When the French Revolution began in1789, it was the beginning not only of conflict in the name of liberty in Europe but also in the New World. Then in 1791, slaves revolted in one of the most brutal slave regimes in the worldin sugar and coffee growing Saint Domingue (later to be called Haiti). In 1794, based upon France’s "Declaration of the Rights of Man" slavery was officially abolished in its colonies. Unfortunately, the slave-holding planters on the island of Saint Domingue refused to Slaves in Haiti revoltcomply with the order. Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader of the Saint Domingue rebellion, pressed on with the long war that eventually produced the first independent black nation in the Western hemisphere. One might have thought that a fellow state fighting for independence would have garnered admiration and assistance from the United States who had so recently won her independence. This was not the case.
The wresting (Links to an external site.) of their freedom from the plantation owners by former slaves terrified slave-holding American planters. And no one more than the American President Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, a Virginia planter and slave-holder himself, was adamant about keeping black revolution from American shores and worked hard to keep all information of the Haitian Revolution from America, and particularly from slaves in the United States.