United States and The Haitian Revolution - Southern White Fears

Southern White Fears

In the South many white people thought that the revolution in Haïti could inspire similar events on their own land. Haïti had an official policy of accepting any black person who arrived on their shores as a citizen.

The legislatures of Pennsylvania and South Carolina, as well as the Washington administration, sent help for the French whites of Saint-Domingue. In the debate over whether the U.S. should embargo Haïti, John Taylor of South Carolina spoke for much of the popular sentiment of white people in the South. To him the Haïtian revolution was evidence for the idea that "slavery should be permanent in the United States." He argued against the idea that slavery had caused the revolution, by instead suggesting that "the antislavery movement had provoked the revolt in the first place." According to historian Tim Matthewson, John Taylor's comments in the debate shows how white attitudes shifted in the south from one of reluctantly accepting slavery as a necessity, to one of seeing it as a fundamental aspect of southern culture and the slave-owning planter class. As the years progressed Haïti only became a bigger target for scorn amongst the pro-slavery factions in the south. It was taken as proof that "violence was an inherent part of the character of blacks" due to the slaughtering of French whites, and the authoritarian rule that followed the end of the revolution - while this logical fallacy required ignoring the violent and authoritarian rule of white people over enslaved Africans, as well as its psychological effects on those Africans.