In January 1822 the Haitian president replied to four Greek expatriates in Paris who had written to him seeking support for the rising against Ottoman rule. Sideris and Konsta present that letter in English translation, with a short account of its recipients and of how it survived.

Boyer declines to send money, explaining that the treasury is exhausted and that absorbing the eastern part of the island has proved ruinously expensive. What he offers instead is recognition: a people who broke their own chains cannot be indifferent to others fighting the same fight, and he closes by invoking Leonidas, Miltiades, Marathon and Salamis.

The editors note that the text comes down through a Greek translation preserved in a revolutionary secretary's papers, and read the classical allusions as a deliberate pairing of the citizen-soldier of antiquity with the volunteers of Haiti and of the Greek revolt.