Jefferson and the Haitian Revolution
* What: The Haitian Revolution against slavery and French rule and later British and Spanish invasions, the most successful though costly slave revolt in history. Jefferson, once a strong critic of slavery who ended the slave trade into the US, took part in efforts to isolate Haiti, insuring its long history of future poverty.
* The Body Count: 170,000 Haitians, or 40% of the entire island population. Napoleon’s armies also suffered heavy losses, 52,000 deaths from battle and disease. British and Spanish armies also lost many. But French, British, and Spanish losses were from ordinary warfare. Some atrocities against French civilians were aberrations, with only a small number of Haitians taking part.(See Section Eleven.) Haitian armies went on to successfully occupy the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo for several decades.
* Who Also Gets the Blame:
* French plantation owners on Haiti had the most brutal plantation system anywhere in the Americas. French slave owners created racial divisions between Blacks, Mulattes (mixed ancestry), and whites or Blancs. French plantation owners removed most wealth from Haiti after losing. Further guaranteeing Haitian poverty, plantation owners successfully pressured the French government to force the payment of more than ten times the value of Haiti’s entire annual revenue as compensation for lost slaves and plantations, and also as a bribe to not invade again.
* The French government also successfully diplomatically and economically isolated Haiti. Haiti took 122 years to pay off the debt and blackmail, finally done in 1947. Forced to borrow from French banks at high rates to finance the payoff, over 80% of Haitian government revenue went to paying French debts, guaranteeing no economic development for the first six generations. French officials created myths of Haitian brutality based on race, claiming Haitians were not only inferior but savage and even demonic.
* Napoleon tried to reinstate slavery after the French Revolution government had earlier set all Haitian slaves free. He sent a huge army in a disastrous attempt to reconquer Haiti. Napoleon's strategy was one of deliberate extermination of all Haitian adult males. In addition to Haitian deaths, Napoleon's great miscalculation cost him 52,000 troops and over a dozen French generals killed by battle and disease.
* British and Spanish invaders seeking temporary political advantage against the French worsened Haitian famine and disease.
* Some Haitian generals and soldiers betrayed the Haitian Revolution for the money, power, or estates given by the French. For individual Blacks to take the side of French slave owners was not unusual. Free Black and mixed blood Creole militias had helped crush slave revolts before.
* What makes Jefferson's actions on Haiti more appalling was that he spent much of his earlier life fighting, successfully, to end or limit slavery. In 1778, in the Virginia Congress he led efforts to successfully ban importing slaves into Virginia. In 1784, he proposed an ordinance to ban all slavery in US territories, all lands that were not part of the original thirteen states. The ordinance failed by a single vote. The Northwest Ordinance, influenced by his bill, passed a year later and three years after banned all slavery in new states above the Ohio River, what would become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In 1806 Jefferson proposed and passed a ban on the US international slave trade. It was now a crime to import slaves or for US citizens or ships to take part in the international slave trade, though slave trading inside the US was still legal.
* But starting in the mid-1780s, Jefferson's position on slavery began to change. Many historians argue his relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings was the cause. Jefferson had just become a widow. His new “mistress” Hemmings was also half-sister to his late wife. Jefferson's father-in-law was Hemmings' father.
* Except for the 1807 law, after taking up with Hemmings, Jefferson made no further moves to end or limit slavery. In fact, he increasingly seemed to fear emancipation. An old friend and ally, Polish nobleman Tadeusz Kosciusko, gave Jefferson money, instructing him to buy slaves and free them after Kosciusko's death. Jefferson never carried out his friend's wishes.
* Jefferson's hostility to Haiti began as Secretary of State to George Washington. Washington and Jefferson sent $40,000 in aid and 1,000 weapons to help put down the Haitian Revolution. As president, Jefferson loaned another $300,000 to aid the French slave owners on the island. (In today's terms, multiply that money by perhaps fifty.) Publicly, the US was neutral, though weapons from US business and citizens (but not the government) continued to aid French slave masters.
* The French campaign against Haitian rebels was incredibly brutal. Napoleon raged that he would “not leave an epaulette on the shoulders of a single nigger in the colony.” Napoleon's lead general and brother-in-law Charles Leclerc agreed. “All the niggers, when they see an army, will lay down their arms. They will be only too happy that we pardon them.”
* Leclerc and other French generals ordered mass drownings, hangings, slaves burned alive, or buried up to the neck while being eaten alive by insects. Many slaves were literally ripped apart by the 1,500 imported hunting dogs the army brought. All these tactics were designed to either exterminate all Haitian slaves so the colony could then be repopulated by new ones, or terrify the survivors into submission. This fits the definition of genocide.
* But Jefferson would take the side of slave owners against slaves for virtually the rest of his life. In 1802 his worst fear came true. There was a public scandal when journalist James Callendar accused Jefferson of having a slave concubine. Jefferson never responded to the accusation. But where his old writings criticized slavery, his new writings began to describe Blacks as inferior, even comparing them to apes.
* Jefferson kept reassuring slave owners, nervous about the Haitian Revolution, by his actions. First he discouraged free Blacks from immigrating to Haiti. Working with Napoleon, the US government successfully isolated Haiti, both economically and diplomatically, from the rest of the world. Above all, Jefferson successfully pushed for Congress to deny diplomatic recognition to Haiti. Haiti was not recognized by the US until 1862, by Lincoln.
* Such isolation, combined with French demands to be bribed not to invade again, almost guaranteed Haiti would remain as poor as it is today. American elites were not done with Haiti yet though. The US invaded in 1891, and then invaded again in 1914, conquering and holding the country until 1934, for twenty years. The US government collected money from poor Haitians to continue to pay the French.
* Towards the end of the twentieth century, the US controlled World Bank restructured the Haitian economy to benefit foreign investment, driving most Haitian farmers off their lands. The GW Bush administration carried out a final coup, against Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Aristide was the first democratically elected Haitian president in generations, but many US conservatives found him “radical.” Clinton later apologized for US policy harming Haitian farmers. The GW Bush administration still denies they overthrew Aristide.
* There are others to blame for Haitian misery. The incredible violence needed to defeat the French created a tradition of military leaders’ absolute control of the nation. One dictator after another looted an already poor Haiti. But most blame for Haiti's early woes goes to the French, especially the genocide carried out by Napoleon's army. Jefferson's guilt is not only turning a blind eye to these atrocities but of then working with the French to (unsuccessfully) avoid questions about his private life.