The politics of "French negroes" in the United States

Historical Reflections

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 103-120

  White, Ashli ^a  

^a Columbia University ^*

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EID: 60949962177     PISSN: 03157997     EISSN: 19392419     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (96)

1. On the history of the Haitian Revolution, see Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville, 1990)
2. David Gaspar and David Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington, 1997)
3. David Geggus, Slavery, War, and Revolution: The British Occupation of Saint Domingue, 1793-1798 (New York, 1982)
4. C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York, 1938)
5. The most eloquent investigation of this argument comes from Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, 1995)
6. Gary Nash, "Reverberations of Haiti in the American North: Black Saint Dominguans in Philadelphia," Explorations in Early American Culture: A Special Supplemental Issue of Pennsylvania History 65 (1998): 45
7. On Saint Dominguan refugees in the United States in the 1790s, see Winston C. Babb, "French Refugees from Saint Domingue to the Southern United States, 1791-1810," (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1954)
8. Susan Branson and Leslie Patrick, "Étrangers dans un pays étrange: Saint Domingan Refugees of Color in Philadelphia" in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution
9. Frances Sergeant Childs, French Refugee Life in the United States, 1790-1800: An American Chapter of the French Revolution (Baltimore, 1940)
10. R. Darrell Meadows, "Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community, 1789-1809," French Historical Studies 23 (2000)
11. Morales, "The Hispaniola Diaspora"
12. Nash, "Reverberations"
13. and JosephG. Rosengarten, French Colonists and Exiles in the United States (Philadelphia, 1907)
14. The Universal Asylum, and Columbian Magazine (Philadelphia: from the press of M. Carey, September 1792), p. 214
15. Slaveowners in Cuba employed similar arguments to differentiate Cuban from Saint Dominguan slavery. See Matt Childs, "A Black French General Arrived to Conquer the Island: Images of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba's 1812 Aponte Rebellion" in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, ed. David P. Geggus (Columbia, 2001)
16. It was even held by some French observers. As the exile Médéric-Louis-Elie Moreau de St. Méry complained in his journal, "Since the misfortunes of the French colonies, it has been the habit in France to praise the attitude of the United States toward slaves." Kenneth Roberts and Anna M. Roberts, trans. and ed., Moreau de St. Méry's American Journey [1793-17981 (New York, 1947), p. 303
17. See, for example, Moreau de St. Méry, Character of the Creoles of St. Domingo," The American Museum (November, 1789), p. 360
18. Joseph La Vallée, "The negro equalled by few Europeans," The American Museum (April 1791), 21 In
19. and [Edward Darlington], Reflections on Slavery; with Recent Evidence of its Inhumanity. Occasioned by the Melancholy Death of Romain, a French Negro (Philadelphia: printed for the author by R. Cochran, 1803)
20. Pennsylvania Gazette, 9 November 1791
21. Columbian Centinel (Boston), 14 August 1793
22. Fifteen years earlier in Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson had predicted that emancipation would lead to "the extermination of the one or the other race," and to Tucker, Saint Domingue proved the sagacity of Jefferson's prophecy. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York, 1999), Query XIV, p. 145
23. For more about Jefferson's views on the aftermath of abolition, see Peter S. Onuf, "To Declare Them a Free and Independent People': Race, Slavery, and National Identity in Jefferson's Thought," Journal of the Early Republic 18 (1998): 1-46
24. St. George Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery: with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it, in the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: printed for Mathew Carey, 1796), pp. 88, 77, 68, 95-6
25. Alfred Hunt, Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean (Baton Rouge, 1988), p. 2
26. Thomas D. Morris, Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619-1860 (Chapel Hill, 1996), p. 379
27. Pennsylvania Gazette, 16 May 1792
28. Reported in Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser, 5 July 1792, but account dated from May
29. For an excellent treatment of the situation of slaves in Jamaica during the Haitian Revolution, see David Geggus, "The Enigma of Jamaica in the 1790s: New Light on the Causes of Slave Rebellions," William and Mary Quarterly 44 (1987): 274-99
30. On Martinique; see Pennsylvania Gazette, 27 January 1796
31. on Cuba see José Morales, "The Hispaniola Diaspora, 1791 -1850: Puerto Rico, Cuba, Louisiana, and other Host Societies" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1986), p. 54
32. Virginia Chronicle (Norfolk), 19 October 1793
33. For more on the Secret Keeper Plot see Robert Alderson, "Charleston's Rumored Slave Revolt of 1793" in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World
34. Douglas Egerton, "The Tricolor in Black and White: The French Revolution in Gabriel's Virginia" in Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities, ed. Doris Y. Kadish (Athens, GA, 2000), pp. 96-8
35. Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, 1991), pp. 230-1
36. James Sidbury, "Saint Domingue in Virginia: Ideology, Local Meanings, and Resistance to Slavery, 1790-1800,"The Journal of Southern History 63 (1997): 531-52
37. Boston Gazette, 11 November 1793
38. Pennsylvania Gazette, 13 December 1797
39. for more detail on the Charleston plots, see George D. Terry, "A Study of the Impact of the French Revolution and the Insurrections in Saint-Domingue upon South Carolina: 1790-1805" (M.A. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1973), pp. 46-131
40. Quoted in Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810 (Athens, GA, 1991), p. 65
41. Columbian Herald (Charleston), 19 October 1793
42. City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston), 9 October 1793
43. Davis, The Problem of Slavery, pp. 120-1
44. Frey, p. 232
45. Hunt, p. 109
46. Nash, Forging Freedom, p. 175
47. Thompson Westcott, A History of Philadelphia, from the time of the first settlements on the Delaware to the consolidation of the city and districts in 1854 Vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1886), p. 637
48. City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston), 12 May 1794
49. Columbian Herald (Charleston), 8 September 1794
50. Mary Hassal (Leonora Sansay), Secret History; or, the Horrors of St. Domingo, in a Series of Letters, Written by a Lady at Cape François, to Colonel Burr, Late Vice-President of the United States, Principally during the Command of General Rochambeau (Philadelphia; 1808)
51. In slaveholding areas the plea for allowing "French negroes" to enter proved persuasive; for instance, the Norfolk police admitted that "from motives of humanity," they had suspended enforcement of state laws that prohibited the entry of slaves and freemen from other areas. Scores of advertisements for the services and sometimes sale of "French negroes" also attest to the flexibility of the laws' enforcement. Tommy L. Bogger, Free Blacks inNorfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860: The Darker Side of Freedom (Charlottesville, 1997), p. 27
52. Quoted in James Sidbury, Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 129
53. On the Frenchmen involved in the plot, see Douglas R. Egerton, Gabriel's Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800 and 1802 (Chapel Hill, 1993), pp. 182-5
54. On U.S. trade with Saint Domingue, see Donald Hickey, "America's Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791-1806," Journal of the Early Republic 2 (1982): 362-3
55. On the dynamics between greed and fear of slave insurrection, see David Brion Davis, "Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions" in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution
56. W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, 1997), p. 145
57. For example, see ibid
58. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000)
59. Julius Scott, "A Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution" (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1986)
60. and Sidbury, "Saint Domingue in Virginia."
61. Bolster, p. 147
62. Pennsylvania Gazette, 26 March 1794
63. Pageot, General of the Brigade, to Toussaint Louverture, 19 February 1796. Copied in the correspondence of Stephen Girard. Stephen Girard Papers, Microfilm collection, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA
64. During the Leclerc expedition to recapture Saint Domingue in the early 1800s, the French chargé d'affaires, Louis A. Pichon, repeatedly complained that Boston merchants supplied the black armies in Saint Domingue with arms, ammunition and provisions. Hickey, pp. 365, 367
65. Matthewson, "Jefferson and Haiti," The Journal of Southern History 61 (1995): 228
66. Hunt, p. 87
67. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800 (New York, 1993), pp. 645-6
68. Quoted in Elkins and McKitrick, p. 654
69. For more on the American diplomacy with Saint Domingue during the Adams administration, see Rayford Logan, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776-1891 (Chapel Hill, 1941), chapter 3
70. Mats Lundahl, "Toussaint L'Ouverture and the War Economy of Saint-Domingue, 1796-1802," Slavery and Abolition 6 (1985): 122-38
71. and "Letters of Toussaint Louverture and of Edward Stevens, 1798-1800," (in Documents) American Historical Review 16 (1910): 64-101
72. Elkins and McKitrick, p. 659
73. David Brion Davis, Revolutions: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Liberations (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 25-6
74. See, for example, the Baltimore Daily Intelligencer, 2 April 1794
75. Fick, pp. 22, 25
76. For example, see Gazette française et americaine (New York), 16 September and 30 October 1795 [slaves from the Congo nation]; and 1 January 1796 Islave from Mozonbie]
77. Baltimore Daily Intelligencer, 3 December 1793 [slave from nation Nago]
78. Opinion about the "rebelliousness" and alliances of free people of color was also influenced by negative portrayals in the press. An article from 1792 claimed that the "mulattoes of St. Domingo" were descended from greedy, shameless white men who, having "no immediate objects of gratification presented, but the enslaved African female," peopled "the island with a progeny, who were neither European nor African, and felt no attachment to either." While noting that some fathers sponsored the education of their illegitimate offspring, the author warned that schooling bred discontent among the gens de couleur with their subordinate social position. He then argued that their aspirations led to upheaval in Saint Domingue: "they allied themselves to the blacks, whom they heretofore held in contempt, and have carried fire and sword through the territories of the white inhabitants." Anonymous, The American Museum (July 1792), p. 39
79. F.X. Reuss, trans. and ed., "Baptismal Records from Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 22 (1911): 1-20
80. Reuss, "Marriage Registers for Holy Trinity Church, Philadelphia," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 24 (1913): 140-61
81. Reuss, "Marriage Registers for St. Joseph's Church," Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 20 (1909): 22-48
82. Reuss, "Sacramental Registers of St. Joseph's Church, Philadelphia, "Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 15-17 (1904-06), pp. 1-32, 53-68, 202-23, 289-313, 314-43, 322-47, 361-90, 454-75
83. Diane Balts Morrow, "Francophone Residents of Antebellum Baltimore and the Origins of the Oblate Sisters of Providence" in Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World, pp. 123, 125
84. Craig Wilder, In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City (New York, 2001), p. 91
85. Jonathan Prude, "To Look upon the 'Lower Sort': Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in America, 1750-1800," The Journal of American History 78 (1991): 146-7
86. Black Saint Dominguan men wore handkerchiefs in this manner as well. Freddie L. Parker, ed., Stealing a Little Freedom: Advertisements for Slave Runaways in North Carolina, 1791-1840 (New York, 1994), advertisement 493 from Herald of Freedom (Edenton, NC), 27 March 1799, p. 196
87. White, pp. 144-5
88. Draft of a letter by "Les Citoyens de couleur de Philadelphie à L'Assemblée Nationale," 1793. John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI. Although dated 1793, this letter - because of its reference to the abolition decree of February 1794 - might be later. There is no indication as to whether this letter was actually sent or who wrote it
89. Baltimore Evening Post, 18 September 1793
90. On cockades and who wore them, see Simon P. Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia, 1997), chapters 4 and 5
91. Quoted in Hunt, 73n
92. "Immediate Emancipation Illustrated," 1833. Print Collection. Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
93. Quoted in Hunt, p. 142
94. James Theodore Holly, "A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self-Government and Civilized Progress, as Demonstrated by Historical Events of the Haytian Revolution; and the Subsequent Acts of that People since their National Independence," (New Haven, 1857), pp.33, 40
95. Chris Dixon, African America and Haiti: Emigration and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, CT, 2000), pp. 26, 39-42
96. William Wells Brown, "St. Domingo: Its Revolutions and its Patriots. A lecture delivered before the Metropolitan Athenaeum, London, May 16, and at St. Thomas' Church, Philadelphia, December 20, 1854" (Boston, 1855), p. 38