Healy sets out to weigh what Toussaint L'Ouverture actually contributed to independence across the Americas, opening with a complaint about the partisan French and British histories that shaped his reputation for a century and praising newer work that rehabilitated Dessalines. She follows his rise from slavery through the campaigns that expelled Spanish, British and French forces, crediting his speed of movement, his intelligence network, the discipline he imposed on troops who lived on almost nothing, and his handling of Sonthonax and of a French Directory that tried to lure him into invading Jamaica and the southern United States. The constitution of 1801, she argues, amounted to independence, since the governor drew his authority from the colony rather than from France. Her largest claim closes the piece: in destroying Leclerc's army, Toussaint cost Napoleon his interest in Louisiana and so doubled the territory of the United States.