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

by Gordon S. Brown

Overview

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 Clause: 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.

During a thirty-five-year Foreign Service career, Gordon S. Brown served mainly in the Middle East and North Africa including assignments as General Norman Schwarzkopf's political advisor in the first Gulf War and ambassador to Mauritania. Since his retirement, he has written Coalition, Coercion, and Compromise on the diplomacy of the first Gulf War and The Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604736977
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	12/22/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

During a thirty-five-year Foreign Service career, Gordon S. Brown served mainly in the Middle East and North Africa including assignments as General Norman Schwarzkopf's political advisor in the first Gulf War and ambassador to Mauritania. Since his retirement, he has written Coalition, Coercion, and Compromise on the diplomacy of the first Gulf War and The Norman Conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	vii
	Preface	ix
	Introduction	3
	July 1790	8
	St. Domingue	23
	White Cockade, Red Cockade	45
	The Cost of Neutrality	66
	Trouble with Britain	89
	Trouble with France	106
	Toussaint's Clause	126
	Creating a Quarantine	144
	The St. Domingo Station	162
	Jefferson Equivocates	179
	The Leclerc Expedition	199
	St. Domingo and Louisiana	213
	A Risky Trade	229
	The Clearance Act Debate	245
	The Trade Suspended	263
	Embargo and Neglect	279
	Epilogue	292
	Notes	296
	Bibliography	310
	Index	317