Toussaint Louverture and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution (review)

Abstract

Toussaint and the American Civil War: The Promise and Peril of a Second Haitian Revolution. Matthew J. Clavin. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Pp. 248, $39.95.)Reviewed by Laurent DuboisI will admit from the first my bias: I operate from the basic assumption that the Haitian Revolution is one of the most important events in the history of the world, and go around talking about it to pretty much anyone who will listen. So I was a particularly receptive audience for the arguments in Clavin's impassioned book about the ways in which Haiti - as example, referent, ghost, nightmare, prophesy, and much else - shaped politics and culture in the decades leading up to the Civil War.This is not the first time this story has been told: The book returns to a terrain explored in Alfred Hunt's 1988 book Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Vokano in the Caribbean, reissued by Louisiana State University Press in 2006. In some ways, his argument is about extending and further emphasizing these earlier arguments: The Haitian Revolution, he writes, a much a greater impact on slavery and abolition than has been suggested (4). But Clavin also brings out new material as well as a different energy and angle to the story, making this a vital contribution. Before and during the Civil War, he argues, Louverture and the Haitian Revolution were resonant, polarizing, and ultimately subversive symbols, which antislavery and proslavery groups exploited to both provoke violent confrontation and determine the fete of slavery in the United States (5). I appreciated the way Clavin illuminates how complex, slippery, and multivalent the Haitian Revolution was as a symbol. He remains attuned throughout to the often contradictory way in which it could surface in various types of debates and discourse, and does a nice job of leading us through its various appearances. At the same time, he also preserves a line of attack and argument throughout, with a drive and urgency that made it exciting reading. To my mind, alongside works like Ashli White's Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore, 2010) and a series of recent works on U.S. foreign policy toward Haiti during the Revolution, this book is required reading for anyone interested in thinking about the ways U.S. and Caribbean histories of slavery and antislavery shaped one another.I didn't - and couldn't - read it this work the way a specialist on antebellum U.S. history would, and will have to leave to others to respond to and evaluate the specific claims Clavin makes about the extent and impact evocations of Haiti had on debates about secession. More familiar with the history of slave revolt and abolitionism in the United States, however, I was impressed by the way in which is his study illuminates the way the symbolism surrounding Haiti really shaped the political imaginary of antislavery activism. …