Georges Biassou reached St. Augustine in 1796 at fifty-five, having led rebel forces early in the Haitian Revolution, joined Spain's Black Auxiliaries when Madrid offered freedom and military rank, and stayed loyal to the crown even after France declared general emancipation. When the Treaty of Basel forced the unit's dissolution, he and a household of twenty-four — relatives, dependents, fellow soldiers, a few slaves — were moved by way of Cuba to Spanish Florida.

Johnson's contribution is to read him as a product of French Saint-Domingue rather than as a revolutionary. Biassou had negotiated for the freedom of the rebel leadership, not for the abolition of slavery, and remained a royalist by conviction; officials who feared he would import insurrection had misjudged the man, if not the moment, since Pointe Coupée had risen the year before. His awkward position in Florida exposes how differently French and Spanish colonies handled free people of colour.