[7] The 1805 book An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti by Captain Marcus Rainsford, a British Army officer who served for many years in the West Indies, provided extensive documentation of the Haitian revolution, offering disturbing accounts of the brutal treatment of the enslaved population by their French masters, as well as the atrocities committed by all sides during the conflict.

[8] The massacre excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans, as well as the Germans who did not take part of the slave trade.

Additionally, many Saint Dominican refugees moved from Saint-Domingue to the U.S., settling in New Orleans, Charleston, New York, Baltimore, and other coastal cities.

These events spurred fears of potential uprisings in the Southern U.S. and they also polarized public opinion on the question of the abolition of slavery.

[13][14] Henri Christophe's personal secretary,[15][16] who was enslaved for much of his life, attempted to explain the incident by referencing the cruel treatment of black slaves by white slaveholders in Saint-Domingue:[17] Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars?

Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man-eating dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?In 1791, a man of Jamaican origin named Dutty Boukman became the leader of the enslaved Africans held on a large plantation in Cap-Français.

[18] On 22 August 1791, the enslaved Africans descended on Le Cap, where they destroyed the plantations and executed all the French who lived in the region.

[22] Girard describes five main factors leading to the massacre, which he describes as a genocide: (1) Haitian soldiers were influenced by the French Revolution to justify murder and large-scale massacres on ideological grounds; (2) economic interests motivated French planters to want to quell the uprising, as well as influencing former slaves to want to kill the planters and take ownership of the plantations; (3) a slave revolt had been ongoing for more than a decade, and was itself a reaction to a century of brutal colonial rule, making violent death commonplace and therefore easier to accept; (4) the massacre was a form of class warfare in which former slaves were able to take revenge against their former masters; and (5) the last stages of the war became a racial conflict pitting whites against blacks and mulattoes, in which racial hatred, dehumanization, and conspiracy theories all facilitated genocide.

In November 1803, three days after Rochambeau's forces surrendered, Dessalines ordered the execution of 800 French soldiers who had been left behind due to illness during the evacuation.

[25][page needed][26] However, Jeremy Popkin writes that statements by Dessalines such as "There are still French on the island, and still you considered yourselves free," spoke of a hostile attitude toward the remaining white minority.

[23] Rumors about the white population suggested that they would try to leave the country to convince foreign powers to invade and reintroduce slavery.

Discussions between Dessalines and his advisers openly suggested that the white population should be put to death for the sake of national security.

Reportedly, he ordered the unwilling to take part in the killings, especially men of mixed race, so that the blame should not be placed solely on the black population.

Dessalines' secretary Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre complained that the declaration of independence was not aggressive enough, saying that "...we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!

While some whites, such as Poles and Germans who were granted citizenship and "a few non-French veterans and American merchants, along with some useful professionals such as priests and doctors" were spared, political affiliation was not considered.

One account describes how Zombi stopped a white man on the street, stripped him naked, and took him to the stair of the Presidential Palace, where he killed him with a dagger.

[23] Reportedly, also people with connections to officers in the Haitian army were spared, as well as the women who agreed to marry non-white men.

[38] Dessalines' secretary Boisrond-Tonnerre stated, "For our declaration of independence, we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!

[42] Girard writes in his book Paradise Lost: "Despite all of Dessalines' efforts at rationalization, the massacres were as inexcusable as they were foolish.

"[39] Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James concurred with this view in his breakthrough work The Black Jacobins, writing that "the unfortunate country... was ruined economically, its population lacking in social culture, [and] had its difficulties doubled by this massacre".

[47] The slave revolt was a prominent theme in the discourse of Southern political leaders and had influenced U.S. public opinion since the events took place.

Historian Kevin Julius writes: As abolitionists loudly proclaimed that "All men are created equal", echoes of armed slave insurrections and racial genocide sounded in Southern ears.

B. Lyon addressed this as a prominent argument of his opponents: We don't know any better than to imagine that emancipation would result in the utter extinction of civilization in the South, because the slave-holders, and those in their interest, have persistently told us ... and they always instance the 'horrors of St.