1802: William Wordsworth composed the famous sonnet “To Toussaint L’Ouverture” while the Haitian revolutionary leader was held as a prisoner of Napoleon in F…

1802: William Wordsworth composed the famous sonnet “To Toussaint L’Ouverture” while the Haitian revolutionary leader was held as a prisoner of Napoleon in France. Toussaint was confined to a deep dungeon in the Fort de Joux in eastern France, where he would eventually die of pneumonia later that year. The poem celebrated Toussaint’s “unconquerable mind” and assured the chieftain that “the common wind” would never forget his struggle for liberty. This literary work serves as a testament to the collective human power and the subversive stories that continued to circulate around the Atlantic.