One of the most significant slave rebellions for the United States took place outside its borders. In 1791, in the French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue (now the nation of Haiti), tens of thousands of slaves, runaways, and free blacks began slaughtering whites in the northern settlements of Saint Domingue and burning the homes and property of slaveholders. The rebellion was the culmination of years of violent confrontations between black slaves and white slaveholders in the French colony, and it was also inspired in part by the French Revolution of 1789. The rebellion ended when it reached the port town of Cap Français, where whites were well armed and prepared to defend themselves. An estimated ten thousand blacks and two thousand whites were killed, and over one thousand plantations were sacked and razed. The rebellion at Cap Français, though unsuccessful, set...