A dinner at Secretary of State Timothy Pickering's Philadelphia house on 26 December 1798 anchors Johnson's account of how the Adams administration came to deal directly with Toussaint Louverture. Joseph Bunel, a merchant from Cap Français sent as Louverture's envoy, asked the Americans to lift the embargo on trade with French colonies and to open ties with a revolutionary government edging toward independence. Johnson works from Pickering's papers, French foreign ministry correspondence and the despatches from Cap Haïtien, and produces the dinner invitation itself, previously uncited, before tracing what followed: legislation within days, the reopening of commerce in June 1799, Edward Stevens's mission, and naval support for Louverture's campaign across the island. The episode is presented as the first United States diplomatic relationship with a government led by a Black former slave, pursued for commercial advantage while honouring the natural rights language of 1776, and abandoned by Jefferson in 1801.