1803–1821: (American Commerce, the Jefferson Embargo, and Diplomatic Stagnation): As early as 1803, American merchants had supported Dessalines, and during t…

1803–1821: (American Commerce, the Jefferson Embargo, and Diplomatic Stagnation): As early as 1803, American merchants had supported Dessalines, and during the first six months of 1804 alone some forty ships carried arms, ammunition, and supplies from New York to Haiti, while in 1805 Dessalines recruited American and German armorers from Philadelphia. Under sharp pressure from Napoleon — and in return for his support in the U.S. dispute with Spain over West Florida — President Jefferson embargoed trade with Haiti in 1806, and though the embargo lapsed in 1809, American trade did not recover: in 1810 it was but $109,000, and even after the War of 1812, by 1821 American exports to Haiti had increased tenfold yet amounted to but 3 percent of total U.S. export trade, whereas in 1790 they had constituted 11 percent. Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Haiti were all but nonexistent: Leclerc had expelled Tobias Lear, Edward Stevens’s successor at the Cap, in 1802, and not until 1813 when William Taylor held the position was there even an American commercial agent at Port-au-Prince — Pétion, Taylor reported in 1814, was “barely friendly.” In the North, Henry — the Anglophile that he was — gave the United States even shorter shrift: in 1811, after a dispute over funds he had deposited in Baltimore, the King expropriated $132,000 worth of American cargoes at the Cap and on various pretexts declined to receive American ships or agents thereafter. While Britain, France, and the United States sparred among themselves, Haiti’s example was not lost on Spain’s restive provinces in Latin America.