1799-04-27: (Louverture Signs a Secret Treaty of Friendship With the United States During the Presidency of John Adams, Trading Sugar and Strategic Restraint…

1799-04-27: (Louverture Signs a Secret Treaty of Friendship With the United States During the Presidency of John Adams, Trading Sugar and Strategic Restraint for Weapons and Supplies): On April 27, 1799, Louverture signed a secret treaty of friendship with the United States during the presidency of John Adams. The agreement was a transaction: Louverture offered the United States access to Haitian sugar and a promise not to export revolution to the American South, where the enslaved population lived under the constant shadow of the Haitian example. In exchange, the United States provided weapons and supplies. The treaty reflected the Adams administration’s pragmatic willingness to deal with a Black revolutionary leader when it served American commercial interests. That pragmatism would not survive Adams’s presidency. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, would refuse to recognize Haitian independence in 1804, and the United States would not establish formal diplomatic relations with Haiti until 1862, after the slaveholding states had seceded from the Union.