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The Pennsylvania Gazette: White Refugees (17 July 1793)
This newspaper article reports sympathetically on the situation of the white refugees fleeing Haiti because of uprising. The articles details how the cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia met the influx of these refugees.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: Blame Now Falls (16 May 1792)
The blame for the Haitian Revolution now falls, at least according to the author of this letter, on the "blood–thirsty aristocracy," which has created dissensions among the French. The author also expresses alarm at the thought of the revolt spreading to other islands in the Caribbean.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: Magnitude of the Insurrection (12 October 1791)
The magnitude of the Haitian insurrection quickly became clear as alarmed observers related that considerable armies were being raised to fight the rebels. It is noteworthy that such reports even to northern U.S. newspapers expressed little sympathy for the rebels.
The Revolt from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
Rainsford’s detailed contemporary account of the revolt emphasizes the strenuous yet ultimately unsuccessful mobilization of colonial French resources.
Discontent Spreads from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti
Rainsford wrote one of the first favorable accounts of the Haitian Revolution. He blamed the colonists for refusing to alter the slave system.
Roster of Membership in the Society of Friends of Blacks, 1789
Jacques Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of Blacks in 1788 to agitate against the slave trade and slavery itself. Brissot modeled the Society on the London Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade established in 1787.
Grievance List (September 1789)
The Haitian free blacks and creoles, many of them substantial property owners and slaveholders, sent delegates to the National Assembly in France with a list of their stated grievances and demands.
The Coffee Planter of Saint Domingo (London, 1798)
Here Pierre Joseph Laborie provides the perspective of the planter. He gives a detailed description of the organization of enslaved labor in the production of coffee.
The Slaves from Africa
The African born enslaved people brought with them to Haiti their African rituals and customs, but the white planters also tried to get them to accept French manners and mores.
The Maroons
In this passage, Moreau de Saint–Méry explains that runaways in Haiti, known as Maroons, are and have always been a persistent problem and details the tremendous efforts put into retrieving the runaways. Despite this effort, some Maroons survived and thereby regained their freedom.