Dessalines marches on Santo Domingo with 20,000 men and fails

Exasperated by Ferrand's harassment and intent on controlling the whole island, Dessalines led twenty thousand soldiers east against Santo Domingo. He had the larger force and lost anyway, because a French naval squadron arrived. Gaffield records the sequel: Ferrand and his small command held the eastern city until 1809, when a combined Haitian, Spanish and British effort finally removed him, after which the east reverted to Spanish rule despite continued Haitian claims to it. The episode matters to her argument in two ways. It shows that the war between France and Haiti was not over in any sense the participants recognised, and it shows the limits of what military action could achieve for either side, which is why both France and Haiti fought the rest of the contest through trade, proclamations and the correspondence of consuls and agents rather than through armies.

Lartigue reported to Ferrand that four vessels had just sailed from St Thomas for the Cap, Les Cayes and Jacmel, and that the traffic continued without fear of or regard for the general's proclamation, issued three months earlier, condemning to death merchants who traded with Haiti. He noted that he had done his part, that the order had been printed and displayed in the town and was well known to merchants and sailors, and that those with dealings among the revolted were not intimidated. Ships left daily with supplies of every kind. Gaffield uses this as the empirical core of her case against the isolation thesis. She adds a legal complication: in three Admiralty court decisions between 1804 and 1806 the British had ruled that arms and ammunition were contraband but that neutral trade in provisions with a belligerent was lawful, so Lartigue's definition of illegality was not shared by the courts that mattered. Where this account departs from the standard one: Against the long-standing view that the Atlantic powers collectively quarantined Haiti after 1804, Gaffield shows trade running openly and often lawfully throughout the period of diplomatic non-recognition.

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.

Leclerc, looking for a pretext after the surrender, stationed five hundred soldiers near Louverture's estate at Ennery and waited. Trouble between those troops and local people gave Louverture reason to ask that they be withdrawn, and Leclerc replied that General Brunet would come to discuss it. Instead Leclerc instructed Brunet to invite Louverture to headquarters and arrest him there. Woodward records that Louverture had been warned of the plan and went anyway, at night, to the Georges plantation. While he waited for Brunet to come back into the room, French soldiers seized him and put him aboard the frigate La Creole. He was carried to Le Cap, transferred to the Heros where his family joined him, and sailed for Brest. The whole sequence, Woodward argues, followed the secret instructions Bonaparte had given Leclerc before the fleet left France.