Intertwined Histories of Oppression

In the late 1700s, both the Haitian slaves and the American colonists gained their freedom--Haitian slaves from their French tyrants/slave masters and American colonists from their British tyrants.
Though the Christian historian, George Marsden, asserts British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violent revolution.

The Haitian slave revolution, against their French oppressors, began in 1791 and ended in 1804.  This overlapped with President Thomas Jefferson's term which began in 1801 and ended in 1809.

President Thomas Jefferson and all other American slave owners greatly feared the example of the successful slave revolution in Haiti; they feared that American slaves might try to copy the Haitian slaves' success and revolt here in America.  So from its very beginning as a new nation, Haiti was seen as an enemy of America.  Americans sided with the French oppressors during their hundred years of Haitian slavery, and also the following one hundred plus years of French debt slavery.

The following information might explain why President Jefferson sided with the French oppressors in Haiti.

• Jefferson, himself, owned 260 slaves; so oppression, exploitation and  brutalization was not a foreign concept to Jefferson.
• Jefferson raped at least one of his slave women.
• Jefferson approved of the Indian Removal Act designed to remove all Indians east of the Mississippi and force them to live west of the Mississippi.  Though it was President Jackson who implemented the Indian Removal Act, Jefferson fully endorsed this Indian genocide and land theft.  When you combine slavery, Indian genocide and siding with French oppressors, this makes Jefferson an exceedingly evil person.

This history of enmity affects U.S. relations with Haiti even today.  To Americans Haitians are blacks and therefore inferior.  So America treats Haiti as a puppet incapable of ruling itself, thereby legitimating American interference in the internal affairs of Haiti at any time.

In a strange case of twisted moral logic, white freedom-loving colonists denied their slaves their freedom.  Even as Americans enjoyed freedom, they denied freedom and justice to their African slaves.

This deeply intertwined history even enabled the U.S. to obtain the Louisiana Territory which extended all the way from New Orleans to the Canadian border west of the Mississippi.  After the successful Haitian slave revolution, Napoleon no longer needed the Louisiana Territory.  So he ended up selling it to America dirt cheap.  American negotiators had gone to France wanting to purchase New Orleans from the French.  Surprisingly the French offered to sell the whole Louisiana Territory from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains.  What we call the Louisiana Purchase might never have happened had the slaves not revolted in Haiti.  The territory west of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains might today still be French and all people living west of the Mississippi River would be speaking the French language.  The western border of the U.S. might not be the Pacific Coast, it might have been the Mississippi River.