Teaching the Haitian Revolution in the Survey:

Table from the video:

For the complete version of the table, click here.

Additional Readings:

Julia Gaffield, “Haiti was the first nation to permanently ban slavery,” Made by History, Washington Post, July 12, 2020.

Julia Gaffield, Haitian Revolution, America in the World, 1776 to the Present: A Supplement to the Dictionary of American History. 2 vols. Blum, Edward J., ed. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2016).

Julia Gaffield, “Reading Declarations: Universal Rights, the Local and the Global,” in Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolutions, Ben Marsh and Mike Rapport, eds., (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017).

Julia Gaffield, “Meet Haiti’s founding father, whose black revolution was too radical for Thomas Jefferson,” The Conversation, 30 August 2018.

Julia Gaffield, “The Haitian Declaration of Independence: Recognition, Freedom and Anti-French Sentiment,” in Revolutionary Moments: Reading Revolutionary Texts. Rachel Hammersley, ed., (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 101–108.

Julia Gaffield, “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World,” The Appendix, 2, no. 1 (2014).

Primary Source Documents:

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the President of the United States [Thomas Jefferson], 23 June 1803, Series 1: General Correspondence. 1651-1827, Microfilm Reel: 028, The Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.

In class exercise:

Ask your students to compare Dessalines’s letters to Thomas Jefferson (president of the US) and George Nugent (governor of Jamaica). He sent the letters on the same day and they are very similar, but there are important differences. Click below for the manuscript originals along with transcriptions and translations of each document.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the President of the United States [Thomas Jefferson], 23 June 1803.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines to the Governor of Jamaica [George Nugent], June 23 1803.