Hall describes an exchange of knowledge in colonial Louisiana. Africans showed Native people how to fight against Spanish and French methods of warfare; Native people in turn guided Africans into the forests and swamps, where communities of the escaped took hold.

That mixing left descendants. White families with long roots in Louisiana frequently have African and Native American ancestors, though after a few generations the connection was seldom acknowledged, least of all on the African side.

On the question of Haitian influence Hall is careful. Enslaved people in Louisiana who organized against slavery during the Age of Revolutions drew some inspiration from Haiti's success and from the instability of the period, but no evidence ties Haitians directly to any Louisiana conspiracy or revolt. What Haiti did send was people: refugees whose arrival doubled the free population of color in New Orleans.

Holly delivered this address to a literary society of young colored men in New Haven in 1855, after returning from Haiti, and repeated it through Ohio, Michigan and Canada West before it was printed. Its declared object is to defend the inherent capability of people of African descent to govern themselves and to build a civilization.

His evidence is Haitian history from the revolution onward. The defense is needed, he argues, not only against open contempt: many who profess to be friends of the race carry a private doubt about equality that surfaces the moment full recognition is pressed on them, and their reticence leaves the field to detractors until the oppressed half accept the verdict themselves.

The lecture then works through the events leading to the rising, the composure of the blacks under it as proof of fitness to govern, the intervention of free men of color, and the record of national enterprise and governmental stability since independence.