“This wave of emigration, propelled by the warfare and consequent upheaval in the West Indian colony, resulted in the creation of a large francophone community in the City of Brotherly Love.”[1] The fleeing French West Indians with their African slaves to Philadelphia can be attributed partly to the class and racial diversity in Saint-Domingue which would be the very thing that intensified the massive revolt on the island. Race and class in Saint-Domingue became increasingly hostile and problematic as certain groups on the island grew more affluent and appeared to have become more powerful than others. Race and class also carved the West Indian islanders into the distinctive categories of grands blancs, petits blancs, gens de couleur libres (affrachis) and the African slave populations. Distinguishing these groups can become quite confusing, so we must begin by determining who was who in Saint-Domingue at the start of the revolution. Scholars of the Haitian Revolution tend to categorize Saint-Domingue’s class and race hierarchal stratification system differently.

Who’s Who in Saint Domingue

To gain an understanding of Saint-Domingue’s late seventeenth and early eighteenth century racial and class system of distinction, I reviewed the work of three scholars of the Haitian Revolution: C.L.R. James, Alfred N. Hunt, and Alex Dupuy. I saw that they each included the grands blancs, petits blancs, affranchis, and the African slaves as Saint-Domingue’s essential society. The first scholar, for example, C.L.R. James, in The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, describes the Saint-Domingue population as including the “big whites, small whites, free mulattoes and free blacks,” and, although not specifically mentioned in this categorization, but is known to have made up the next group are the African slaves. James explains the first group as the “big whites” which included the “great merchants, maritime bourgeoisie, and the wealthy planters.” The plantation managers and stewards of the absentee planters, along with the small lawyers, notaries, clerks, artisans, and grocers, James places in the second group, the petits blancs. However, he mentions that “over them both was the bureaucracy, composed almost entirely of Frenchmen from France, who governed the island.”[2] The bureaucracy made up the third group of the population. Imagining myself as a resident of the island, members of the bureaucracy would fall into the grands blancs category along with the maritime bourgeoisie, merchants, and wealthy planters. James points out that a great majority of the grands blancs and members of the bureaucracy were the Frenchmen that had been born in France. The “ultimate objective of French merchants, D’Auberteuil argued, was to become rich as quickly as possible, and then to withdraw their wealth from circulation.”[3] He goes on to reveal that the petits blancs population of the island was primarily island-born Frenchmen or Creoles. James’ fourth and final group that he describes is the “free mulatto and free black” population. James characterizes this group of wealthy free Africans and free mixed-race Saint-Dominguans as landowners and slaveholders. He says that this fragment of the Saint-Dominguan citizenry tended to be financially and intellectually stronger than the “small whites.”

A second scholar whose work, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean, that helped me to better decipher Saint-Domingue’s varied population and how this diversity of population, “in their practical effects, …..altered irrevocably the pattern of American commerce and the direction of American development,”[4] was Alfred N. Hunt. Hunt also discusses these four distinctive groups of the Saint-Dominguan population, only more concisely. The first group, he explains were the grand blancs who were the “notable officials” and the wealthy planters. In this case, the “notable officials” would also incorporate C.L.R. James’ members of the bureaucracy, merchants, and the maritime bourgeoisie. Next, are the overseers, artisans, and unskilled laborers that make up the petits blancs group. Here, Hunt excludes the small lawyers, notaries, and clerks that James had previously included. The third group that Hunt classifies is the free people of color or “the affranchis.” This group he assorts into what James calls the “free black and free mulatto” community. Distinctions here also become a bit perplexing because this group of free people of color were made up predominately of a mixed-race population of people of African and French descent as well as a smaller number of free people of color of pure African descent. Prior to the revolution, the affranchis, also referred to as gens de couleur libres, despite having affluence, property, and slaves, were not considered French citizens and had no political and legal rights or social standing in the colony. “The French coloreds deeply resented the indignities and discriminations designed to reduce them to an under-caste. And in actuality, it was this issue of rights and representation for free coloreds that opened the way for slaves to free themselves.”[5] After the start of the revolution, they would be granted full citizenship and the rights of Frenchmen. The fourth and final group that Hunt mentions is the African slave population that was obligated to both the grands blancs and petits blancs as well as the free people of color.

Alex Dupuy was the third scholar who brought these varied classifications of race and class into brighter perspective. In his essay, “Class, Race, and Nation: Unresolved Contradictions of the Saint Domingue Revolution,” Dupuy also breaks down the Saint-Dominguan population’s four groups, only he provides more extensive details. He places at the top of this race and class hierarchy the white French absentee planters, merchant bourgeoisie, colonial administrators, and Creole planters as the grands blancs or “large whites.” The Creole planters are the added group to the grands blancs population. Hunt distinguished that “a Creole was a white Frenchmen born in the Western Hemisphere” and that “the Creole was nevertheless regarded as slightly inferior to the native-born Frenchman.”[6] Instead of placing the petits blancs as the second group, Dupuy places the affranchis and the free people of color directly beneath the grands blancs and labels them the “middle class.” This categorization seems more accurate, in terms of class distinctions, since this group although of mixed-race or black, was wealthier and more educated than their rival petits blancs. Additionally, Dupuy includes the physicians, lawyers, retail merchants, colonial military officers, administrators, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and artisans, all in this middle class.

Dupuy’s third category is the petits blancs who he also identifies as “petty whites.” He divides the petty whites into the middle class and the working class. He says that white skilled and unskilled workers were comprised of the sailors, storekeepers, apprentice, coachmen, and dockworkers to make up the middle and working class petits blancs community. This description seems realistic, in that, it provides us with a more detailed breakdown of the class division among the petty whites. This helps to not only explain the agitation within the Saint-Dominguan community between the whites and the free people of color, but also the strife between the grands blancs and the petits blancs. It also reminds us that the island’s class stratification system included mixed-race people, blacks and whites in its middle class.

Dupuy’s fourth group also contains Saint-Domingue’s almost 500,000 African slave population who, in essence, accumulated the wealth and created status for the grands blancs, middle class people of color, and petits blancs as well as the Frenchmen and women of the motherland. This would be the group that no one on the island paid much attention to and the portion of the population that would be the least contentious, yet the most powerful during the revolution.[7] “For decades in St. Domingue, in Louisiana, and other Caribbean colonies, French and Spanish royal officials had nurtured the three-tiered societies of whites, free mulattoes, and slaves, playing each group off the others as a strategy to strengthen their own imperial authority.”[8] It is important that students understand how residents of Saint-Domingue were labelled because it will help them to better comprehend how this division of race and class helped trigger revolution.

The Small revolutions that Led to the Big Revolution

There were many small revolutions that were occurring in Saint-Domingue that ultimately led to the big revolution. These small revolutions did not just include the lesser rebellions that literally occurred on the island, but the many discrepancies among the already divisive population. One of the divisive issues and possibly the most important, that would help to spark the fire on the island was the excessive envy the petty whites had for the free people of color, who by the 1750s and 1760s had accumulated an enormous amount of wealth during the coffee revolution when they “retreated into the interior and hilly areas of the colony where they were able to acquire or take possession of unclaimed lands to cultivate coffee and other crops….. so, that by 1791…..they owned up to one-third of the productive properties and one-fourth of the slaves of the colony, thereby making them a significant bloc of property owners.”[9] The poor whites, already mistreated and disrespected by the rich whites, resented that the free people of color were in a better economic situation than they were and did not want another class of people over them.

Subsequently, “from 1791 through 1793 the Haitian Revolution had begun not as a slave uprising but as a conflict between propertied slaveholding whites and propertied, slaveholding mulattoes.”[10] It was because their mixed-race rivals had been part black, were acquiring more property, more education, were becoming wealthier and were consistently making demands for equal rights that “by the late 176os, the affranchis were subject to discriminatory laws that not only kept them out of the elite positions and professions but also excluded them from being considered French citizens by white society.[11]” Some of this “malicious legislation” put into place by the whites, while adding increasingly to the number of mulattoes….. excluded [them] from the naval and military departments, from the practice of law, medicine, and divinity, and all public offices or places of trust. No mulatto….whatever his number of white parts, was not allowed to assume the name of his white father. Between 1758 and the revolution the persecutions mounted. The mulattoes were forbidden to wear swords and sabres and European dress. They were forbidden to buy ammunition. They were forbidden to meet together “on the pretext” of weddings, feasts and dances. They were forbidden to stay in France. They were forbidden to play European games. The priests were forbidden to draw up any documents for them. In 1781…..they were forbidden to take the titles of Monsieur or Madame. The only privilege the whites allowed them was the privilege of lending white men money.[12]

The free mixed-race population had become a formidable force on the colony, hence much of the contemptible legal measures put into place to subjugate them was largely the result of their embodiment as “a class that applied pressure against white discrimination based on color instead of legal and economic status”[13] giving them the ability to send “representatives to Paris in 1780 to ensure that the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” included them as well.”[14]

There were also several issues that separated the planters, merchants, and the metropolis. One was the royal decrees that had been passed in the 1780s in France as measures to improve the treatment of the African slaves. French administrators, for decades, had been aware of the mistreatment of the slave population. Their mistreatment had been so horrendous that they were unable to maintain the colony’s slave population through natural reproduction and had to be taken regularly from Africa to continue this forced labor for Saint-Domingue’s plantation economy.[15] The decrees to be implemented would also provide reforms of the Code Noir officially passed in 1685, although never complied to. Planters and merchants, alike, went into an uproar. They felt disrespected since the French administrators had created legislation without including the island’s white population. They now demanded to be self-governed. In fact, the “petits blancs lobbied the National Assembly for a voice in colonial governance.”[16]

Aside from the class division within the Saint-Dominguan community and royal decrees from France, “another bone of contention between planters and French officials was the economic policies of the royal government”[17] which resulted in “the conflict between merchants and planters over the prices paid for colonial goods, as well as the ability to buy cheap and sell dear.”[18] Dupuy asserts that the royal administrators and merchant bourgeoisie held a monopoly on trade and commerce as far back as the late 17^th century. This became a considerable problem for the smaller planters because according to Mims, Dupuy explains that “after the dissolution of the West Indies Company in 1674, the entire French commerce with the colonies was taken over by private merchant companies, which now possessed the same trade and reexport privileges, tax exemptions, and free duties on exports as the national monopolies,”[19] all at the expense of the planters.

The royal government and merchant bourgeoisie’s monopoly or the exclusif, as they were more commonly known, was implemented with the hopes that “French ships would buy slaves in French ports in Africa, bring them to French colonies in the Caribbean, and bring back plantation commodities to Europe to be sold by French merchants.”[20] This ideology, that totally disenfranchised Africa and Africans as well as the small planters, could have been successful had all parties involved shared in the financial benefits. In actuality, the French ships were not able to deliver significant amounts of goods or Africans, merchants paid less than demanded for colonial products, and trade was prohibited, due to the exclusif, with neighboring colonies, for instance, Jamaica and Cuba. This infuriated local planters of Saint-Domingue because they were not able to make an adequate profit and as “individual merchants sought state protection from foreign competition and state regulations for favorable terms of trade, they also demanded the freedom to engage in trade.”[21] Dupuy also states that Pares indicated that the “colonial settlers and planters also complained bitterly against the national monopolies, and rose again and again with the cry of “no companies.”[22] French merchants simply had too much power over the planters. Consequently, “the financial control that the merchant bourgeoisie exercised over the colonial planters enabled the merchants to dominate the colonial market and directly influence the productive activities of the planters.”[23] This would serve as the other basis that invariably caused acrimonious disputes between the two groups leading up to the revolution.

Race and class separations, the free people of color persistently demanding equal rights and justice, and the unfair trading practices on behalf of the French merchants resulted in a series of world changing events. These would include, first, Jacques Pierre-Brissot and other Girondists forming the Societie des Amis des Noirs in 1788 and their applying pressure to the French government to abolish slavery. Secondly, The Declaration of the Rights of Man are laid out in 1789. Thirdly, the 1789 outbreak of the French Revolution. “For two years the enslaved mainly kept a low profile. They watched as tensions mounted between whites and free coloreds, and they saw the divisions within the white population grow deeply as the French Revolution became more radical.”[24] This would be thing that the slave population would capitalize on when they began organizing en masse for their revolution.

These three episodes established the foundation for the aftermath that would follow. “In August 1791, slaves on the sugar plantations in the north of the colony launched the largest slave revolt in history.”[25] “The French Assembly had granted political rights to the free people of color in 1792.”[26] This concession made by the Girondists was “in response to the emergency created by slave revolt and the doubtful loyalty of many colonial whites.”[27] To solidify positions and gain support, revolutionary commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel, along with the black general, Toussaint Louverture, issued emancipation decrees in August 1793 granting freed slaves full citizenship. However, the National Convention in Paris issued the decree of 16 Pluvose An II (February 4, 1794) which essentially abolished slavery in France and in its French colonies.[28]

So, What Was the Impact on Philadelphia?

Many white French Saint-Dominguan refugees came to the city of Philadelphia to escape the civil war in their French colony of Saint Domingue. However, it seems odd that so many of the slaveholding colonists would choose Philadelphia as a city of refuge. After all, 18^th century Philadelphia in 1791 “was a free city in a free state and the center of an anti-slavery movement”[29] and “the site of the national capital, as well as the cultural and economic center of the United States.”[30] Many left their homes abruptly and with very little of their possessions. Some left the colony in response to aid offered from nearby. For instance, “after hearing about the destruction of Cap Francais in the summer of 1793, Philadelphia merchant Stephen Girard wrote to associates in Le Cap, offering them passage to the United States.”[31] This offer most likely was the result of Stephen Girard, a transplanted Frenchman, who had once lived in Saint Domingue, serving as Philadelphia’s most important connection to the sugar- and coffee-rich French colony (Nash, 1998:46).

With the assistance of passage and the charitable benevolence of the Philadelphia community, white French Saint-Dominguans came to enjoy their stay in Philadelphia, some as a consequence of the French Revolution. By 1792, there had already been about 600 emigres to reach the ports of Philadelphia. However, the mass exodus of French West Indians and their African slaves arriving in Philadelphia, occurred in the summer of 1793 when the crisis of June 20, 1793 erupted in Cap Francais (Nash, 1998:45). Many would seek asylum in Philadelphia because they knew of an existing French population of fellow Frenchmen who already resided in the city. John Davies discusses the findings of Frances Sergeant Childs where she reveals that many white refugees settled with other French-speaking exiles along Second, Third, and Fourth streets, from Front Street out to Eighth Street. They often lodged in boarding houses, which placed them in close proximity to the French consulate and Roman Catholic churches, such as St. Joseph’s, on Willings Alley just off Fourth Street, and St. Mary’s, at Fourth between Locust and Spruce.[32]

Upon their arrival, the French refugees met established French societies that would be of economic, social, and political significance to their well-being and quality of life in the city that had been formed by fellow Saint Dominguans. Some of these organizations would include the Societe Francaise de Bienfaisance de Philadelphie, the Societe de la Liberte et de l’Egalite, the Societe des Grivois and LaParfaite-Unis to name a few (Lundy, 2006:84). These organizations were created for the sole purposes of providing financial and legal aid to as well as establishing a French social community for white Saint Domiguan refugees in Philadelphia. In addition to their institutions was their bilingual French-American Philadelphia newspaper, L’Etoile Americaine. This paper not only carried French news, but also advertisements of runaway French slaves (Nash, 1998: 57).

The largest impact would come in the form of the dialogue that emerged over the status of the enslaved Africans that accompanied the white French refugees. Despite the National Convention in Paris abolishing slavery in its French colonies in February 1794, French colonists felt they were not obligated to comply with French law. Although, Pennsylvania had passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1780, these French refugees continued to argue that they were exempt from the French decrees that had freed all French slaves because they were refugees in a neutral country and to make their point clear, they had petitioned the Pennsylvania legislature for relief from the law (Nash, 1998: 54). The French refugees, in essence, sought to maintain slavery in Philadelphia. To counterattack their claim was the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society (PAS) who would also pay close attention to the activities of white Saint Dominguans. At any rate, they found a legal loophole that allowed them to circumvent the law and keep their African slaves.

Although legally released from slavery after six months from when an owner establishes residence, the law also allowed slaveholders to immediately sign their former enslaved blacks to lengthy periods of indenture. In this manner, French colonists could retain the labor of their human property until they were 28 years old or, if they were older than 21, for seven years.[33]

The white French refugees knew their way around Pennsylvania law and they knew that the “free city” of Philadelphia, in a very real sense, was not truly free for people of African descent. In this way, there presence negatively impacted Pennsylvania political and legal affairs regarding slavery, emancipation and indentured servitude. Therefore, the decision of some to come to the thriving port city of Philadelphia as opposed to other port cities along the coast was probably not a consideration.

There would also be a financial impact to the founding trustees of the African Church of Philadelphia with regard to the sudden presence of the white Saint Dominguan refugees now residing in Philadelphia. For two years Absalom Jones, Richard Allen and other leaders of the black church had solicited small donations for the building of their church. The African Church of Philadelphia was to be the first free black church in the United States. However, along with the arrival of the Saint Dominguan refugees went the hopes of receiving those promised donations to help with the construction of this first free black church. The wealthy donors had shifted their attention and financial support to aid, instead, the fleeing French West Indian slaveholders, planters and merchants in their moments of distress. Within a matter of days, these wealthy donors had raised $12,000 to assist the refugees, while church members had spent two years trying to raise $3,500. The arrival of the city’s new inhabitants must have struck a mighty blow to the black religious community in their time of need.[34]

Another impact resulting from the Haitian Revolution was the effect it had on mercantile trade which contributed heavily to the ideal of nation and empire building. Using reports and accounts from 18th century Philadelphia print media, James Alexander Dun gives an elaborate description of the trading practices between the merchants of Saint Domingue and Philadelphia during the colonial island’s civil war period. It seems likely that the amount of trade would decline drastically during the slave revolution and as “the events on Saint Domingue caused the trade between Philadelphia and the island to ebb and flow during this period,”[35] the opposite was true for this American city which maintained a steady amount of trade from 1789 up until 1802 when it began to taper off. This trade timeline covers the entire revolutionary period. “Philadelphia’s mercantile community saw the island as an economic opportunity. Hundreds of voyages were made to the troubled colony, even after various outbreaks of violence there.”[36]

This may account for the fact that “in 1791, 440 self-described merchants appeared in Philadelphia directories.”[37] Philadelphia residents read on a daily basis about the unceasing turmoil on the colony, yet “by 1790, some 500 hundred ships were employed in this trade”[38] and “voyages to Saint Domingue in this period were conducted by more than three hundred captains who sailed either on behalf of their merchant employer or in their own interest.”[39] Dun goes on to explain that from 1789 to 1793, what is actually considered the height of the slave revolution, 18% to 25% of the arriving vessels to Philadelphia’s ports were from foreign ports and from 1789 to 1792, 7% to 15% of all the imports to Philadelphia arrived from Saint Domingue establishing Philadelphia as a significant import/export customer for French merchants. The imported amounts alone attest to Philadelphia’s level of mercantile trading importance. Approximately 20,000 tons Saint Domingue plantation products arrived in Philadelphia from October 1792 to September 1793, all while a massive slave revolution is ensuing and residents are fleeing the island by thousands. Although, not specifically mentioned, it is highly likely that those hundreds of captains on those many merchant vessels delivering exorbitant amounts of plantations products to Philadelphia, were bringing in sugar since by the 1790s, Saint Domingue supplied the United States with practically all the sugar and molasses it imported (Hickey, 1982: 363). There is a possibility that Philadelphia’s boom in trade with Saint Domingue could be the result of what historians attribute to colonial America’s inability to develop trade with France and Vice President John Adams’ financial and military support to Toussaint Louverture, since trade fell off dramatically when Jefferson took office and implemented trade embargoes that would last until 1810 on the island.

Lastly, the most noticeable impact of the Haitian Revolution would be the actual presence of the enslaved Africans who accompanied their white French slaveholders. As mentioned earlier, their presence dredged up extensive discussion about them as slaves in the city of Philadelphia, their emancipation and/or indentured servitude. From the 1790s through the Civil War, ideas about rebellious “French negroes” shaped American arguments about slavery and abolition.” And while this was taking place, nearly 800 black Saint Dominguans[40] would try to eke out an existence in this new and foreign land. Their presence caused many white Philadelphians to associate them with the Jacobins and become fearful of rebellion that “concern grew as the numbers of refugees swelled in 1793.”[41] This fear became so great that by “1798 Governor Mifflin of Pennsylvania, upon hearing that shiploads of Saint Dominguans had arrived in Philadelphia’s harbor, issued a proclamation that prohibited “French negroes” from landing.”[42] Many of the benevolent societies created were distinctively for white Saint Dominguans, “black refugees were denied the relief supplied by both the French and the United States.”[43]  For this reason, many were left to their devices, struggling to meet basic sustenance.

Gary Nash, discusses some of the immediate effects of the black Saint Dominguans to include their adding to the African American population, their later impact on the economic life of the city as successful entrepreneurs, and their diverse language patterns to the community. Although many spoke French, they brought a plethora of African languages as many slaveholders identified the African slaves as “Mina, Congo, Myaca, Nago, Ibo, Senegalais, Mozambique and Gambary.”[44] It was common to meet many trilingual black Saint Dominguans in Philadelphia. The black Saint Dominguan community tended to have residents on Shippen Street (now Bainbridge), Gaskill Street, Lombard Street, and on Fifth and Sixth Streets near St. Joseph’s as well as on a number of alleys and smaller streets. In the mid-1820s, small clusters of black Saint Dominguans could be found throughout the city, but with concentrations of black households in Cedar, New Market, and Locusts wards, as well as Southwark (Davies, 2010: 117-118)

A few Saint Dominguan entrepreneurs found entry into Philadelphia’s black elite community. These included members of the Augustin, Baptiste, and Dutrieuille families. Pierre Augustin was a high profile caterer. The catering business he began in eighteenth century Philadelphia continues to thrive today on 15^th Street between Walnut & Locusts Streets run by Clara Augustin and Tillie Baptiste. Eugene Baptiste, Sr. was a prominent cabinetmaker and ran a catering business as well. Eugene Dutrieuille was a well-known shoemaker. Other Saint Dominguan members of the Philadelphia elite and African American community would also include members from the Duterte, Dupee, Appo and Depee families. Francis A. Duterte and John Dupee were active members in Philadelphia’s African American social and political movements. John Appo and Thomas Depee had become members of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. Thomas Deppe had served as a member and officer of Philadelphia’s African Lodge. (Davies, 2010: 114-115, 117-119) The Saint Domingue refugee free people of color established The Citoyens de Couleur de Philadelphie  as a political group that would engage in political activity to address the national Assembly in France to plead their case for equal rights as citizens during the eighteenth century. (Childs 1940: 142-146)

Black Saint Dominguans also impacted the Catholic Church in the city. Of the three 18th century Philadelphia Catholic Churches, St. Mary’s Church, St. Joseph’s and Holy Trinity, “St. Joseph’s and Holy Trinity…..became the religious and social gathering places of Saint Domingue’s former slaves, and it appears that many of them married former island-mates.”[45] While their presence invoke fear, legislative debate, and the creation of new proclamations, black Saint Dominguans found their niche in the Philadelphia social, economic, political, and religious communities by maintaining their cultural and traditional identity. This impact would have a lasting effect on Philadelphia in the 21^st century.

The Haitian Revolution is an amazing story of world history that all students need to be exposed to. The Haitian Revolution tells the story of how ‘Saint Domingue became the first major slave-owning society to abolish slavery and the first to outlaw racial discrimination. Haiti was the first modern state in the tropics and the first after the United States to throw off European rule.”[46] This narrative reveals the accounts of a dejected and oppressed population that would defeat not only the French, but also the Spanish and British armies using guerilla warfare tactics to challenge the premises of the colonial, slave, and white supremacy systems, and declared that the ideas of liberty, equality, justice, and self-determination championed by the two previous revolutions and embodied in the philosophies of the Enlightenment belonged to all of humanity and not only those privileged by the skin color or social position.[47]

[1] Branson, Susan and Patrick, Leslie, “Estrangers in un Pays Estrange: Saint-Domingan Refugees of Color in Philadelphia” in Geggus, Davis P., ed., 2001, The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, pp. 193

[2] James, C.L.R., 1963, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingue Revolution, New York, Vintage Books, pp. 34

[3] Dupuy, Alex, “French Merchant Capital and Slavery in Saint-Domingue,” Latin American Perspectives, Summer 1985, Vol 12, No 3, pp. 77-102

[4] Zuckerman, 1993, Almost Chosen People, pp. 176

[5] Davis, David Brion,“Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions” in Geggus, Davis P., ed., 2001,The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, pp. 7

[6] Hunt, Alfred N., 1988, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, pp. 11-12

[7] James, The Black Jacobins, pp. 33, 36, Hunt, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America, pp. 13-14, and Dupuy, Alex, “Class, Race, and the Nation: Unresolved Contradictions of the Saint-Domingue Revolution,” Journal of Haitian Studies, Spring 2004, Vol 10, No 1, pp. 8-9

[8] Dupuy, “Class, Race and Nation,” pp. 9

[9] Ibid, pp. 9

[10] Kukla, Jon, 2003, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America, New York, Knopf

[11] Hunt, Haiti’s Influence, pp. 14

[12] James, The Black Jacobins, pp. 37-41

[13] Hunt, Haiti’s Influence, pp. 13

[14] White, Ashli, 2010, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press, pp. 4

[15] Reinhardt, “200 Years of Forgetting,” pp.253

[16] White, Encountering Revolution, pp. 4

[17] Dubois, Laurent, 2004, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution, Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 31

[18] Dupuy, French Merchant Capital, pp. 86

[19] Ibid, pp. 85-86

[20] Dubois, Avengers, pp. 32

[21] Dupuy, French Merchant Capital, pp. 85

[22] Ibid, pp. 85

[23] Ibid, pp. 88

[24] Geggus, David, 2014, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, edited and translated, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., pp. xix

[25] Dubois, Laurent, 2012, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, New York, Picador, pp. 5

[26] Popkin, Jeremy D., 2010, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 13

[27] Blackburn, Robin, “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, October 2006, Vol 63, No 4, pp. 656

[28] Popkin, You Are All Free, pp. 16-17 and Blackburn, Haiti, pp. 646

[29] Lundy, Garvey F., “Early Saint Domingan Migration to America and the Attraction of Philadelphia,” Journal of Haitian Studies, Spring 2006, Vol 12, No 1, pp. 76

[30] Ibid, pp. 80

[31] White, Encountering Revolution, pp. 87

[32] Davies, John, “Saint-Dominguan Refugees of African Descent and the Forging of Ethnic Identity in Early National Philadelphia,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, April 2010, Vol 134, No 2, pp. 115

[33] Nash, “Reverberations of Haiti in the American North: Black Saint Dominguans in Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Explorations in Early American Culture, 1998, Vol 65, pp. 85

[34] Nash, “Reverberations in Haiti,” pp. 44-45

[35] Dun, James Alexander, “What Avenues of Commerce, Will You, Americans, Not Explore!”: Commercial Philadelphia’s Vantage onto the Early Haitian Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, The Atlantic Economy in the Era of Revolution, July 2005, Vol 62, No 3, pp. 480

[36] Ibid, pp. 476

[37] White, Encountering Revolution, pp. 63

[38] Hickey, Donald R., “America’s Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791-1806”, Journal of the Early Republic, Winter 1982, Vol 2, No 4, pp. 363

[39] Dun, “What Avenues of Commerce,” pp. 479

[40] Nash, “Reverberations of Haiti,” pp. 47

[41] White, Ashli, “The Politics of “French negroes” in the United States,” Slavery and Citizenship in the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions, Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, Spring 2003, Vol 29, No 1, pp. 108

[42] Ibid, pp. 110

[43] Lundy, “Early Saint Domingan Migration,”  pp. 86

[44] White, “The Politics of French negroes,” pp. 115

[45] Nash, “Reverberations of Haiti,” pp. 59

[46] Geggus, The Haitian Revolution, pp. xi

[47] Dupuy, “Class, Race, and Nation,” pp. 6

The principle objective of “The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on 18^th Century Philadelphia” is to provide students with some background knowledge of the events that led to the Haitian Revolution, in addition to how a relationship between the city of Philadelphia and the colony of Saint Domingue developed as a result of the revolution that would last for 13 years, from 1791 to 1804.  The unit is intended for high school students, but can be modified to meet the social studies curriculum goals of middle school students. This unit can be taught in the American History, World History, Global Studies, Pennsylvania History, and African American History classrooms. If utilized in the English classroom, the novels All Souls Rising: A Novel of Haiti by Madison Smartt Bell and Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel by Isabel Allende can be used as the instructional text to teach the revolutionary period, specifically the Haitian Revolution. This unit incorporates the Pennsylvania Common Core Standards for Reading and History. The unit will focus on content comprehension, building background knowledge, and critical thinking skills. This interdisciplinary unit can be used to discuss the events leading up the Haitian Revolution that include the many race, class, and social classifications that contributed to the many divisions on the colony, the “small revolutions” in connection to the “big revolution,” and how the revolution impacted 18^th century Philadelphia and its residents. Additional areas that can be explored include, 21^st century race and class issues as they relate to events of today, the economic, social, political, and cultural implications of the revolution on the United States as a whole, a 3-ring Venn Diagram analysis of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution, the use of agency in the black community in acquiring their freedom, Haitian-American relations, then and now, the differences in presidential support or lack thereof during the revolutionary cause, and an examination of Philadelphia’s Haitian community today.

An additional objective will be to have students examine the various maps of the island during the 17^th through the 21^st centuries to enhance mapping skills and to analyze the three locations where the revolution occurred, map out the major port locations, and to determine how designated areas change over periods of time. Students will also analyze various tables and graphs that explain merchant and vessel trading patterns. One of two essays containing charts and graphs that students will look at in detail is Gary B. Nash’s “Reverberations of Haiti in the American North: Black Saint Dominguans in Philadelphia,” because it provides two tables created from his research that provides details of (1) the numbers of French West Indians that arrived in Philadelphia between 1791 to 1794 and (2) the age and gender of the African slaves manumitted upon arriving to Philadelphia between 1794 to 1804. This will not only give students information to aid in their understanding of how many people actually fled from Saint Domingue to Philadelphia, but will also serve as a template to assist students in analyzing and creating their own information tables for their own real life events.

The second essay to be incorporated to meet the objectives of the unit is “What Avenues of Commerce, Will You, Americans, Not Explore!”: Philadelphia’s Vantage onto the Early Haitian Revolution” by James Alexander Dun. From his archival research, Dun also developed three tables and one graph that provides explicit details of the (1) total entries of vessels into Philadelphia ports from Saint Domingue from1789 to 1805, (2) total tonnage from Saint Domingue entering Philadelphia from 1789-1792, (3) a graph illustrating the years in which arrivals from Saint Domingue ports to Philadelphia ports peaked and receded from 1789 to 1805, and (4) entries to Philadelphia ports from Saint Domingue ports by province with percentages of total arrivals from 1789 to 1805. These primary sources can be analyzed and checked against one another to compare and contrast the accuracy of trade from Saint Domingue to Philadelphia during the revolutionary period. Students can then draw their own conclusion about international trade during the 18^th century as well as the relationship of United States and Haitian trade during a major war.

A final objective will be to have students create a culminating exercise that incorporates a chronological order time line. Because there are so many events and various players that make up the Haitian Revolution, placing events in chronological order will help students prioritize the accounts of the revolution and assist in knowledge retention.

“The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on 18^th Century Philadelphia” will incorporate the Common Core Standards for both History and English. The new common core offers greater teacher flexibility in the classroom allowing for more teacher creativity. A diverse level of pedagogical techniques and educational stratagem will be utilized to achieve the above-referenced aims. In addition to text, technology, the use of films, music and high interest active engaging activities will be integrated into student lessons. The Seven Step Lesson Plan is used by the School District of Philadelphia and will be implemented in this unit.

This teaching strategy involves an Objective, Do Now, Direct Instruction, Guided Practice, Independent Practice, Closure, and Exit Ticket. Homework is assigned daily as an extension of the current lesson taught. These seven steps plus the homework is posted daily and referred to repeatedly during the class period to drill students for lesson knowledge and comprehension. The Objective states what knowledge or skill the lesson would like the students to achieve. The Do Now is a brief exercise that precedes the lesson. It should relate to the lesson or be a review of the previous lesson taught. Direct Instruction is the teacher-centered activity of the lesson. It is during this time that lesson content material is introduced. Guided Practice allows the lesson to be modelled for the students.

Although, lesson modelling occurs here, the lesson should be modelled for students as many times as needed. Independent Practice allows students to work independently as evidence that they actually understand the lesson that has been taught. There should be no teacher involvement during the independent practice component. This is the opportunity for teacher notes to be taken to determine student comprehension, if the lesson needs to be re-taught and if new pedagogical strategies and techniques need to be incorporated to re-introduce the lesson. Students should be able to answer a relevant question to the lesson. Closure allows teachers to conduct a mini pre-assessment with brief wrap-up questions. This portion also allows teachers to determine if the lesson should be re-introduced to students.

The final piece of the steps is the Exit Ticket. Students should be able to summarize of cite verbatim the objective and provide a brief synopsis of the knowledge they have acquired during the class. This is typically a written piece completed before five –ten minutes before the closure of the lesson. Homework is given daily as an extension of the lesson to improve mastery of the skill or topic taught. Graphic organizers will be used to help organize information from the less, primary and secondary source images and documents will be used as visual tools to help make real life connections as well as dialogue and discussion to improve speaking and listening skills. Modifications and accommodations are made during the implementation of the lessons to address the many student learning styles.

The following lessons are brief opening lessons to introduce a skill set. Each lesson or student activity needs to be modified during implementation to meet the student’s learning style and academic level.

Lesson 1:

SWBAT describe the essential population of Saint Domingue using a 4-Column Chart Graphic Organizer.

Reading:

Teacher-Made Excerpts from Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution by Laurent Dubois

Vocabulary:

• blancs
• petits blancs
• gens de couleur libres
• affranchis
• bureaucracy
• merchant
• maritime bourgeoisie

Driving Questions:

Who are the grands blancs? Who are the petits blancs? Who are the gens de couleur libres? Who are the affranchis? Who was the bureaucracy? Who were the maritime bourgeoisie? Why did Saint Domingue have race/class classifications? How did this racial hierarchy contribute to the civil war? Is use of the term “Mulatto” politically correct to use in the 21st century? What else would I like to know?

Lesson 2:

SWBAT describe the race, class, and social stratification system of Saint Domingue and the role it played in helping to spark the Haitian Revolution using a primary source document and a primary source document analysis worksheet.

Reading:                      The Plantation Hierarchy, document 2 (pages 4-6) and Racial Discrimination: Unofficial, document 7 (page 14) from The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History edited and translated by David Geggus.

Vocabulary:

• hierarchy
• viligance
• egalitarian
• estate-attorney
• perquisites
• agriculturalist
• quadroon
• mulatto
• debasement

Driving Questions:

What is the social hierarchy Charles Malenfant sketches here? What are his discrepancies? How would the issues he raises contribute the revolution? What else would I like to know?

Lesson 3:

SWBAT describe the conflict between the petits blancs (petty whites) and the gens de couleur (affranchis) and explain how this conflict was a component of the revolution using a primary source document and a primary source document analysis worksheet.

Reading:

Racial Discrimination: Official, document 6 (pages 12-13) and Free Coloreds Petition the Assembly of the North, 10 November 1789, document 27 (pages 61-62) from The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History edited and translated by David Geggus.

Vocabulary:

• descendant
• comparatively
• liberal
• commandant
• indigent
• magistrate
• constable
• emigrate
• judiciary
• parish
• Vizir

Driving Question:

What is happening to the free people of color? Who are the Amis des Noirs? What argument is Gregoire, the liberal French priest, placing before the national Assembly on their behalf? What else would I like to know?

Lesson 4:

SWBAT explain the events of the Haitian Revolution using primary source documents and document analysis.

Readings:

The Bois Caiman Ceremony, document 35 (pages 78-79), Vodou and Petro, document 11 (pages 20-22), Vodou and the Underworld, document 12 (pages 22-24)    The Uprising Begins, document 36 (pages 79-81)

Vocabulary:

• West African blood-oath ceremony
• talisman
• uncultivated
• benevolent
• secrecy
• Vodou
• invariably
• sorcerer
• calabash
• sanctum
• neophyte
• sacralize
• envoy
• miscreant
• intransigent

Driving Questions:

What role did vodou play in the revolution? What do you believe the African slaves invoked vodou at the start of the revolution? How did the revolt unfold on the night of August 22, 1791? How would these events look in a sequence of events? What else would I like to know?

Lesson 5:

SWBAT gather and analyze information to explain the number of Saint Dominguan arrivals into the city using a table, chart or graph.

Primary Source:

Table 1: French West Indies Arrival in Philadelphia, 1791-1794 form “Reverberations of Haiti in the American North: Black Saint Dominguans in Philadelphia” by Gary B. Nash (page 50) and Table 2: Age and Gender of Manumitted French Slaves, 1791-1804 (page 51)

Vocabulary:

• extant
• extrapolated
• Creole
• manumission
• median
• paucity
• composition

Driving Questions:

Between 1790 and 1794, which year had the highest percentage of Saint Dominguan refugee arrivals? Which year represents the least? What percentage were white? What percentage was black? What is the average age of males manumitted? And girls? What else would I like to know?

Lesson 6:

SWBAT gather and analyze information to explain the number of merchant vessels arriving from Saint Dominguan into Philadelphia ports using a table, chart or graph.

Primary Source:

Table I: Total Entries to Philadelphia From Foreign and Ports in Saint Domingue, 1789-1805 from“What Avenues of Commerce, Will You, Americans, Not Explore!”: Commercial Philadelphia’s Vantage onto the Early Haitian Revolution” by James Alexander Dun (page 478)

Vocabulary:

• merchant
• vessel
• tonnage

Driving Questions:

From 1789-1805, how many vessels arrived from foreign ports? And how many, in all, from Saint Dominguan ports?

Which year represents the greatest amount of Saint Dominguan vessel arrivals? And the least? What other ways can this information be charted to reveal information? What else would I like to know?

Lesson 7:

SWBAT describe how the first and second generations of black Saint Dominguans that arrived impacted 18^th century Philadelphia using Teacher-Made reading excerpts and graphic orgnizers.

Lesson 8:

SWBAT conduct research to learn about the 21^st century Haitian community in Philadelphia using technology and other traditional information gathering methods. SWBAT compare and contrast their 21^st century findings using graphic organizers, tables, charts, etc. with the 18^th century information acquired.

Suggested Teacher Reading List

Allende, Isabel, 2009, Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel, New York, Harper Collins Publishers

Opening in Saint Domingue a few years before the Haitian revolution would tear it apart, the story has at its center Zarité, a mulatto whose extraordinary life takes her from that blood-soaked island to dangerous and freewheeling New Orleans; from rural slave life to urban Creole life and a different kind of cruelty and adventure. Yet even in the new city, Zarité can’t quite free herself from the island, and the people alive and dead that have followed her. The story discusses voodoo, medicine, European and Caribbean history, Napoleon, the Jamaican slave Boukman, and the legendary Mackandal, a runaway slave and master of black magic. Allende barely skims the surface.

Clavin, Matthew J., 2010, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press

At the end of the eighteenth century, a massive slave revolt rocked French Saint Domingue, the most profitable European colony in the Americas. Under the leadership of the charismatic former slave François Dominique Toussaint Louverture, a disciplined and determined republican army, consisting almost entirely of rebel slaves, defeated all of its rivals and restored peace to the embattled territory. The slave uprising that we now refer to as the Haitian Revolution concluded on January 1, 1804, with the establishment of Haiti, the first “black republic” in the Western Hemisphere.

Dubois, Laurent, 2004, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution, Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Laurent Dubois weaves the stories of slaves, free people of African descent, wealthy whites, and French administrators into an unforgettable tale of insurrection, war, heroism, and victory. He establishes the Haitian Revolution as a foundational moment in the history of democracy and human rights.

Dubois, Laurent, 2012, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, New York, Picador

Even before the devastating 2010 earthquake, Haiti was known as a benighted place of poverty and corruption, blamed by many for its own wretchedness. But as acclaimed historian Laurent Dubois demonstrates, Haiti’s troubled present can only be understood by examining its complex past. The country’s difficulties are inextricably rooted in its founding revolution—the only successful slave revolt in the history of the world; the hostility that this rebellion generated among the surrounding colonial powers; and the intense struggle within Haiti itself to define its newfound freedom and realize its promise.

Dubois, Laurent and Garrigus, John D., 2006, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents, Boston, Bedford/St. Martin’s

This volume details the first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to the establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving the way for the emancipation of slaves in the rest of the French Empire and the world. Incited by the French Revolution, the enslaved inhabitants of the French Caribbean began a series of revolts, and in 1791 plantation workers in Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, overwhelmed their planter owners and began to take control of the island. They achieved emancipation in 1794, and after successfully opposing Napoleonic forces eight years later, emerged as part of an independent nation in 1804.

Egerton, Douglas R., 1993, Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800-1802, Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press

Gabriel’s Rebellion tells the dramatic story of what was perhaps the most extensive slave conspiracy in the history of the American South. Douglas Egerton illuminates the complex motivations that underlay two related Virginia slave revolts: the first, in 1800, led by the slave known as Gabriel; and the second, called the ‘Easter Plot,’ instigated in 1802 by one of his followers. According to Egerton, the social, political, and economic disorder of the Revolutionary era weakened some of the harsh controls that held slavery in place during colonial times.

Geggus, David P., 2001, The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press

Fifteen international scholars, including eminent historians David Brion Davis, Seymour Drescher, and Robin Blackburn, explicate such diverse ramifications as the spawning of slave resistance and the stimulation of slavery’s expansion, the opening of economic frontiers, and the formation of black and white diasporas. They show how the Haitian Revolution embittered contemporary debates about race and abolition and inspired poetry, plays, and novels.

Geggus, David Patrick, 2002, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, Bloomington, Indiana University Press

David Patrick Geggus sheds new light on this tremendous upheaval by marshaling an unprecedented range of evidence drawn from archival research in six countries. Geggus’s fine-grained essays explore central issues and little-studied aspects of the conflict, including new historiography and sources, the origins of the black rebellion, and relations between slaves and free people of color. The contributions of vodou and marronage to the slave uprising, Toussaint Louverture and the abolition question, the policies of the major powers toward the revolution, and its interaction with the early French Revolution are also addressed.

Geggus, David P., 2014, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

A landmark collection of documents by the field’s leading scholar. This reader includes beautifully written introductions and a fascinating array of never-before-published primary documents. These treasures from the archives offer a new picture of colonial Saint-Domingue and the Haitian Revolution.

Girard, Philippe, 2005, Haiti: The Tumultuous History-From Pearl of the Caribbean to Broken Nation, New York, Palgrave Macmillan

Philippe Girard examines how colonialism and slavery have left a legacy of racial tension, both within Haiti and internationally; Haitians remain deeply suspicious of white foriegners’ motives, many of whom doubt Hatians’ ability to govern themselves. He also examines how Haiti’s current political instability is merely a continuation of political strife that began during the War of Independence (1791-1804). Finally, Girard explores poverty’s devastating impact on contemporary Haiti.

Hunt, Alfred N., 1988, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press

Alfred N. Hunt discusses the ways these Saint Dominguan immigrants affected southern agriculture, architecture, language, politics, medicine, religion, and the arts. He also considers how the events in Haiti influenced the American slavery-emancipation debate and spurred developments in black militancy and Pan-Africanism in the United States. By effecting the development of racial ideology in antebellum America, Hunt concludes, the Haitian Revolution was a major contributing factor to the attitudes that led to the Civil War.

James, C.L.R., 1963, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution, New York, Random House, Inc.

This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.

Kukla, Jon, 2003, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America, New York, Knopf

Historian, Jon Kukla recounts the fascinating tale of the personal maneuverings, political posturing, and international intrigue that culminated in the greatest land deal in history. Spanning nearly two decades, Kukla’s book brings to life a pageant of characters from Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Jay, to Napoleon and Carlos III of Spain and other colorful figures. Employing letters, memoirs, contemporary documents, and a host of other sources, Kukla creates a complete and compelling account of the Louisiana Purchase.

Nesbitt, Nick, 2008, Toussaint L’ouverture: The Haitian Revolution, London, Verso Books

In this collection of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s writings and speeches, former Haitian politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide demonstrates L’Ouverture’s profound contribution to the struggle for equality.

Popkin, Jeremy D., 2010, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

You Are All Free provides the first complete account of the dramatic events that led to these epochal decrees, and also to the destruction of Cap Francais, the richest city in the French Caribbean, and to the first refugee crisis in the United States.

Smartt Bell, Madison, 2007, Toussaint Louverture: A Biography, New York, Pantheon Books

Madison Smartt Bell combines a novelist’s passion with a deep knowledge of the historical milieu that produced the man labeled a saint, a martyr, or a clever opportunist who instigated one of the most violent events in modern history. The first biography in English in over sixty years of the man who led the Haitian Revolution, this is an engaging reexamination of the controversial, paradoxical leader.

Smartt Bell, Madison, 1995, All Souls’ Rising: A Novel of Haiti, New York, Vintage Books

In this first installment of his epic Haitian trilogy, Madison Smartt Bell brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the world’s first Black republic.

White, Ashli, 2010, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press

Encountering Revolution looks afresh at the profound impact of the Haitian Revolution on the early United States. Historian Ashli White examines the ways Americans―black and white, northern and southern, Federalist and Democratic Republican, pro- and antislavery―pondered the implications of the Haitian Revolution.

Wood, Peter H., 1974, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion, New York, W.W. Norton & Company

Zuckerman, Michael, 1993, Almost Chosen People: Oblique Biographies in the American Grain, Berkeley, University of California Press

Zuckerman’s essays in this collection range from early New England settlements to modern Washington. Among his subjects are Puritans and Southern gentry, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Spock, P. T. Barnum and Ronald Reagan. Collecting scammers and scoundrels, racists and rebels, as well as the purest genius are also examined.

Suggested Student Reading List

Lake, Nick, 2012, In Darkness, New York, Bloomsbury Children’s Books

This is the story of “Shorty”-a 15-year-old boy trapped in a collapsed hospital during the earthquake in Haiti. As he waits in darkness for a rescue that may never come, a mystical bridge seems to emerge between him and Haitian leader Toussaint L’Ouverture, uniting the two in their darkest suffering-and their hope. Yet in some strange way, the boy in the ruins of Port au Prince and the man who led the struggle for Haiti’s independence might well be one and the same.

Bergeaud, Emeric, 1859, Stella: A Novel of the Haitian Revolution, New York, New York University Press, edited and translated, 2015, Mucher, Christen, and Curtis, Leslie

Stella, first published in 1859, is an imaginative retelling of Haiti’s fight for independence from slavery and French colonialism.  Set during the years of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), Stella tells the story of two brothers, Romulus and Remus, who help transform their homeland from the French colony of Saint-Domingue to the independent republic of Haiti. This new translation and critical edition of Émeric Bergeaud’s allegorical novel. Considered the first novel written by a Haitian, Stella gives a pro-Haitian version of the Haitian Revolution.

Smartt Bell, Madison, 1995, All Souls’ Rising: A Novel of Haiti, New York, Vintage Books

In this first installment of his epic Haitian trilogy, Madison Smartt Bell brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the world’s first Black republic.

Smartt Bell, Madison, 2000, Master of the Crossroads, New York, Vintage Books

Continuing his epic trilogy of the Haitian slave uprising, Madison Smartt Bell delivers a stunning portrayal of Toussaint Louverture, former slave, military genius and liberator of Haiti, and his struggle against the great European powers to free his people in the only successful slave revolution in history. Toussaint is betrayed by his former allies and the commanders of the Spanish army, he reunites his army with the French, wresting vital territories and manpower from Spanish control. Toussaint eventually rises as the ultimate victor as he wards off his enemies to take control of the French colony and establish a new constitution.

Smartt Bell, Madison, 2004, The Stone that the Builder Refused, New York, Vintage Books

The Stone that the Builder Refused is the final volume of Madison Smartt Bell’s masterful trilogy about the Haitian Revolution–the first successful slave revolution in history–which begins with All Souls’ Rising and continues with Master of the Crossroads. Each of these three novels can be read independently of the two others.

Works Cited/References

Blackburn, Robin, “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, October 2006, Vol 63, No 4, pp. 643-674

Davies, John, “Saint-Dominguan Refugees of African Descent and the Forging of Ethnic Identity in Early National Philadelphia,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, April 2010, Vol 134, No 2, pp. 109-126

Dubois, Laurent, 2004, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution, Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Dubois, Laurent and Garrigus, John D., 2006, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History with Documents, Boston, Bedford/St. Martin’s

Dun, James Alexander, “What Avenues of Commerce, Will You, Americans, Not Explore!”: Commercial Philadelphia’s Vantage onto the Early Haitian Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, July 2005, Vol 62, No 3, pp. 473-504

Dun, James Alexander, “Philadelphia not Philanthropolis: The Limits of Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery in the Era of the Haitian Revolution,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, January 2011, Vol 135, No 1, pp. 73-102

Dupuy, Alex, “French Merchant Capital and Slavery in Saint-Domingue,” Latin American Perspectives, Repression and Resistance, Summer 1985, Vol 12, No 3, pp. 77-102

Dupuy, Alex, “Class, Race, and Nation: Unresolved Contradictions of the Saint-Domingue Revolution,” Journal of Haitian Studies, Bicentennial Issue, Spring 2004, Vol 10, No 1, pp. 6-21

Gares, Albert J., and Girard, Stephen, “Stephen Girard’s West Indian Trade, 1789-1812,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, October 1948, Vol 72, No 4, pp. 311-342

Garrigus, John, “Blue and Brown: Contraband Indigo and the Rise of a Free Colored Planter Class in French Saint-Domnigue,” The Americas, October 1993, Vol 50, No 2, pp. 233-263

Geggus, David P., 2001, The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press

Geggus, David Patrick, 2002, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, Bloomington, Indiana University Press

Geggus, David P., 2014, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Girard, Philippee, “Trading Races: Joseph and Marie Bunel, a Diplomat and a Merchant in Revolutionary Saint-Domingue and Philadelphia,” Journal of the Early Republic, Fall 2010, Vol 30 No 3, pp. 351-376

Hickey, Donald R., “America’s Response to the Slave Revolt in Haiti, 1791-1806,” Journal of the Early Republic, Winter 1982, Vol 2, No 4, pp. 361-379

Hunt, Alfred N., 1988, Haiti’s Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press

James, C.L.R., 1963, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution, New York, Random House, Inc.

Johnson, Ronald Angelo, “A Revolutionary Dinner: US Diplomacy toward Saint-Domingue, 1798-1801,” Early American Studies, Winter 2011, Vol 9, No 1, pp. 114-141

Kukla, Jon, 2003, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America, New York, Knopf

Lundy, Garvey F., “Early Saint Dominguan Migration to America and the Attraction of Philadelphia,” Journal of Haitian Studies, Spring 2006, Vol 12, No 1, pp. 76-94

Matthewson, Tim, “Abraham Bishop: “The Rights of Black Men,: and the American Reaction to the Haitian Revolution,” The Journal of Negro History, Summer 1982, Vol 67, No 2, pp. 148-154

Matthewson, Tim, “Jefferson and the Nonrecognition of Haiti,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, March 1996, Vol 140, No., pp. 22-48

Nash, Gary B., “Reverberartions of the Haiti in the American North: Black Saint Dominguans in Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Explorations in Early American Culture, 1998, Vol 65, pp. 44-73

Peguero, Valentina, “Teaching the Haitian Revolution: Its Place in Western and Modern World History,” The History Teacher, November 1998, Vol 33, No 1, pp. 33-41

Popkin, Jeremy D., 2010, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Reinhardt, Thomas, “200 Years of Forgetting: Hushing Up the Haitian Revolution,” Journal of Black Studies, March 2005, Vol 35, No 4, pp. 246-261

White, Ashli, “The Politics of “French negroes” in the United States,” Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, Slavery and Citizenship in the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions, Spring 2003, Vol 29, No 1, pp. 103-121

White, Ashli, 2010, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press

Zuckerman, Michael, 1993, Almost Chosen People: Oblique Biographies in the American Grain, Berkeley, University of California Press

The Common Core Standards for Social Studies/ History can be accessed using:

http://www.pdesas.org/Standard/Views#114|14125|0|0

The Common Core Standards for English can be accessed using:

http://www.pdesas.org/Standard/Views#114|14122|0|0

3-Ring Venn Diagram (compare and contrast)

http://www.studenthandouts.com/1batch/graphic-organizers/venn-diagram-three-concepts.pdf

4-Column Chart (categorization)

https://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/pdf/4column.pdf

Primary Source Analysis Worksheet

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/written_document_analysis_worksheet.pdf

For extended readings, lessons, and activities on Haiti, download the free pdf 12 chapter, 43 page booklet “Teaching About Haiti” on the Teaching for Change website:

http://www.teachingforchange.org/books/our-publications/caribbean-connections/teaching-about-haiti-pdf-and-resources

Content Standards

The Common Core Standards for Social Studies/History can be accessed using:

http://www.pdesas.org/Standard/Views#114|14125|0|0

CC.8.5.9-10.A: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.

CC.8.5.9-10.B: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.

CC.8.5.9-10.C: Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier events caused later ones or simply preceded them.

CC.8.5.9-10.D: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social science.

CC.8.5.9-10.E: Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis.

CC.8.5.9-10.F: Compare the point of view of two or more authors for how they treat the same or similar topics, including which details they include and emphasize in their respective accounts.

CC.8.5.9-10.G: Integrate quantitative or technical analysis (e.g., charts, research data) with qualitative analysis in print or digital text.

CC.8.5.9-10.H: Assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author’s claims.

CC.8.5.9-10.I: Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.

CC.8.5.9-10.J: By the end of grade 10, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the grades 9–10 text complexity band independently and proficiently

The Common Core Standards for English can be accessed using:

http://www.pdesas.org/Standard/Views#114|14122|0|0

For use with the novels by Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel by Isabel Allende, Stella: A Novel of the Haitian Revolution by Emeric Bergeaud (translated by Christen Mucher and Leslie Curtis), In Darkness by Nick Lake and Madison Smartt Bell’s trilogy: All Souls’ Rising, Master of the Crossroads, and The Stone that the Builder Refused.

CC.1.3: Reading Literature: Students read and respond to works of literature – with emphasis on comprehension, making connections among ideas and between texts with focus on textual evidence.

CC.1.3.9-10.A: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

CC.1.3.9-10.B: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences and conclusions based on an author’s explicit assumptions and beliefs about a subject.

CC.1.3.9-10.C: Analyze how complex characters develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.

CC.1.3.9-10.D: Determine the point of view of the text and analyze the impact the point of view has on the meaning of the text.

CC.1.3.9-10.E: Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it and manipulate time create an effect.

CC.1.3.9-10.F: Analyze how words and phrases shape meaning and tone in texts.

CC.1.3.9-10.G: Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment.

CC.1.3.9-10.H: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms themes, topics, character types, and/or other text elements from source material in a specific work.

CC.1.3.9-10.I: Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 9-10 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies and tools.

CC.1.3.9-10.J: Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.

CC.1.3.9-10.K: Read and comprehend literary fiction on grade level, reading independently and proficiently.