Dessalines writes land sharing into the 1805 constitution

Mocombe treats the 1805 constitution as Dessalines's attempt to hold two incompatible projects together. The text divided land among all who had fought in the revolution, discarded French institutional models in favour of arrangements grounded in the experience of the island's African population, and replaced white supremacy with a declaration that Haiti was a country for and of Black people. Behind it lay a balancing act: the grandon class of former generals and drivers wanted to become landed proprietors on the old model, while the mass of Africans wanted subsistence farming, husbandry and komes outside any plantation. Mocombe argues that Dessalines tried to satisfy both and that the redistribution is precisely what the Affranchis class would not accept, since their wealth depended on the export circuit and on holding the estates their fathers had owned.

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.