Civic Republicanism in the Haitian Revolution: Toussaint Louverture and His Influence on John Brown

UNITED STATES REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION VERSUS HAITI’S REVOLUTION

Theme	United States (1776–1820s)	Haiti (1791–1804)
Definition of liberty	Liberty is non-interference and (for many Founders) non-domination, but with huge exceptions for enslaved people and women	Liberty is non-domination with no exceptions. Slavery is the paradigmatic form of domination and therefore absolutely incompatible with a republic
Slavery and Republicanism	Slavery tolerated and protected (3/5 clause, fugitive slave clause, 20-year slave-trade protection). Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Henry—all slaveholders who used republican language daily	Slavery abolished forever in every Haitian constitution from 1801 onward. “There cannot exist slaves on this territory” (Toussaint’s 1801 Constitution, Art. 3) is the most uncompromising anti-slavery sentence in any 19th-century constitution
Who counts as a citizen?	Only free white men (and in some states free Black men with property until the 1820s–30s). Civic membership explicitly racialized	All inhabitants, regardless of color, are citizens. Dessalines’s 1805 Constitution (Art. 14): all citizens are legally “Black” to forge a civic identity rooted in shared experience of non-domination
Fear of corruption	Fear that luxury, standing armies, and finance would corrupt the republic. Solution: checks and balances, agrarian virtue	Fear that any return of white proprietors or foreign domination would re-impose slavery. Solution: permanent constitutional prohibition on white landownership (1805 Const., Art. 12–13)
Use of Roman models	Cato, Cicero, Cincinnatus admired, but Rome’s slave economy quietly accepted or ignored	Rome admired as a republic that fell because it abandoned its own principles and embraced latifundia slavery. Haiti must not repeat Rome’s mistake
Military vs. Civic Virtue	Washington voluntarily retires (Cincinnatus moment). Civilian control of military emphasized	Toussaint and Dessalines both take lifelong or monarchical titles, arguing that only a strong Black military leadership can permanently prevent re-enslavement (the “armed virtue” argument)
Economic vision	Agrarian republic of independent (mostly white) yeomen. Plantation slavery seen as compatible or even necessary in the South	Forced labor on plantations retained temporarily (the “cultivateur” system) to prevent economic collapse and the return of great proprietors—explicitly justified in republican anti-corruption language (“idleness breeds vice”)
Universalism vs. particularism	Universal language of rights in the Declaration, but repeatedly qualified by race and gender in practice	Universalism without qualification. Haiti grants citizenship to any enslaved person who sets foot on its soil and to Poles, Germans, and Native Americans who fought with them
International reception	Celebrated throughout the Atlantic world as the first modern republic	Terrifying to every slaveholding society. Jefferson refuses recognition; France demands indemnity; Spanish America fears “contagion.” Haiti becomes the great unspoken counter-example that proves republicanism and racial equality are compatible
Long-term ideological legacy	Civic-republican strand largely eclipsed by liberal individualism by the 1830s (except in labor-republican and abolitionist circles)	Civic republicanism remains a living tradition in Haitian political thought into the 20th century (Firmin, Price-Mars, Duvalier paradoxically invoked it, etc.)

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