1791-July-28: Less than a month before the great slave uprising, Jefferson reaffirmed in a ciphered message to Short that the United States had a “right and …

1791-July-28: Less than a month before the great slave uprising, Jefferson reaffirmed in a ciphered message to Short that the United States had a “right and duty under the moral law” to exchange its surplus products with its neighbors. He issued a veiled threat, suggesting that if European powers continued to oppress their colonies with trade restrictions, the United States might be tempted to “act together” with those colonies. Jefferson believed that the National Assembly in France might be forced to grant trade freedom to avoid a total break with the colonists in Saint-Domingue. This correspondence reveals that American policy was actively seeking to undermine the French mercantilist system just as the social order of the colony was about to collapse. Logan notes that these diplomatic calculations were soon “upset” by the scale of the impending slave insurrection.