DURING THE NIGHT of August 22, 1791, a wave of fire engulfed the French West Indies colony of St. Domingue (present-day Haiti), as hundreds of thousands of slaves set fire to plantations, torched cities, and massacred a terrified white population. The slave rebellion that started that night—the most successful slave rebellion in history—lasted 12 long years. It culminated in the founding of the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and its first black-governed republic. But more than this, the Haitian Revolution was a turning point in history, the repercussions of which extended far beyond the small island nation. Perhaps nowhere was its impact greater than in the United States, where Haiti’s slave revolt figured directly in two of the most significant events in United States history: the Louisiana Purchase and the American Civil War.
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