Across the ocean, however, a jealous man was watching with interest the career of the “gilded African.”  None knew better than Napoleon that it was because he did not trust France that Toussaint had sought the friendship of the United States, and none read better than he the logic of events.  As Adams says, “Bonaparte’s acts as well as his professions showed that he was bent on crushing democratic ideas, and that he regarded St. Domingo as an outpost of American republicanism, although Toussaint had made a rule as arbitrary as that of Bonaparte himself....  By a strange confusion of events, Toussaint L’Ouverture, because he was a Negro, became the champion of republican principles, with which he had nothing but the instinct of personal freedom in common.  Toussaint’s government was less republican than that of Bonaparte; he was doing by necessity in St. Domingo what Bonaparte was doing by choice in France."[1]

[Footnote 1:  History of the United States, I, 391-392.]

This was the man to whom the United States ultimately owes the purchase of Louisiana.  On October 1, 1801, Bonaparte gave orders to General Le Clerc for a great expedition against Santo Domingo.  In January, 1802, Le Clerc appeared and war followed.  In the course of this, Toussaint—­who was ordinarily so wise and who certainly knew that from Napoleon he had most to fear—­made the great mistake of his life and permitted himself to be led into a conference on a French vessel.  He was betrayed and taken to France, where within the year he died of pneumonia in the dungeon of Joux.  Immediately there was a proclamation annulling the decree of 1794 giving freedom to the slaves.  Bonaparte, however, had not estimated the force of Toussaint’s work, and to assist the Negroes in their struggle now came a stalwart ally, yellow fever.  By the end of the summer only one-seventh of Le Clerc’s army remained, and he himself died in November.  At once Bonaparte planned a new expedition.  While he was arranging for the leadership of this, however, the European war broke out again.  Meanwhile the treaty for the retrocession of the territory of Louisiana had not yet received the signature of the Spanish king, because Godoy, the Spanish representative, would not permit the signature to be affixed until all the conditions were fulfilled; and toward the end of 1802 the civil officer at New Orleans closed the Mississippi to the United States.  Jefferson, at length moved by the plea of the South, sent a special envoy, no less a man than James Monroe, to France to negotiate the purchase; Bonaparte, disgusted by the failure of his Egyptian expedition and his project for reaching India, and especially by his failure in Santo Domingo, in need also of ready money, listened to the offer; and the people of the United States—­who within the last few years have witnessed the spoliation of Hayti—­have not yet realized how much they owe to the courage of 500,000 Haytian Negroes who refused to be slaves.