Toussaint Louverture - Madison Bell [93]
The possibility of independence for Saint Domingue aroused violently mixed feelings in the American Congress, with the case against it most strongly stated by Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania:
Suppose that island, with its present population, under present circumstances, should become an independent state. What is this population? It is known to consist, almost entirely, of slaves just emancipated, of men who received their first education under the lash of the whip, and who have been initiated to liberty only by that series of rapine, pillage, and massacre that have laid waste to that island in blood. Of men, who, if left to themselves, if altogether independent, are by no means likely to apply themselves to peaceable cultivation of the country, but will try to continue to live, as heretofore, by plunder and depredations. No man wishes more than I do to see an abolition of slavery, when it can be properly effected, but no man would be more unwilling than I to constitute a whole nation of freed slaves, who had arrived to the age of thirty years, and thus to throw so many wild tigers on society.53
To the anxiety that an independent Saint Domingue would spread slave rebellion across the Caribbean and into the southern United States was added the fear that such a state would become a base for pirates—like the pirates who threatened American shipping along the Barbary Coast (often with the covert encouragement of the British), but much, much closer to home. That French Saint Domingue had to all intents and purposes been founded by pirates had by no means been forgotten.
However, the declared subject of the congressional debate was not Saint Domingue's independence but the possibility of renewing trade relations, which had been lucrative and important for American merchantmen for many years. The embargo against trade with France was to be renewed—but exceptions could be made “either with respect to the French Republic, so to any island, port, or place, belonging to the said Republic, with which a commercial intercourse may safely be renewed.'54 It was so well understood that Saint Domingue was the island in question that the rider was commonly called “Toussaint's Clause.” But free trade with Toussaint's Saint Domingue had its own set of risks, at least for the slaveholding south of the United States. Thomas Jefferson, marginalized in the Adams administration, fretted about that: “We may expect therefore black crews&supercargoes&missionaries thence into the southern states … If this combustion can be introduced among us under any veil whatsoever, we have to fear it.”55
Despite all such reservations, the bill was passed, and soon after-ward the USS Constellation captured the French L'Insurgente in Caribbean waters. A naval war between the two countries was clearly under way, for all it had not been officially declared. In that context, Toussaints negotiations with the United States had to be interpreted by the French Directory as treating with the enemy, though the Directory said nothing about it for the moment (for fear that Toussaint would declare the colony independent). Bunel returned to Le Cap to report the success of his mission, accompanied by Jacob Mayer and a new American envoy, Edward Stevens—and a cargo of supplies to launch the new trade agreement. Idlinger, the French accountant called by cynics “Toussaints creature,'56 was there to receive them, and Maitland's emissary, Colonel Harcourt, sailed into Le Cap at the same time. Not long after, Maitland arrived in person to take part in the conference with Toussaint which confirmed