French privateers take a hundred American ships, Cuba splits the prize

General Jean-Louis Ferrand, who had taken command at Santo Domingo in late 1803 after refusing a place on a British ship out, could not defeat the new state militarily but could make its trade dangerous. French privateers, supported by Spanish corsairs under the Franco-Spanish alliance, patrolled the waters around Hispaniola and seized merchants suspected of dealing with the people they called brigands, taking more than a hundred American vessels in two years. Because Ferrand's own position was precarious, prizes were processed in Spanish ports. Ferrer's finding, which Gaffield uses, is that property was often condemned without trial and the ships and their human and other cargo sold, with duties owed to the crown divided among Cuban officials instead. Haiti answered by declaring war on Spain and seizing Spanish vessels for condemnation in Haitian ports. Cuban authorities, meanwhile, preferred to behave as though Haiti did not exist.

Dedee Bazile was born near Cap Francais to enslaved parents. Accounts of her differ. One has her raped by her master at about eighteen, then following the indigenous army as a sutler until Rochambeau's men killed three of her brothers and two of her sons at a dance at Doco, after which she lost her reason. Another, printed in the review Le Document in February 1940, makes her a fighter who went mad after seeing two brothers cut down beside her. She was called Defilee from the order she repeated endlessly to indifferent passersby. On 17 October 1806, children were pelting the remains of Jean Jacques Dessalines with stones on the Place du Gouvernement. She came past, asked who it was, and for a moment her eyes cleared. She ran for a sack, came back, gathered the bloodied remains into it and carried them to the town cemetery, where soldiers sent by Petion buried them for a small sum.

The article prints a certificate signed by Repussard, commander of the national guard at Verrettes, together with his officers and men. It records the capture of insurgents in the heights above the town and their separate interrogations, in which they said they had risen on the secret orders of Charles Belair and were bound to obey him as their chief. The statements describe a plan to concentrate in the Grands Cahos, to kill blacks and men of colour who had gone over to the French, to obtain cartridges from Saint-Marc on the pretext of marching against the rebels, to kill Repussard and his guardsmen, and then to join the rising. The last statements say the moment had to be seized or the whites would restore slavery and kill everyone who had served under Toussaint. The document was sealed and sent directly to Rochambeau.

The United States had prohibited the import of enslaved people from abroad in 1808. When ships from Cuba began arriving at New Orleans the following spring, Governor William Claiborne ordered the enslaved passengers held on board and the vessels impounded, which also trapped the clothing, furniture and small stocks of goods the families had brought with them. Petitions went to Washington within days. On 28 June 1809 the House of Representatives took up a bill remitting the fines and penalties incurred. Thomas Newton argued for it in the language of hospitality, quoting Dido receiving Aeneas after the fall of Troy, saying that one who has known misfortune knows how to relieve it in others. Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina and John Montgomery of Maryland backed the bill on a colder calculation, that the newcomers would never move on unless they kept the property that was their only means of leaving. It passed without a single vote against.