1790: Spanish authorities in Louisiana re-instituted strict regulations barring the entry of blacks from Saint-Domingue to prevent the spread of “contagion”.

1790: Spanish authorities in Louisiana re-instituted strict regulations barring the entry of blacks from Saint-Domingue to prevent the spread of “contagion”. This policy was a reaction to a previous series of slaveowner poisonings in the French colony that officials feared might be replicated on the mainland. Despite these prohibitions, New Orleans remained a major destination for large numbers of both enslaved people and free people of color during the revolution. White refugees often brought “trusted” servants with them, inadvertently introducing veterans of the black rebellion to the local population. These attempts to quarantine the province from revolutionary ideas were consistently undermined by the physical mobility of the Caribbean’s unfree.