France holds Santo Domingo for six years after losing Haiti

The final French position in the region was the eastern side of the island. Troops under Kerversau and then Ferrand remained in Santo Domingo after the defeat next door and repelled an invasion by Dessalines in 1805. Girard records what happened when Paris tried to reinforce them with survivors of the Saint-Domingue expedition who had regrouped in Cuba. The soldiers were so unwilling to serve in the region again that they deliberately took their ships off course, with some wrecked and others landing in American ports and being sent home to France. The last French troops left Santo Domingo in 1809, closing the period his article covers. A large expedition planned to sack Barbados, besiege Jamaica and strike at Newfoundland was shelved without a fight. French territory in the region has been confined to Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyane ever since.

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 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.

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.