American policy toward the revolution in Saint-Domingue was never settled, and this account explains the oscillation as a contest between economic interests rather than a matter of principle. Northern shipping and merchant houses wanted the trade. Southern planters, who had most to lose from a successful slave revolt next door, wanted the rebels isolated or crushed. Which group had the ear of the sitting administration determined where policy went.

Washington's cabinet began by helping France hold its colony. Later administrations leaned toward the rebels, at moments even toward encouraging independence, then back toward France. Only when Jefferson's embargo, coupled with the collapse of Haitian exports, drove the maritime interests out of the argument did an openly hostile policy emerge.

Racism was pervasive, but it is not offered as the whole explanation. Many Americans, north and south, recoiled from the bloodshed of the French revolution, and saw in Haiti a military autocracy rather than a fellow republic.