The United States withheld recognition from Haiti for nearly sixty years and from Liberia for fifteen, and Wesley traces the reason through the congressional record. The question surfaced in 1825 over the Panama Congress, whose agenda included Haitian recognition; senators from the South, Benton and Hayne among them, objected that they could not deliberate with a state where men of colour led armies and sat in legislatures. Petitions followed for three decades, many presented by John Quincy Adams, and were tabled, ruled out of order or shouted down. Britain meanwhile recognised Haiti in 1825 and France in 1838, and by 1860 Haiti ranked twenty-seventh among American trading partners, ahead of several republics that had long been recognised. Wesley shows the obstacle disappearing with secession: Lincoln's message of 1861, Sumner's bill in February 1862, passage by 32 to 7 in the Senate and 86 to 37 in the House, and treaties in 1864. Recognition arrived as the slave system collapsed.