration supported Toussaint Louverture in 1799, partly during an undeclared naval war with France. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, took a more hostile approach after 1801, and in 1806 Congress banned trade with Haiti.

Southern slaveholders feared that Haiti's example would inspire revolts; news of it circulated among enslaved and free Black Americans, and some later rebels, such as Denmark Vesey in 1822, were said to have looked to Haiti. The United States recognized Haiti only in 1862, during the Civil War, when Southern members had left Congress. This comparison is revealing: the first two independent nations in the Americas shared a revolutionary origin, but slavery divided them for nearly sixty years.