Jenson follows Haiti's declaration of independence into the American newspaper press, where partial and rival translations surfaced in the New York Evening Post, the Daily Advertiser, the Commercial Advertiser and Poulson's through the spring of 1804. Setting those printings against the manuscript record and against Thomas Madiou's famous scene of Boisrond-Tonnerre writing the text in a single night, she finds the timeline implausible and credits Dessalines with shaping the language of independence himself, dictating a voice that secretaries transcribed. French papers denied his authorship on racial grounds, claiming he could not sign his name, while Haitian nationalist pride handed the credit to his Paris-educated secretary. Read as a body of work, the proclamations show an author reworking the tree of liberty and addressing foreign powers directly. The scattered, mutilated American texts record a young Black republic speaking to its neighbours, and a United States that withheld recognition until 1862.