“A New Era in the Progress of Liberty and Independence”

Abstract Historians have tended to conclude that North American attitudes were hostile toward the Haitian Revolution in the early nineteenth century. This article argues that, after Haiti was unified under President Jean-Pierre Boyer in 1820, public opinion expressed in various newspapers across the United States accepted and even applauded events in Haiti. Impressed by the apparent stability Boyer's regime brought to Haiti, North Americans even recommended that government authorities consider laws to emancipate enslaved Blacks in the United States and send them to Haiti. Evidence drawn from periodicals published in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and the Northern states shows support for the independent Black and mixed-race Haitian government. It challenges the conventional view of public hostility in the United States toward Black rule in Haiti.