The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States by Dillon Elizabeth Maddock; Drexler Michael;

Author:Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock; Drexler, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2019-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

As the text itself admitted, the source here was a 1795 comic romance, Pigault-Lebrun’s Mon Oncle Thomas.11 Now the continuum of anti-Jacobin satire is extended to include the U.S. context, with Uncle Thomas referring to Jefferson, as is made clear by the reference to Gallatin and the well-known citation (“all Republicans, all Federalists”) from the 1801 inaugural address. Uncle Thomas’s constitution becomes a weapon of irrationality and political domination, deliberately denying the social or ethnographic realities of commercial society. Magistrates imply conflicts—so let us do away with magistrates.

What is perhaps most notable about this satire, though, is how close it veers to the St. Domingue text. Toussaint’s Constitution might fit the imperious model presented here, from the above dictation to the final reference to the plebeian, perhaps even racialized, figure of the shoe-black—a seeming commentary on the ex-slave-turned-general. But the Gazette’s treatment of the Caribbean constitution is consistently positive, revealing several important contrasts. Most obviously, Jeffersonian rule implies a potentially radical constitutional hermeneutic whereby political principles ignore or dominate social realities, thereby reflecting the dangerously idealistic character of the ruler. But Toussaint’s Constitution seems to be read very differently, as a properly Federalist text well adapted to existing conditions and emergencies, rather than to the promotion of abstract principles. Of course, such a reading necessitates the repression of Article 3: “Slaves are not permitted in this territory; servitude is forever abolished—All men born here, live and die freemen and Frenchmen.” But perhaps as importantly, it necessitated the repression of Toussaint’s race as a factor, and a transference of his blackness to Jefferson. Both gestures—deradicalization and reracialization—were necessary for the celebration of Toussaint as counter-revolutionary, as Larry Tise observes. In Tise’s view, the Federalists turned to Toussaint as an antidote for both the new administration’s republican enthusiasm and the Federalist losses in 1800.12 Conceived as a counter-revolutionary, Toussaint had successfully reinstituted the rights of property, established a state religion, and re-elevated economic elites: he instated himself as ruler for life with the right to appoint his successor. This is the Toussaint of “The Character of the Celebrated Black General,” in which the imperative “to restore the planters, and revive the trade” displaces Tous-saint’s race, mentioned only in the title and the first paragraph.

We may contrast this configuration with that implicit in the Democratic-Republican press. Few Toussaint texts appeared in those papers, but they were printed in the national partisan journals, like William Duane’s Aurora General Advertiser. An early opponent of the Toussaint Clause, Duane remained contemptuous of Toussaint, so much so that the Aurora was one of the few papers to dedicate space for what might today be called an editorial.13 His response to the promulgation of the constitution began with a principled objection to its anti-republican articles, but ended with a race-conscious warning to his compatriots in the southern states: “We are among those who deny the competency and question the legality of the authorities assumed by the extravagant organization which has lately been set up in St. Domingo,” Duane wrote, launching an attack on Toussaint’s character and executive authority.

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