Wesley sets the two black republics against the general practice of diplomatic recognition as it took shape after 1783 and was applied by Adams and Jefferson to Spain's rebelling American colonies, several of which Britain acknowledged in 1824. Haiti, independent since 1804, and Liberia waited far longer.

The article follows the obstruction through Congress: objections raised to sending delegates to the Panama congress, a Vermont member shouted down in 1839, resolutions ruled out of order, consular reports that misrepresented Haitian commerce even though it rivalled the combined United States trade of several South American states. The obstacle was never commercial. A slaveholding country could not receive black ministers as equals.

Recognition finally came in 1862, carried through the Senate by Charles Sumner, and treaties of friendship, commerce and navigation followed in 1864. Wesley records the thanks offered by both republics and by the A.M.E. Church, and reads the episode as a landmark in the advance toward equal standing.