^Slavery

^Abolition

Slavery & Abolition

Ajournai of Slave and Post-Slave Studies

ISSN: 0144-039X (Print) 1743-9523 I

The Light of Knowledge Follows the Impulse of

Revolutions': Prince Saunders, Baron de Vastey
and the Haitian Influence on Antebellum Black
Ideas of Elevation and Education
Peter Wirzbicki

Slavery & Abolition, 2015

Vol. 36, No. 2, 275-297, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2014.941184

iRoutledge

'The Light of Knowledge Follows

the Impulse of Revolutions': Prince
Saunders, Baron de Vastey and
the Haitian Influence on Antebellum
Black Ideas of Elevation
and Education
Peter Wirzbicki

This article details the influence that Haitian ideas about education had on early btack
intellectuals. Following the successful slave revolution, leaders of the new Haitian stale
set out to develop a new educational system. African-American observers paid close atten
tion to these developments and often attempted to mimic them. Especially important was
the black traveller and activist Prince Saunders, who was hired by the Haitian King Henry
Christophe to build schools. Combining social and intellectual history, this article argues
that black intellectuals in the North were inspired by the memory and symbol of Haiti to
develop an education system and elevation ideology that served explicitly political
purposes.

One of the defining features of antebellum black civic life was the extraordinary
importance that activists and community leaders gave to self-education and elevation.
From Baltimore to Boston, Schenectady to San Francisco, this impulse manifested
itself in the creation of black libraries, debating clubs, schools, lyceums, writing
groups and other organizations dedicated to elevaLing the community. Recently
these organizations, as well as the broad elevation impulse that gave birth to them,
have received significant scholarly attention. Historians and others have reignited a
debate abouL the political content of black education and uplift in the years before
the Civil War. However, they have missed an important component to the story
Peter Wirzbicki is Collegiate Assistant Professor, Social Science Division at the Universityof Chicago, 5845 S. F.llis
Avenue, Cates Blake 327, Chicago, EL 60637, USA. Email: pwjr/bickis>i!iiieago.i>iiu
: 2014 Taylor St Francis

2?6

Peter Wrzbicki

about eleva Linn: the degree to which the memory of the Haitian Revolution and the
symbolic and direcL pull of the state that emerged from it shaped this impulse and
influenced these intellectual clubs and schools. Flows of knowledge between
African-American communities in the North, Haitian intellectuals, and British and
French polemicists opened radical possibilities for black education and elevation.
Historians are still coming to grasp the importance of ideas abouL elevation and self
education - and the clubs and institutions in which those impulses manifested them
selves - to antebellum black life. Forty years ago, Frederick Cooper seemed surprised
when he noticed that early black newspapers were more likely to write about education
than about slavery, and historians still too often accept the idea that the elevation
impulse was a distraction from true radical anli-slavery politics. Thus, Joanne Pope
Melish positions the rhetoric of self-improvement as an internalization of black sub
ordination as people of color had little choice but to accept the burden of proof of
their inherent worthiness. Patrick Rael sees more political potential in these clubs,
arguing Lhal while the elevation ideology was a demonstration that black activists
were invested in bourgeois norms of individual self-improvement, these norms
helped to create a potent protest culture. Even Elizabeth McHenrys groundbreaking
study of black intellectual clubs largely focused on them as evidence of literary devel
opment. The transatlantic origins of the elevation impulse, though, have not been
explored.1
This article finds a previously hidden explanation that helps explain why early black
reformers focused on building intellectual dubs and developing ideas about education
and intellectual uplift: because, thanks to the work of black intellectuals like Prince
Saunders, Baron de Vastey and others, many associated the elevation impulse with
a militant and transnational discourse with its roots in the Haitian Revolution, 'trans
national networks of intellectual exchange that spanned the Atlantic - with Haiti as a
crucial node - shaped the ways in which black intellectuals saw their project of build
ing educational institutions while fighting slavery. Recently theorists and historians
have explored the relationship between the Haitian Revolution and Western intellec
tual history, opening up a counter-narrative of the Enlightenment centred squarely on
Lhc legacy of black resistance and rebellion. They have recast the foundation of Western
intellectual traditions by demonstrating Haitian influence on everything from the universalism of Jacobin revolutionary politics to the intricacies of Hegels masler/slave
dialectic. Unfortunately some of this work has suffered from a lack of material evi
dence. But in African-American appropriation of Haitian ideas of education, we
can see one consequence of the intellectual interaction with Haiti. Historians, in
their haste to rediscover the importance of the Revolution itself, have also neglected
to study the interaction with the government of Haiti that continued throughout
the nineteenth century, long after the revolutionary era ended. A number of early
black intellectuals explicitly looked to Haiti - and sometimes travelled there while they built the clubs, lyceums and intellectual organizations that set the contours
for American abolitionism and black secular civil society. The Haitian government,
through its support of people like Prince Saunders, played a role in this intellectual
exchange (see Figure 1). But more important were the ways in which stories about

Slavery - Abolition

278 Peter Wirzbicki

the Haitian experience and Lhe symbolic pull of Haiti were central to black ideas about
education. African-American intellectuals and Haitian state builders were thus parti
cipating in a set of shared assumptions, dialogues and discourses about the purpose of
education and black intellectual acLivity.2
The Haitian Revolution was a watershed event in American and global history. By
the time the dust had settled, some of the mosL exploited slaves in the Western Hemi
sphere had seized control of Trances richest colony, had forever abolished chattel
slavery and had declared all residents black, regardless of their skin colour. To many
white Americans, what they achieved was unthinkable, and could only be understood
as a monstrous event, a gothic calamity representing the worst revolutionary excesses
and an unholy reversal of racial hierarchies. As Frederick Douglass remembered it,
white Americans saw the Haitian Revolution as a very hell of horrors. Throughout
the antebellum period, conservatives would hurl the spectre of race war, which the
memory of the Haitian Revolution evoked, at white and black abolitionists who ques
tioned slavery.3
If the spectre of the Haitian Revolution haunted white Americans, black intellectuals
in America celebrated it and the sLale that it produced. Scholars are increasingly aware
of the hidden ways in which information about the Haitian Revolution travelled
throughout the black Atlantic, inspiring slaves in Jamaica, freed people in Philadelphia
and Creole intellectuals in New Orleans. Black Americans in the Early Republic weie
particularly interested in the legacy of the revolution. Haitian emigration, which
served as a radical contrast to Lhc white-run colonization societies, was one manifes
tation of this interest in Haiti. As the black newspaper lhe Rights of All explained
if any have a disposition to leave this country, why not emigrate, either to Canada or
the beautiful island of Hayti... We do not ask the Colonization Society to provide a
home for us, we can do it for ourselves, when necessary, and a far better one than
they have to offer.

Black thinkers saw Haiti as a source of black pride, proof of what people of African
descent were capable of. As Elijah Forte, a black activist in Cincinnati, told an audience
in 1831, I .et the world boast of her Alfreds, her Fredericks and her Washingtons - ours
shall be the boast of a Boyer, referencing the leader of the Haitian state. Southern
slaves - like those on a slave ship bound from Virginia to New Orleans who unsuccessftilly rebelled hoping Lo proceed to Hayti - viewed the nation as a beacon of liberty.4
But African-Americans were interested in more than simply the pride that the
Haitian Revolution evoked, or Haiti as a site of emigration. While historians have
focused on how Haitis independence and abolition of slavery impacted black
thought in America, they have not considered Lhe degree to which the existing govern
mental institutions and forms of state inspired black thinkers. Haitis educational
system would emerge as one of the aspects of the post-revolutionary state that most
compelled African-Americans. Ironically, it was exactly because of the racism of
European elites, who purposefully isolated Haiti, that Lhe nation developed its own
educational institutions. The Haitian educational system was forged in a context of
official international isolation and Lhe constant threat of re-invasion. Unlike much

Slavery & Abolition 279

of South America and Catholic Europe, Haiti lacked experienced religious orders to
take control of their schools. Hie Vatican, unwilling to fully recognize the Haitian
state, refused to establish an independent diocese in Haiti until 1860. In the words
of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the lack of experienced Catholic educators crippled the
Haitians chances of easily building an educational system on the model of France.
Although the early constitution of the newly emancipated staLc had mandated the cre
ation of central public schools, given the turmoil following the division of Haiti, few
were founded."
By 1815, though, Haitians were ready to begin constructing schools. In the years
after independence, Haiti had temporarily splintered into two states - a monarchy
in the north led by Henry Christophe and a republic in the south led by Alexandre
Ption. Both leaders attempted to creaLc public education systems. Christophe's
efforts arc better documented, partly because he invited British teachers to oversee
the schools. It would be his vision of educational development that would have the
greatest influence on African-American thinkers. Christophe, in the words of a histor
ian of Haitian education, wanted to build his kingdom on military strength, Negro
sovereignty, and good principles of education. BriLish missionaries were impressed
by the great vigour with which Christophe founded schools in Cape Henry, Port
de Paix, Sans Souci and Gonaives. By 1821, there were at least 11 public schools, edu
cating 1110 students in reading, writing and arithmetic, and an advanced Royal
Academy teaching Latin, French, English, grammar and geography. About 72,000 stu
dents attended schools at some point during Christophes reign, a remarkable achieve
ment for a group whose parents had been almost universally barred from reading and
writing. One white professor proudly wmle that the schools demonstrated that the
Omnipotent has freely given to all the nations in the world the powers of intellect."
Christophe invested in education for explicitly political reasons, claiming that the
schools would safeguard Haitian sovereignty. The official justification for spending
scarce Haitian resources on schools was that education was needed to combat the
increased belligerence from France. The Bourbon Restoration had both brought
peace to war-torn Europe and empowered many cx-planters in Paris, who were
noisily advocating the re-conquest of the former colony, hoping to take advantage
of a divided Haiti and the momentum of European counter-revolution. As rumours
of French spies spread across the countryside, Christophe legitimately worried that
the French monarchy was plotting to restore control over Haiti. When the French
envoy to the island was discovered with papers indicating that the French did not con
sider Haiti to be truly independent and were hoping to reassert French control, Chris
tophes worst fears were validated. According to Baron de Vastey, a former slave and an
adviser to the HaiLian government, Christophe figured that the French would try to
subdue Haiti by intrigue and corruption', and so Henry saw more than ever the
importance of making Lhe people acquainted with their rights and their duties; and
he determined upon diffusing the light of instruction throughout all classes of his sub
jects. To the Haitian public, Christophe and allied intellectuals argued that education
would safeguard their freedom against the French, by providing concrete skills and,
mote importantly, tying Haitians to the national state and its anti-slavery mission/

280 Peter Wirzbicki

Reaching out to British allies like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforcc, and
with the aid of the African-American school-master Prince Saunders, Christophe built
a number of British schools along the Lancasterian model in northern Haiti. The
schools were run in English, both a savvy tactic to win British abolitionist support
and a cultural blow against the French. By teaching their citizens English, the
schools would encourage the Haitians to fed like a different people than their
former colonial masters. Christophe, in the words of a British travel writer, was
anxious to abolish everything that indicated their former possession of the island.
British volunteers were recruited to move to Haiti and serve as teachers. It was also
interesting that the King chose explicitly to use the Lancasterian model. This was a
system of education in which, rather than rely exclusively on one teacher, the more
advanced studenLs were tasked with passing on information to younger students,
ideally creating a collaborative and engaged learning environment. The system was
popular among Atlantic radicals, especially Latin American revolutionary Simon
Bolivar, who invited Joseph Lancaster to Venezuela in the 1820s to set up schools in
the newly liberated Latin American nation.*1
Not only would these schools prevent French intrigue, but Christophe intended that
they send a clear message about die intellectual capabilities of black Haitians. Accord
ing to the Haitian King, ihc schools would prove to the impious, by facts and by
examples, that the blacks, like the whites, are men'. The acquisition of knowledge
was a crucial component of a transformation from being enslaved and degraded to
being restored to the dignity of man, and to society. Boosters of the educational
system explicitly linked its success to that of Haitis revolution, declaring that,
unlike in France, where revolution had led to anarchy and barbarism, the revolution
in out country ... has inclined us to civilisation and the light of knowledge.g
By demonstrating to the French and British publics that they had created a success
ful civilization, Haitian propagandists were laying claim to the status of an enlightened
nalion. In Enlightenment thought, a groups humanity was directly tied to the
members ability to reason, and therefore a successful educational system was defini
tive proof'of human equality. Christophe, who admired the enlightened leadership of
Frederick the Great, was very much in this Enlightenment-era tradition. On the otheT
side, French cx-colonists, who hoped to convince the monarchy to re-conquer Haiti,
were arguing LhaL the lack of education in Haiti proved the disorderly state of the
nation, and justified French intervention. A quality education system would earn
the worlds respect and forestall European invasion, Haitian intellectuals hoped.
After having established our rights by the sword, one wrote, we acquire a new
lustre in the eyes of the world, when we defend them by the pen.10
While one part of Christophes educational theory faced outward, to prove black
intellectual capability to a sceptical white world, ihe oilier hall looked inward, to
create institutions and educated citizens who would empower the Haffian state and
its anti-slavery mission. Christophe joined a long list of nation-builders who used
schools as a mechanism to create national communities, but in his case the schools
would build a specifically and explicitly anti-slavery community. From the schools,
Christophe declared, will proceed a Tace of men capable of defending by their

Slavery & Abolition 281

knowledge and talents those rights so long opposed by tyrants'. Much like later apostles
of democratic education in America, Christophe claimed to value education, at least
partly, because it was necessary to produce proud and free citizens. In this he was a
far cry from his successor, Jean-Pierre Boyer, who would allow Christophes schools
to fall into disrepair and was supposed to have believed that to extend education
was to sow Lhe seed of revolution1. Christophe ran an authoritarian state, and his com
mitment to democracy can be reasonably questioned. But his hatred of slavery cannot
be. Moreover, the fact thaL Cliristophe sought to justify his educational system as a Lool
that would create an anti-slavery citizenry demonstrates what he thought his own citi
zens desired/1
Particularly important to Lhe creation of these ideas about education was
Christophes aide Pompe ValcnLin Vastey. Vastey, who was made a nobleman in
Christophes kingdom, has received the most scholarly attention for his anti
colonialism, as his Colonial System Unveiled is rightfully seen as a classic in early anti
imperialist rhetoric. Connected to his anLi-colonialism was his fierce advocacy for an
educational policy in Haiti that would demonstrate the intellectual prowess of
African people. Ilis essay Reflexions on the Blacks and Whites, printed in 1817 in
French and then quickly translated into English, was one of the earliest and strongest
arguments against scientific racism published by a black writer. Quoting scientific
and philosophical authorities like Buffon and Montesquieu, and expressing solidarity
with 500 Millions of Rlack, Yellow, and Red Men, scattered over the Globe, who
were claiming their rights, Vastey Lraced the history of Africa to show its early leadership
in the arts and sciences. A second pamphlet, Political Remarks on Some French Works and
Newspapers, continued his ruthless assault on the ex-colonialists, arguing that with the
arrival of schools and academics in Haiti, Haitians were proving French ideas of black
inequality incorrect. It is by Lhe cultivation of letters, arts, and science alone, that we
shall be able to excite Lhe moral world against the enemies of humanity, he wrote. A
third essay on the history of the Haitian Revolution included an appendix listing the
schools now operating in Haiti.u
In the end, Christophes goal of a modern educational system in Haiti was not suc
cessful in his home country. After Christophes death, Boyer, who took control of a
united Haiti, declined to invest in education, and British travellers were disappointed
to see old schools used as barracks. Vastey was arrested, and William Wilberforce had
to plead with the new government for clemency for the Haitian writer. If momentarily
defeated, Christophes idea of black empowerment Lhrough education would soon
reappear in America, where it would be central to Lhe burgeoning black civil
society. The characteristics that marked his pedagogical theory - that intellectual
aspiration would prove black capability to an outside world, that it would cTeale
proud and free citizens who would resist slavery, and that it was a project that reflected
the hopes of Africans throughout the Atlantic - would be powerfiilly reflected in later
African-American discourses. Most important, Haitian thought created a clear link
between black ideas of education and aspirations to egalitarian universalism.1
lhe debates about the place of education in post-revolutionary Haiti exposed Lhe
intellectual hopes of Haitian revolutionaries, but might have done little to influence

282 Peter Mrzbicki

fer away Boston and Philadelphia had it not been for the extraordinary African-Amer
ican traveller Prince Saunders. Characteristic of the confident culturally adaptable
black travellers of the Atlantic world, Saunders moved across and beLwecn national,
imperial and linguistic borders, revealing the transnational horizons of black activists
in the early nineteenth century. From 180S to 1825, Saunders travelled between worlds,
starting out among dour black-clad New England ministers, moving to the elegance of
London aristocratic society and ending up casting his lot with ex-slave revolutionaries
in Haiti. In the early 1820s, he did more than any previous American individual to
connecL the experiences of the Haitian republic with black communities across the
Northern seaboard. At the same time he was tireless in his efforts to create black edu
cational institutions, making a concrete legacy out of the uplift ideology that he took
from Haiti.11
In 1808, the young Saunders was recommended to famed UniLarian minister
William Ellery Channing, to assist with the elevation of the colored people, in
Boston. Saunders father, Cuff, had been a former slave and a Revolutionary war
veteran while his moLhcr, Phyllis, was born in Guinea and broughL as a slave to
New England. Born free and baptized in Lebanon, Connecticut, Saunders had lived
in Vermont before becoming a teacher in Colchester, Connecticut, and enrolling at
the Moors Charity School at Dartmouth College. He soon became a Lcachcr at
Bostons African School, a poorly funded segregated school on the north slope of
Beacon Hill. Among the overseers of the African School was a while minister
named William Emerson, whose young son Ralph Waldo would one day himself
become a prominent anti-slavery voice. In 1815, Saunders convinced a wealthy
white merchant, Abiel Smith, to donate $4000 to the school, which would be re
named Lhe Smith School, and would educate most of the free black leadership of
the city in the antebellum years. Saunders quickly rose to a position of leadership in
the small black community of Boston: he was active in the African Masonic Society
and helped found the Belles Lettres Society, a model ot the later black literary organ
izations he would lead and he gave regular public addresses on behalf of black edu
cation. He was a prominent supporter of Paul Cuffee, the black merchant from
nearby New Bedford who was then crafting plans for free blacks to emigrate to
Africa, arranging for Cuffee to speak in Boston and navigating the complex politics
associated with accepting British aid on the eve of the War of 1812. He was even
briefly engaged to Cuffees daughter.15
Three years later, in 1815, Saunders travelled to England to meet with British aboli
tionist William WiTberforcc. On Wilberforces suggestion, Saunders sailed to Haiti,
arriving in early lRlfi. Ostensibly, he was to help introduce vaccination and to build
schools on the Lancaslerian model. Henry Christophe was immediately attracted to
Saunders, writing to Thomas Clarkson that Saunders gave him 'great satisfaction.
Saunders became fiercely loyal to Christophe and an adviser to the king, assisting
with the construction of the educational system and running at least one Haitian
school. He brought the smallpox vaccination to Haiti - itself a potent symbol of
Enlightenment aspirations - and Lraincd doctors in Haiti in the new medical technol
ogy. Given his role, he almost certainly met and collaborated with Vastey. Travelling

Slavery & Abolition 283

back lo England on official Haitian government business, he became a minor celebrity
in aristocratie circles {supposedly the British mistook his first name for a title and
assumed he was royalty), as he successfully helped to recruit British teachers. He
befriended the popular author Amelia Opie, his parties attracted Dukes and he was
a regular guest of Lhc Countess of Cork. When snubbed by a white American lady
in London, Saunders had the pleasure of informing her that he could not have
eaten with her anyway since, 1 am engaged to breakfast with the Prince Regent, this
morning. Meanwhile he published his Haytiun Papers, which presented a number
of official documents from Christ ophes regime in an attempt to prove that wise
laws could be written by all black men, or men of colour16
Despite his success among the British aristocracy, Saunders was developing a sense
of black identity and solidarity that would inform the rest of his life. Even his early
career in New England, when he seemed perfectly willing to seek British help in
order to create a black colony in Africa in the midst of the War of 1812, suggesLs he
valued his citizenship in an imagined black Atlantic community far more than he
did loyalty to any particular nation-state. Much as Christophe conceived of an edu
cation system that would modernize the state of Haiti, so Saunders saw the develop
ment of intellectual institutions as something that would aid the descendents of
Africans, my brethren, achieve their rightfiil place in the world. British reactionaries
were horrified, in 1816, to hear Saunders belittle European monarchs while celebrating
the Haitian government which would subvert the relations of the western world as at
present constituted, and give Africa its natural rank, if not superiority, in the scale of
mankind. Haiti was not recognized by Britain, and, in the reactionary climate after the
Napoleonic wars, slave-owners accused Saunders and others of delivering] inflam
matory harangues at meetings of a motley assemblage of white, black, and tawneycoloured people, collected together at a tavern; the direct tendency of which is to
excite insurrection in our West India Islands. In the conservative imagination, Saun
ders anti-slavery work evoked the spectre of Paineite plebian radicalism, mixed up
with slave rebellion and the reversal of racial hierarchies.1'
In the appendix to his IJaytian Papers, an unfairly forgotten gem of early black
radicalism, Saunders demonstrated that he shewed his own life as embedded within
Atlantic flows of knowledge and power. The end of the slave trade, he argued, could
be found in the long fall-out of the French Revolution. He described the devastation
of the revolution as partly a form of divine punishment as Europe, the oppressor of
Africa and America, saw itself in turn covered with crimes and inundated with the
blood of her own Sons. Moreover the consequences of the European upheaval were
unabashedly good: out of the crucible of revolution had come the freedom of
nations and Lhe reassertion of black contribution to the pursuits of commerce, of
science, and of arL. Praising Lhe British philanthropists who had ended the slave
trade, and referencing implicitly the Haitian Revolution, he declared a new era
arises for Africa. Saunders drew on common understandings of the inevitable rise
and decay of civilizations to argue that Africans were not inherently deficient, but
were only slowly coming out of a dark age, much as Europe recently had. In a remark
able statement that encapsulated how the Haitian Revolution had created new

284 Peter Wirzbicki

imaginarles and ideological horizons for black activisLs like himself, Saunders wrote
that the light of knowledge follows the impulse of revolutions, and travels, succes
sively, over the surface of the globe.18
If a new day was dawning for African people throughout the Atlantic world, Saun
ders admitted that they still had powerful enemies. Too many Europeans believed that
blacks were inherently inferior. Tn response, Saunders exhorted, black leaders must
devote ourselves to the cultivation of letters, of arts and sciences, which develope
intellect'. Black intellectual achievement would be the first sign of the 'new era that
the Haitian Revolution had inaugurated.1
Coming back to America, Saunders brought with him Haitian ideas about edu
cation from Haiti, and a desire to emulate Christophers investment in schools and
otheT institutions of learning. By May 1818, Saunders was back in New England
where his exploits among the British aristocracy earned him the moniker the cele
brated African in newspaper accounts. He told a while minister, William Bentley of
Salem, that the jealousies around Christophe had disappointed him. Christophe,
apparently, had disapproved of the expenses that Saunders racked up in England,
and briefly dismissed him. But his two interests - support for the state of Haiti and
of developing black intellectual institutions - remained. The Salem Gazette reported
that Saunders, having arrived in the Massachusetts seaport town, was engaging in
measures for improving the intellectual and moral conditions of his race. That
month, Bentley reported that Saunders and the black minister Nathaniel Paul were
attempting to raise money to encourage the education of Africans for the ministry.
Tn Boston, newspapers printed accounts of Saunders speech on black education along
side reviews of Vasteys Observations on the Black and Whites. By July Saunders had
reprinted Haytian Papers, giving American audiences access to Christophes proclama
tions on education.20
Saunders had the most influence in Philadelphia, the northern city with one of the
largest and most settled black communities. On 30 September 1818, he addressed the
newly formed Augustine Society for the Education of People of Colour. Although
Northern free blacks had long expressed interest in elevation and education, the
founding of the Augustine Society marked a new phase in the maturity and develop
ment of black intellectual institutions. Led by the el he of Philadelphia black men,
including Rev. John Gloucester, James Forten and Samuel Cornish, it was the first
of the major black-run literary and intellectual groups, and helped set the tone for
the dozens Lhat would follow throughout the country.
Saunders was asked to speak at an opening event, and his speech, prinLcd along with
a copy of the groups constitution, was sold as a pamphlet foT 12V2 ccnLs at Matthew
Careys famous bookstore. As in his earlier writings, Saunders was impressed by the
vagaries of history, how great civilizations rose and fell, an important point for
someone who believed that now was the time for Africa to rise. There were, he
claimed, three such places in the world where enlightened men were creating civiliza
tions worthy of respect. The first was in Europe, the second was in the northern and
eastern sections of our country, where the Augustine Society was now engaged and the
third was The island of Hayti. Saunders saw post-revolutionary Haiti as one of the

Slavery - Abolition 285

central sites of intellectual modernity. This statement was of crucial importance as iL

linked Haiti as a place of inspiration to Lhc founding of the Augustine Society, which
was tasked with emulating the intellectual production of the Haitian people.
Months after he presided over the inauguration of the Augustine Society, Saunders
surfaced again, this time as one of the first black northerners to speak out in favour of
emigration to Haiti. Saunders, the former adviser to Henry Christophe, was thus
present at the beginning of both the push for Haitian emigration and the creation
of one of the most important intellectual clubs in early African-American life. Just
two years earlier, the white-led American Colonization Society had begun Lo advocate
for the colonization of free blacks to Africa. Philadelphia black leaders, including those
who would form the Augustine Society, had presided over a massive meeting in 1817
that had decisively rejected the white-led Colonization Society. It was in this context
that Saunders presented Haiti as an alternative to Liberian Colonization at a meeting
of the American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Without naming
the American Colonization Society directly, he expressed his distrust of white colonizationists whom observation and experience might teach us to beware. Emigration to
Haiti, Saunders aTgued, was far more practical than colonization to Liberia and, unlike
Africans, the black authorities in Haiti were themselves desirous of receiving emi
grants from this country More important, though, emigration to Haiti would serve
to re-unite the warring factions in Haiti, turning the divided nation into a beacon
for the subsequent improvement and elevation of the African race. Saunders
framed this emigration in the language of religious redemption, casting AfricanAmerican emigrants as biblical peace-makers', who would be divine instruments of
the pacification and reunion of the Haytian people. Saunders was deploying language
similar to boosters of the American Colonization Society, but inverting its purpose,
turning the rhetoric of divine redemption into something that would strengthen a
black republic forged in slave rebellion.
In 1820, Saunders was back in Haiti, arriving just in time to see the collapse of the
regime of his patron Henry Christophe, who killed himself following a stroke in
October and a coup among his inner guards. Saunders would continue to travel
back and forth between Philadelphia and Haiti for the better part of the decade, but
he would never have as good relations with Christophes successor, Jean-Pierre
Royer. Particularly upsetting was the fact that Boyer did not share Christophes
passion fur building a national school system. Writing to Thomas Clarkson in 1823,
SaundeTs complained Lhal the numerous schools and academies which were estab
lished throughout Lhc Kings dominions are abolished. An outraged Saunders reported
that Haitian officers from the South believed that education must not be too general;
if it is ... there will be nobody lo work. He continued to work for Haitian emigration
though, and, after 1825, spent the resL of his life in Haiti, working for Boyer despite the
mutual distrust that marked their relationship. When he died in 1839, American
obituaries even claimed (probably erroneously) that he had been named, at different
times, as the Haitian ALlomcy General and Lhc Bishop of Haiti,*'
Other black activists in America soon look the baton from Saunders, and as they
continued his campaign for black education, they did not forget the importance of

286 Peter Wirzbicki

the Haitian example. The Board of Managers of the Haytian Emigration Society, for
instance encouraged possible emigrants to diligently attend to the education of
your children, seeing education and Haitian emigration as linked aspects of black
uplift. When advocating Haitian emigration, as William Watkins did in 1825, black
activists declared that the value of Haiti lay not only in its example of slave rebellion
and black agency, but also because it was a a republic in which the arts and sciences
begin to flourish. Like Saunders, Watkins saw Haiti as a crucial site of intellectual
creativity, one that proved racist assertions of black inferiority incorrect. Many
black thinkers also continued to value education as a project whose importance lay
in how it would improve conditions for the entire community of transatlantic black
activists. F.A., a wriLer from Boston, argued that in education the prime object is
to give elevation and happiness to our coloured population, whether they stayed in
the USA, emigrated lo Haili or were colonized to Africa.
This link between the example of Haiti and the need for elevation among black
Northerners was strengthened by David Walker, the most important African-Ameri
can intellectual before 1830. He dedicated his famous Appeal to coloured people of
the world, evidence of his transnational identity. He felt especially close to Haiti,
declaring the state to he 'the glory of the blacks and terror of tyrants. But while his
sense of an African idenliLy lhat spanned the Atlantic is well known, his place as a
booster of black education and intellectual development is less well known. In addition
to calling for black resistance and even rebellion, Walker argued repeatedly for
increased black attention to education and personal improvement. In his first major
speech, in 1828, Walker had argued that white Americans delight in our degra
dation ... glory in keeping us ignorant. Walker saw the solution in the creation of
institutions that could unite the efforts of black people throughout the USA and
encourage education. 'There ought to be a spirit of emulation and inquiry among
us, Walker wrote, declaring that such an emphasis on education would ultimately
resulL in rescuing us from an oppression, unparalleled, I had almost said, in the
annals of the world. Lack of education, both intellectual and religious, would,
Walker told the audience, produce more scoundrels like the black man who had just
colluded to defraud 'the government of our brethren, the Haydens." '
It was David Walkers masterpiece, his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the Worldy
that frilly revealed the radical extent of his ideas about black intellectual life and the
way that he linked it wilh Haiti. Walker divided his pamphlet into articles. The
first declared black oppression to be caused by slavery, while the second was subtitled
our wretchedness in consequence of ignorance. Haiti, which could never be subdued
by the combined forces of the whole world demonstrated that ignorance and treach
ery ... are not the natural elements of Lhe blacks, as the Americans try to make us
believe. White Americans, Walker charged, keep us in the most death-like ignorance
by keeping us from all source of information. For Walker, few concepts were as
mutually reinforcing as ignorance and tyranny. Educated people - of good sense
and learning - would never submit to slavery, but would, like the Haitians, rebel
instead. In Walkers calculation, then, black elevation was not only essential for
people of African descent to reach Lheir full potential and dignity; it was also a

Slavery & Abolition 287

direct blow against white oppression. For colored people to acquire learning in this
country, Walker wrote, makes tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foun
dation ... Lhc bare name of educating the coloured people, scares our cruel oppressors
almost to death. Walkers belief - that white Americans would treat black education as
a direct assaulL on their power - was demonstrated as well, as white mobs violently
destroyed black schools in New Hampshire, Canterbury, Connecticut and elsewhere/
Increased interest in the works of Baron de Vasteys demonstrated a growing audi
ence for news on the linked causes of education and the state of Haiti. The late 1810s
and early 1820s saw the translation and republication of many of Vasteys works in
American and British newspapers, which turned the Haitian intellectual into a wellknown figure among those interested in black education. Newspapers as diverse as
the New York Daily Advertiser, the City of Washington Gazelle, and the Rhode Island
American published reviews and excerpts of Vaslcys work. The most important
notice of Vasteys writings came in an 1821 article in the North American Review, argu
ably the most prominent and respected intellectual journal in Lhc early republic. White
supporters of the Colonizationist movement quoted Vasley as evidence that the slaves
disliked their condition. And during the national turmoil surrounding the Missouri
Compromise, Vastey was cited by prominent anti-slavery pamphleteers as an
example of both the intelligence of Africans and even Lhc jusLice of slave revolt.
Even elites like the American Philosophical Society were stocking Vasteys books.
Since Vastey had been so concerned with Haitian education, the spread of his works
helped draw attention to the issue of black education. Freedoms Journal, the pioneer
ing black newspaper, frequently ran lengthy excerpts from Vasteys writings. In one
they published Vasteys historical works that were intended to prove that, in Vasteys
words, Africa was the cradle of the arts and sciences. Another Freedoms Journal
article republished Vasteys reply to the French colonialists, an article that emphasized
French brutality in pre-revolutionary Haiti/'
Along with Vastey, African-American newspapers and intellectuals reported eagerly
on the development of education in the black republic. In 1828, Freedoms Journal
reported, perhaps a bit optimistically, that in Haiti, thanks to government support
and the construction of common schools and a medical school, education is almost
at every mans door. In 1837, the Colored American published a leLLer from office of
the Haytian Abolition Society, which described no less than fifteen male and female
schools in this city, also a national college, in which sciences, languages, drawing,
music, etc. are taught. The paper commented that this demonstration of Haitian
educational development proved that blacks were as capable as European and T-atin
American governments at running states. As late as 1847, the National Era, an aboli
tionist paper with a large black readership, was fascinated by the example of Haitian
schools and reported on the crowded schools which were rapidly increasing in the
black republic/8
Black Americans had been interested in self-education for as long as there had been
free communities, but they eagerly latched onto the example of Haitian schools, taking
them as a model for their own activity. Thanks to the work of Saunders and Vastey,
Haiti had become a symbol of black genius among Northern African-Americans.

288 Peter Wtrzbicki.

This image of Haiti was intended to disprove while racism, to demonstrate black
ability for civilization and, simultaneously, through celebrating Haiti as an aspirational
model, to encourage black intellectuals to emulate the accomplishments of their
Haitian forbearers. Writing about Haiti, one New York black activist wrote that
through education, in the words of a New York activist, the tyrants spell will be
broken. Another writer pointed out that while American blacks were excluded from
white schools, people of African descent in Haiti, having access to good education,
were not as inferior to any ofhis fairer brethren. African-American observers contin
ued to show deep interest in the state ol Haitis education system. When hundreds of
Americans emigrated to Haiti in 1825, advocates like Belfast Burton made a point that
the government was preparing to build schools for the emigrants. Three years later, in
1828, Freedom's Journal advocated that schools be established in every city, town, and
village, of the Republic. Comparing Haiti to ancienL Sparta, the author argued that a
national system of education would ensure Haitian liberty and would allow Haiti to 'in
a few years ... take her rank among the nations of Lhe earth, respecLed and
honoured. 9
The most remarkable illustration of how black thinkers continued to link the cause
of Haiti and the cause of education in America came in 1829, when the Rights of All, a
New York newspaper, wrote a lengthy commentary on an educational proclamation by
Henry Christophe. The author began by describing the sorry state of education and
intellectual development available to free blacks in the NorLh. Knowledge is power,
the Rights of All wrote, deploying a trite phrase given new meaning in the context
of support for the education system in the revolutionary black republic. Let our
coloured population once become as learned as while people, Lhe newspaper declared,
and the tyrants will lose their power over black Northerners. Christophes proclama
tion, printed underneath the commentary, demonstrated powerfully the continued
interest that black boosters of education had in connecting their arguments to the
state of Haiti and the legacy of Henry ChrisLophes policies. Just as black Northerners
admired Haitians foT having overthrown slavery, the Rights of All asked LhaL they
admiTe the educational policy of the Haitian government.'1'1
T.ike Christophe, many black educaLors in America embraced Lhe Lancastrian
method of education. In 1839, for instance, a young Samuel Ringgold Ward was
hired to teach in the Coloured Lancasterian School, in Poughkeepsie. Tn 1828,
Isaiah Degrass, a black teenager wrote a letter to the New York Manumission
Society thanking them for running a school conducted on the Lancasterian system,
and claiming that the school was responsible for the improvement of the scholars.
The system was also used by the African Tree School in New York City, which gradu
ated a number of important black intellectuals, including Alexander Crummell, James
McCune Smith and Henry Highland Garnet. The Lancasterian System, in which older
students taught the younger ones, may have appealed to black teachers both because it
maximized scarce resources and because it allowed black students to take a certain
amount of control over their own education. More interestingly, some scholars have
speculated that it may have appealed to African-Americans because it was similar to
covert styles of learning practiced under slavery. In Louisiana, a state with significant

Slavery & Abolition 28J

cultural and linguistic ties to Haiti, black children in St Lan (fry Parish went to a school
modelled along the Lancasterian method. A historian of these schools speculates that
Lancasterian methods were popular because the structure supports self-teaching
among students and was reminiscent of the clandestine schools in other parts of
Louisiana. A direct connection, of course, is hard to prove conclusively, but the fact
that both Haitian leaders and American blacks reached for similar pedagogical
methods, one associated with slaves illegally teaching themselves to read, reveals the
radical contexts and possibilities behind black education.31
By the late 1820s, the exhortation of leaders like Saunders and Walker, and newspa
pers like the Freedom's Journal to replicate Haitis educational system had successfully
positioned questions of education and elevation as central to black politics. Although
pedagogical questions interested many Americans in this period, African-Americans
had special reasons to be interested. White Americans locked them out of the
normal means of education, and then used their ensuing lack of education as evidence
for why black Northerners did not deserve equal rights - including the right to edu
cation. Both public and private places for intellectual development were closed to
black Northerners. As a writer to the Freedoms Journal exclaimed Conscious of the
unequal advantages enjoyed by our children, we feel indignant against tho.se who
are continually vituperating us for the ignorance and degradation of our people.
Writers for black newspapers grimly tallied the cities that segregated or ilat-oul
banned black education. Private lyceums and libraries remained segregated through
out the antebellum period. William C. Nell reported that in Boston large audiences in
Lyceum lectures have been thrown almost into spasms by the presence of one colored
man in their midst.3'
In response, black leaders formed independent intellectual clubs that flourished in
the 1820s and 1830s. In Philadelphia, as we have seen, there was the Augustine Edu
cational Society, founded in 1818 because prejudices, powerful as they are unjust, have
reared to impede our progress in the paths of science and of virtue. In 1827, a black
traveller in Boston visited the Debating Club, which consisted of about 20 black
members. Later would come the Boston Mutual Lyceum, which was organized in
1833 to give classes on reading, writing and math, and which debated topics such as
what are the best means to adopt, to remove the prejudice which exists against the
people of color? In New York, the Phoenixonian Society, organized in the 1830s,
was the most prominent, and included such future leaders as Samuel Ringgold
Ward, Alexander Crummell and James McCune Smith. In Boston, the Adelphic
Union, beginning in 1837, would be one of the most successfid, lasting for at least a
decade and bringing together some of the most important white and black intellectuals
and activists of the region. In her exhaustive study of black educational institutions,
Dorothy Porter identified at least 46 such clubs, in cities as large as Manhattan and
as small as Schenectady. By the 1850s, even the West Coast could boast the
San Francisco Athenaeum, a literary association with an 800-volume library.33
The Haitian Revolution, and the need to emulate the Haitian state, was one of the
most popular topics of discussion at these black intellectual dubs. Bostons Adelphic
Union, for instance, may have heard from the elite of the regions thinkers {including

290 Peter Wirzbicki

prominent Transcendentalists and abolitionists) but the members were most attracted
to lectures about the I laitian Revolution. In 1838, Thomas Brooks, a black gentleman
who had been living in Haiti, lectured on the localities, manners, and customs of the
place. Three years later, on 19 January 1841, the members of the black lecture series
heard from white merchant William M. Chace on the Character of Toussaint LOuverlure. It was such a popular topic that it was repeated the next year, this time by the
fuLure abolitionist Henry I. Bowditch. The same year, James McCune Smith praised
ToussainL LOverture as brave and virtuous in a lecture in front of the Phoenixonian
Society (renamed the Hamilton Lyceum), in New York City. And black intellectuals
continued Lo praise Henry Christophes interest in education. In Frederick Douglass
newspapers, a correspondent in Haiti reported on the establishment of a university in
Port-All-Prince, adding that education was among the germs wherein lie the future
welfare of Haiti. As late as 1854, William Wells Brown, in his lecture on the Haitian
Revolution, commended Christophe as Lhe patron of education ... there are still on
the island schools that were founded by him when king. These intellectual dubs
played crucial roles keeping the memory of the HaiLian Revolution alive in antebellum
black thought.'4'1
These intellectual groups reached a remarkable cross-section of the black popu
lation. In border cities like Baltimore, they even embraced Lite enslaved. Frederick
Douglass was admitted Lo the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society while he
was still a slave, despite Lhe fact that it was supposedly open only to free blacks.
Years later he wrote simply, T owe much to the society of these young men. In New
Orleans, black and Creole writers even published a journal that drew on Romantic
themes. There was little that challenged pro-slavery ideology as much as slaves
eagerly reading, writing, debating and engaging with the works of famous intellectuals.
Under more direct surveillance and threats, black intellectuals in slave states did not
have the freedom or relative luxuries that their northern counterparts did, and the
reach of these clubs was, no doubt, more circumscribed by white authority in the
South. Still, their existence in slave states, however limited, gives new meaning to
Laurent Dubois call to re-examine the intellectual history of the enslaved?5
Intellectual and material exchange between Haiti and free blacks continued
throughout the period. The Haitian example was, obviously, important first and fore
most at an ideological level to the burgeoning abolition movement. But the impact of
Haiti was material and financial as well as ideological. In 1836, for instance, the
recenLly founded Haylian Abolition Society donaLed two barrels of sugar to Lhe Amer
ican AnLi-Slaverv Society. The ideological importance of HaiLi did not end wiLh the
memory of the revolution itself. Haitian intellectuals, like M. Pierre Rindiere who wrote an early history of Haiti - advertised their books for black Americans to
buy, wrote articles for American newspapers and in other ways maintained contact
with the free black North. Black newspapers like Frederick Douglass North Star
sent correspondents to Haiti to directly report on its condition.46
The political impulse written into both the concept of elevation and the structure of
anLebdlum intellectual clubs had interesting ramifications for hlack gender norms.
Many male boosters assumed that womens educational roles were auxiliary to male

Slavery & Abolition 291

schools, or that womens institutions would only teach the circumscribed set of skills
associated with classically feminine education like sewing and cooking. But black
women did not accept the limited place offered Lo Lhcm by male leaders, and
quickly transformed their literary clubs into venues to debaLe slavery, abolition and
womens rights. The Female Literary Society of Philadelphia, which was in regular
contact with William Lloyd Garrison, is a well-known example. Tn Boston, Maria
Stewart, a groundbreaking black feminist, played a major part in creating and sustain
ing the elevation ideology in the city (despite often virulent opposition from black
male leadership), arguing that uplift would be a political process that would necessarily
include women. All male-led intellectual clubs were not exclusive. William C. Nell, a
leader of Bostons Adelphic Union, invited women to address a mixed audience well
before such behaviour was considered normal. Nell admitted that having female
orators was unorthodox when, writing to ask Maria Weston Chapman to speak, he
acknowledged that this is somewhat an unusual, though not an unprecedented
request, but 'Miss. Crimk, had already lectured to the Union. It is difficult to under
estimate how radical and dangerous this must have seemed: white women addressing
promiscuous and biracial audiences. Womens roles in these intellectual clubs were
contradictory: on one hand, by providing a space for women to practice reading,
debating and engaging in the public without male supervision or control, the clubs
fostered a sense of independence and political agency that would inform later black
feminism. On the other hand, black women were often shuttled into separate organ
izations where they were excluded from the processes of leadership formation that
made so many fraternal organizations conduits to abolitionist leadership.3'
These clubs were formative places of not just detached intellectual debate but also
political organizing and the creation of radical subjectivities. As one black writer in
Philadelphia explained, soon, indeed, slavery must fall, which will be the conse
quence of active and well-organized associations, operating upon public sentiment.
And so the author, Peterboro, advocated societies for moral and intellectual improve
ment which would hasten abolition. A number of important black leaders, among
them William C. Nell, James McCune Smith and Frederick Douglass had significant
interaction with these organizations as they were becoming politically active. Nell
led the Adelphic Union, Smith was a member of the Phoenixonian Society and Dou
glass had been a member of the East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society. The
radical potential of these clubs was illustrated well by Alexander Crummells descrip
tion of the New York-based Phoenixonian Literary Society. The group met every
Fourth of July, a day which, for them, evoked the anniversary of New Yorks emanci
pation law, not the nations independence. Their celebration rejected the chauvinistic
celebrations common to the day and instead met to discuss 'the sublime and beautiful
in the poetry of Wordsworth. While reading Romantic poetry, they would dream of the
day when they could start an insurrection and free our brethren in bondage, evidence
of how interlinked intellectual elevation and radical political consciousness were in
the minds of many black intellectuals/8
The most remarkable illustration of the ways in which the legacy of Haiti affected
antebellum black ideas about intellectual uplift was the 1841 lecture by James

292 Peter

I
5

*S

Wirzbicki

McCune Smith to the New York Stuyvesant Institute. Although the Sluyvcsanl Insti
tute, an incorporated private library on Bleecker Street, was owned by white elites,
it was open to black speakers and black audiences and Smiths speech was widely
reported in the black press. In the speech, Smith, who had been a member of the Phoenixonian Society and would lecture before the Adelphic Union, justified the Haitian
Revolution as 'the legitimate fruit of slavery, and even declared the massacres of the
whites to be 'the consequences of withholding from men their liberty. Smiths
overall message was that caste inequalities inevitably led to bloody revolution.
Drawing explicitly on the work of Baron de Vastey (as would Henry Bibb in his
famous letters to his old master), Smith demonstrated the rapid intellectual strides
made by Haitians since slavery. Only in the last three paragraphs did Smiths political
agenda become clear, when he described how ihe spiriL of caste was invading
New York. One of the local manifestations, he told his audience, of the incongruous
and undermining influence of caste, was Lhe exclusion of black children from the
schools in the city of New York. lv
The clear association that many black intellectuals had with Haiti and with the
transatlantic project of black empowerment demonstrated that the elevation trope
continued to come from a radical perspective. In 1845, for instance, William
C. Nell reported on a black Northerner who was denied enLry to Brown University
and who was preparing instead to move Lo HaiLi. The association of Lhe Hailian
Revolution with black empowerment and intellectual capability spread among
white allies, most notably when Ralph Waldo Emerson, using similar language as
Prince Saunders before him, declared that Lhe arrival of such men as Toussaint,
and the Haitian heroes heralded the arrival of black intellect on Lhe world
stage. In a speech in front of the Hamiltonian Lyceum, the black minister Alexander
Crummell quoted this paragraph by Emerson, while arguing why black sludenLs
should seek education. As the Civil War approached, black Northerners and their
allies continued to associate the rise of Haiti with black demonstrations of intellec
tual development.4"
Writing in 1818, the Haitian intellectual Baron de Vastey liad argued that the very
fact of Haitis independence would itself change European thought. Is not our inde
pendence an object most interesting Lo Europe, most worthy of aLLracling the attention
of the philosopher, and the admiration of mankind? he asked. Vastey was correct:
Haitis success did demonstrate the possibility of an egaliLarian universalism, the
promise that happiness and knowledge may be diffused throughout the earth, even
if mosL Americans and conservative Europeans daied not face this prospect openly,
instead repressing lhe history of slave revolt under ever-more fantastic narratives of
barbarism and massacre. Not only did the memory of the Revolution itself - inter
preted variously as catastrophe or heroic example - shape imaginations and disrupt
racial narratives throughout the Atlantic world, but, thanks to the efforts of activists
like Prince Saunders and others, the Haitian example inspired those in the Northern
states who were creating the concrete institutions that would educate the black aboli
tionists who attacked American slaver}'.41

Slavery & Abolition 293

Notes
|1] [oanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slaver)': Gradual Emancipation and Race in New Englanil,
1780-1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 257. Elizabeth McHenry, Forgotten
Readers: Recovering ihc Lost History of African-American Literary Societies (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2(102); Frederick Cooper, 'Elevating the Race: The Social Thought of
Black Leaders, 1827-50, American Quarterly 24, no. 5 (1972): 606 - 7; Patrick Rael, Black Iden
tity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2002), 124-30; Stephen Kantrowitz, More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a
White Republic, 1829-1889 (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 122-71.
[2] Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pitts
burgh Press, 2009); Laurent Dubois, 'An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual
History of the Erench Atlantic, Social History 31, no. 1 (2006): 1-4; Domenico Losurdo, Lib
eralism: A Counter-History (New York: Verso, 2011 ), 151 3.
[3J Frederick Douglass quoted in David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of
Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1S8. On the Haitian Revo
lution, see Jeremy D. Popkin, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the. Abolition of
Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New
World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004);
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint l'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
(New York: Vintage, 1989); for a black eye-witness account, see Baron Pompee Valentin de
Vasley, An Essay on the Causes of the Revolution arid Civil Wars of Hayti {Exeter: Western
luminary Office, 1823), 15-42. On the reactions to the revolution see, Michel-Kolph Trouillot,
Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997). For
Southern white reactions, see Alfred Hunt, Haiti's Influence, on Antebellum America: Slumbering
Volcano in the Caribbean (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 107-46; for a
range of opinions on the impact of the Revolution see David Geggus, ed., The Impact of the
Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
2001); Mathew Clavin, Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and
Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010);
Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 2010).
[4J Hayti, The Rights of All, October 16,1829; 'Celebrations in Cincinnati, Liberator, July 30,1831;
Domestic Slave Trade, Boston Recorder, January 13, 1830; for work on the transnational appeal
of post-revolutionary Haiti, see Julius S. Scott, 'A Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American
Communication in the Age of the Haitian Revolution (PhD diss., Duke University, 1986); Ada
Ferrer, Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic, American Historical
Review 117, no. 1 (2012): 40-66.
[5] Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti State against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990), 51.
|6) Job. B. Clement, History of Education in Haiti: 1804-1915, Revista de. Historia De Amrica 88
(Jul-Dec 1979): 34; Religious Intelligence, The Christian Observer 16, no. 191 (1817), 745;
Tilomas Julius Oxley, Education in Hayti, Boston Recorder, April 17, 1819; Vastey, Essay on
the Causes of the Revolution, Appendix I, no. 1; The number 72,000 comes from Laurent
Dubois discussion of Henry Christophcs education polity. Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The After
shocks of History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012), 73. For official government descrip
tion of the Haitian school system seethe Appendix to the 1819 report of the British and Foreign
School Society. Fourteenth Report of the British and Foreign School Society to the General
Meeting, May 15, 1819 (London: Bensley and Son, 1819), 70-3.
[7]
Henri Christophe, Royaume d'Hayti: Dclaration du Roi (Cap-Hatien: Chez P. Roux, Impri
meur du Roi, 1816); Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, 79-81: Vasley, Essay on the
Causes of the Revolution, 214.

294 Peter Wirzbicki

[8] William Harvey, Sketches of Hayti; from the Expulsion of the French to the Deuth of Christophe
(I.ondon: LB. Seeley, 1827), 202.
[9] Irincc Saunders, Haytian Papers: A Collection of the Very Interesting Proclamations, and Other
Official Documents; Together with Some Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present Stule of the
Kingdom of llayti (London: W. Reed, 1816), 210-1; Barun de Vastey, 'Political Remarks on
Some French Works and Newspapers concerning Hayti, The. Pamphle.te.er 13, no. 25 (1818):
185.
[ 10] Vasrey, 'Political Remarks on Some French Works, 173.
[11] Education, The Rights of All, September 18, 1829; lob B. Clement, 'History of Education in
Haiti: 1804 1915, Revista de Historia de America 87 (January-June 1979): 165.
[12] liaron de Vastey, Reflexions on the Blacks and Whites: Remarks upon a Letter Addressed by
M. Mazeres, A French Ex-Colonialist, to f.C.L. Sismode de Sismondi, Containing Observations
on the Blacks and Whites, The Civilization of Africa, the Kingdom of Hayti, Etc ... (London:
F.B. Wright: 1817), 21; Baron de Vastey, Political Remarks on Some French Works and News
papers concerning Hayti, The Pamphleteer 13, no. 25 (1818): 209; Vastey, Essay on the Causes of
the Revolution, Appendix 1, no. 1. For more on Vastey see David Nicholls, Pompe Valentin
Vastey: Royalist and Revolutionary, Revista de Historia de Amrica, no. 109 (1990): 129-43.
[13] James Franklin, The Present State of Hayti (Santo Domingo) With Remarks on its Agriculture,
Commerce, Laws, Religion, Finances, and Population (London: John Murray, 1828), 398;
William Wilbcrforce, ESQ, to the Head of the Haytian Government, December 16, 1820 in
Robert Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, eds., The Correspondence of William Wilberforce
(London: |ohn Murray, 1840), 1:391-5.
[14] For recent work on Atlantic Creoles see Jane Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age. of Revolution
(Cambridge: Harvard University' Press, 2010); A.O. White, Black Leadership Class and Edu
cation in Antebellum Boston, fournit1 of Negr o Education 42, no. 4 (1973): 526.
113) A.O White, Black readership Class and Education in Antebellum Boston, 510; Barbara
W. Brown and James M. Rose, Black Routs in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650-1900 (Detroit,
MI: Gale Research, 1980), 362; Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of fames Forten
(New York: Oxford University' Press, 2002), 211; Rev. William Emerson was a member of the
Sub-Committee on the African School that, in 1800, first created the African School in the
first place. See William Crowell et al., City Document-No. 23: Report to the Primary School Com
mittee, fune 15,1846 on the Petition of Sundry Colored Persons (Boston: J.H. Eastburn, 1846), 16;
The Annual Visitation, Independent Chronicle, April 15, 1811; On international negotiations,
see Prince Saunders to Paul Cuffcc, June 25, 1812; Prince Saunders to Paul Cuffec, August 3,
1812. New Bedford Public Library, Cuffee Papers; Graham Russell Hodges, 'Prince Saunders,
in American National Biography, ed. Mark Carnes and John A. Carnes (New York: Oxford Uni
versity Press, 1999), 19:308.
[16]
Prince Sanders Boston Weekly Messenger, December 7, 1815; Saunders trip was described in
a fairly hostile account in Joseph Marryat, More Thoughts Occasioned by Two Publications
which the Authors call An Exposure of some of the Numerous Statements and Misrepresenta
tions Contained in a Pamphlet Commonly Known by the. Name Mr. Marryat's Pamphlet entitled
Thoughts, etc. and A Defence of the Bill for the Registration of Skives (London: J.M. Richard
son, 1816), 111; Henry Christophe to Thomas Clarkson, February' 5, 1816 in Earl Leslie
Griggs and Clifford H. Prator, eds., Henri Christophe and Thomas Clarkson: A Correspondence
(Berkeley: University' of California Press, 1952), 91; Vaccination in Hayti, The Eclectic Reper
tory and Analytical Review, Medical and Philosophical 6, no. 3 (1816): 395; Letter Received At
Boston, National Advocate, August 31, 1816; Harvey Newcomb, The 'Negro Pew. Being an
inquiry Concerning the Propriety of Distinctions in the House of God, on Account of Color
(Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1837), 67; Saunders, Haytian Papers, iii; Job. B. Clement, History
of F,ducaron in Haiti: 1804-1915, Revista de Historia De America 88 (July-Decemher
1979): 34.

Slavery - Abolition 295

[17] Saunders, Haytian Papers, 223; the book sold for 75 cents. See Haitian Papers Essex Register,
July 22,1818; Joseph Marryat, More Thoughts Still on the State of the West India Colonies and the.
Proceedings of the. African Institution (London; Hughes and Baynes, 1818), 39.
[18] Saunders, Haytian Papers, 215-6, 219.
[ 19) Ibid., 221.
|20J 'Prince Saunders ... New York Columbian, May 8,1818; William Bentley, The Diary of William
Bentley, D.D., Pastor of the East Church, Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, MA: Essex Institute,
1914), 4:517; The Influence of Christianity Seems to be Gradually Raising the Blacks in the
scale of society, Salem Gazette, May 29, 1818; Bentley, Diary, 4:522; 'Last Monday Evening
... . Paulsons American Daily Advertiser, May 27,1818.
[21] Prince Saunders, An Address Delivered ut Bethel Church, Philadelphia on the 30th of September,
1818 before the Pennsylvania Augustine Society for the Education of People of Colour (Philadel
phia: Joseph Iakestraw, 1818), 4; Just Received, and for Sale, Franklin Gazette, October 24,
1818.
[221 Prince Saunders, Memoir Presented to the American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of
Slavery, and Improving the Condition of the African Race (Philadelphia: Dennis Heart!, 1818),
3, 13, 15, 16. Black preference for Haitian Emigration over Liberian colonization, even at
this early point, was common. Awhile newspaper in 1819 reported that the free blacks of Phi
ladelphia have unanimously protested against the execution of the plan to colonize them in
Africa ... Their attention, it appears, is turned to Hayti. The Free Blacks ... . Newburyport
Herald, November 26, 1819.
[23] See Prince Saunders to Thomas Clarkson, May 2, 1823 in Earl Leslie Griggs and Clifford
H. Prator, eds., Henri Christophe and Thomas Clarkson: A Correspondence (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1952), 249; A Colored Man, Philadelphia National Enquirer, July 11, 1839;
Prince Saunders, Colored American, June 8, 1839.
[24j Peter Williams et al.. Address of the Board of Managers of the Haytian Emigration Society of
Coloured People: To the Emigrants Intending to Sail to the. Island of Hayti, in the brig De Win
Clinton (New York: Mahlon Day, 1824), 7; William Watkins, Address, Genius of Universal
Emancipation, August, 1825; F.A, African Education, Freedoms Journal, February 15, 1828.
[25] David Walker, Walker's Appeal, in Pour Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citi
zens of the World, but in Particular, and very Expressly, to those of the United States of America,
Written in Boston, State, of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829, 3rd ed. (Boston: David Walker,
1830), 24; David Walker, Address, Delivered before the General Colored Association at
Boston, Freedoms Journal, December 19, 1828; For more on Walkers ideas about education
see Peter Hinks, To Awake my Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum
Slave Resistance (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 91-115.
126] Walker, Appeal, 22,24,74, 37; For a good case study on antebellum white hostility to black edu
cation see; Hilary Moss, Educations Inequity: Opposition to Black Higher Education in Ante
bellum Connecticut, History of Education Quarterly 46, no. 1 (2006): 16-35.
1271 For reprints of Vastey see, Hayti, New York Daily Advertiser, May 13, 1818; From A Late
English Paper, City of Washington Gazette, May 21, 1818; Literature of Hayti, New England
Galaxy arid Masonic Magazine, May 29, 1818; Revolutionary Incidents, Rhode-Isiand Ameri
can, February 13, 1821. Vasteys work received a favorable review and lengthy description in
the august North American Review in 1821. See Hayti, North American Review 12, no. 30
(1821), 112-34. The British journal Quarterly Review, which called Vastey an intelligent
black, ran long excerpts of his Political Reflexions. Past and Present State of Hayti, Quarterly
Review 21, no. 42 (1819), 456-8; Vastey was quoted in The Annual Report of the Auxiliary
Society of Frederick County, VA. for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States
(Winchester, VA: Published by the Auxiliary Society, 1820), 20; for an example of Vastey
appearing during the debates engendered by the Missouri Compromise, see John Wright, A
Refutation of the Sophisms, Gross Misrepresentations, and Erroneous Quotations Contained in

296 Peter Wirzbicki

'An Americans' 'I.etter to the Edinburgh Reviewers' or Slavery, Inimical to the Character of the
Great Father of All (Washington D.C.: Printed by the Author, 1820), 33-5; see Catalogue of
the Library of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Joseph
R.A. Skerrett, 1824), 184; Africa; Excerpts from Baron de Vastey, Freedoms Journal, February'
7, 1829; Africa: Excerpts from Baron de Vastey, Freedoms Journal, February 14, 1829; Extracts
from Baron de Vastey s Work, Freedoms Journal, December 12, 1828.
(281 Tlayti V, Freedoms Journal, June 29, 1827; The Republic of Haiti, The Colored American,
March 11, 1837; Hayti, National Era, July 8,1847.
[29] Education, The Rights of All, September 18, 1829; African Free Schools in the United States,
Freedom's Journal, June I, 1827; Hayti, Freedoms Journal, December 12, 1828; Dr. Belfast
Burton, in a letter to the Rev. Richard Allen, of Philadelphia, Genius of Universal Emancipation,
June, 1825.
(301 Education, The Rights of All, September 18, 1829.
1311 Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the
United States, Canada, and England (London: John Snow, 1855), 50; Isaiah Degrasss Essay,
Freedom's Journal, March 14, 1829; Gregory U. Rigsby, Alexander Crummell: Pioneer in
Nineteenth-Century Pan-African Thought (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 20; David
Freedman, African-American Schooling in the South Prior to 18(51, The. Journal of Negro
History 84, no. 1 (1999), 9; Lancasterian Schools were also popular among white Americans,
who saw them as a valuable tool to create republican citizens. See Dell Upton, Lancasterian
Schools, Republican Citizenship, and the Spatial Imagination in Rarlv Nineteenth Century
America, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 55, no. 3 (1996): 238-53.
|32] African Free Schools in the United States, Freedoms Journal, June 1, 1827; William C. Nell,
William Cooper Nell: Nineteenth-Century African American Abolitionist, Historian, Integrationist: Selected Writings from 1832-1874, ed. Dorothy Porter Wesley and Constance Porter Uzelac
(Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2002), 221. l or more on white hostility to black education in
this period see Hilary J. Moss, Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in
Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
[33] Quotation is from the Augustines Constitution, reprinted in Prince Saunders, An Address
Delivered at Rethel Church ... before the Augustine Society, 10; Boston Mutual Lyceum, Libera
tor, July 20, 1833; Take Notice, Liberator, November 9, 1833; Letter VI, Freedom's Journal,
November 9, 1827; Dorothy B. Porter, The Organized Educational Activities of Negro Literary
Societies, 1828-1846, Journal of Negro Education 5, no. 4 (1836): 555-76; Progress of the
Colored People of San Francisco, Frederick Douglass Paper, September 22, 1854.
1341 Thomas Brooks lecture is advertised in Notice, Liberator, April 13,1838; Adelphic Union Lib
erator, January 15, 1841, Adelphic Union Library' Association, Liberator, October 2!, 1842;
James McCuue Smith, The Destiny of the People of Color (New York; Published by Request,
1843), 8; 'From our Correspondent, North Star, April 7, 1849; William Wells Brown, St
Domingo: Its Revolutions and its Patriots (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1855), 35.
[35] Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies (New York; Library of America, 1996), 336; Laurent
Dubois, An Enslaved Enlightenment: Rethinking the Intellectual History of the French Atlan
tic, Social History 31, no. 1 (2006): 2, 7; Caryn Coss Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the
Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718-1868 (Baton Rouge; Louisiana State University'
Press, 1997), 104.
[36] Sec Abolition in Hay'ti, National Enquirer, December 24, 1836; Rinchere wrote an article in the
Pennsylvania Freeman hoping to get buyers for his new history of Haiti, which he was publish
ing. See Prospectus', Pennsylvania Freeman, August 17,1837; the series of articles in the North
Star was commenced in 1848, see Hayti, North Star, April 21, 1848.
(37| William C. Nell, William Cooper Neil; Nineteenth-Century African American Abolitionist, Histor
ian, Integrationist: Selected Writings From 1832-1874, ed. Dorothy Porter Wesley and Con
stance Porter Uzelac (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2002), 21; For examples of different

Slavery & Abolition 297

[38]

[39]

[40]

[41]

educational ideas based on gender, see African Free School, 'lite Rights of All, May 29,1829; On
the Female Literary Society sec McHenry, Forgotten Readers, 57-68.
An Address to the Young Men of Color, in Philadelphia, on the Importance of Associations of
Moral and Mental Improvement, Philadelphia National Enquirer, April 29, 1837; Alexander
Crtimmell, Africa and America: Addresses and Discourses (Springfield, MA; Willey, 1891), 300.
James McCune Smith, A Lecture vri the Haytien Revolutions; with a Sketch of the. Character of
Toussaint L'Ouverture (New York: Daniel Fanshaw, 1841), 15, 43; See Haytien Revolutions,
Colored American, August 7, 1841; Bibb quotes Vastey in Henry Bibb, To our Old Masters,
No. 2, Voice of the Fugitive, February 12, 1851.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays and Poems (New York: Library of America, 1996), 991; 'Why are
the Colored People Ignorant?*, Liberator, October 3,1845; Alexander Crummcll, The Necessi
ties and Advantages of Education Considered in Relation to Colored Men, Schomburg
Collection.
Vastey, 'Political Remarks on Some French Works, 238.