How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

That fear had escalated over the course of the Haitian Revolution, in which the enslaved population in Haiti rose up against the French and in 1804 founded what became the first Black-led republic in the world. The French army was so beleaguered from battle and disease—by the end of the war, more than 80 percent of the soldiers sent to the island had died—that Napoleon Bonaparte, looking to cut his losses and refocus his attention on his military battles in Europe, sold the entire territory of Louisiana to Thomas Jefferson’s negotiators for a paltry fifteen million dollars—about four cents an acre. Without the Haitian Revolution, it is unlikely that Napoleon would have sold a landmass that doubled the size of the then United States, especially as Jefferson had intended to approach the French simply looking to purchase New Orleans in order to have access to the heart of the Mississippi River. For enslaved people throughout the rest of the “New World,” the victory in Haiti—the story of which had spread through plantations across the South, at the edges of cotton fields and in the quiet corners of loud kitchens—served as inspiration for what was possible.