A TRIPARTITE INTERVENTION IN HAYTI, 1851 325 



whole island by reducing Sau Domingo at its eastern end. And for 

 more than two decades the white population of the east had to toler- 

 ate the burden of a black government. Then it broke the bond. 



Hayti had been independent for forty years when Boyer met 

 with the usual fate of the Latin -American dictator, abdicated in the 

 face of a revolution, and took the well-beaten path to Jamaica and 

 obscurity. In spite of its traditional policy of early recognition, the 

 United States had never recognized the independence of the republic, 

 for its population was black and the temper of the southern states 

 would not permit such a reward to a revolted slave population. In- 

 stead, the mere mention that Hayti was to be invited, seems to have 

 raised the opposition that kept the United States from participation 

 in the Panama Congress. *^^ Petitions for the recognition of Hayti 

 during the thirties raised a clamor in the House equal to that of the 

 petitions for abolition in the United States. ^-^ But now when the 

 fall of Boyer was marked by the secession of San Domingo from 

 the republic, there was a partial revulsion of opinion. 



American politicians divided on Haytian questions as they were 

 already divided on slave questions in the United States. The popu- 

 lation of San Domingo was predominantly white, and so could com- 

 mand the sympathetic consideration of southern leaders, while 

 abolitionists in the north were distressed at once by the injury to the 

 one republic that proved, to their minds, the capacity of the negro 

 for self-government, and by the triumph of a theory of secession. 

 The literature on Hayti falls into two classes as it voices the senti- 

 ments of those two schools of thought. 



The deposition and flight of Boyer occured in March of 1843. ^'> 

 The secession of the eastern end of the island came a year later, for 

 the white population was tired of negro dominance, and, as a Spanish 

 Catholic community, resented the adoption by the new Haytian gov- 

 ernment of a constitution containing a clause in favor of religious 



(1) Compilation of Reports of Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 1789-1901, 



Wash., 1901, IV., 12; cf. Henry Wilson. Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 

 I.. 116. 



(2) J. Q. Adams, Memoirs, X.. 66; H. S. Leerar6, Works, I., 322. 



(3) Hazard, 170; Redpath, 20; Britannicus, The Dominican Republic and the Emperor Sou- 



louque, Phila., 1852, P. 11. 



