The treaty to establish a protectorate over Haiti is another step by the United States in the Americanization of the Caribbean area. These extensions have become a fixed policy of the Department of States. The Republicans and Democrats heartily support the United States government in her program of expansion. Protests will continue, but once the United States gets in, she will stay in. Already she has gone far from the position that she occupied when she first went in. The United States has always had a policy of expansion from early colonial period. She has extended control west, south, and north to secure fields for our population and commercial interests. In the brief period since the Spanish-American War, the United States has made rapid strides in the Caribbean area. Most of these republics have a large proportion of white blood, but Haiti is the black republic. White men have been able to hold land or become citizens only since 1899.1 In Haiti, a white man is looked upon with prejudice, just as the Americans look upon the Negro. This fact raises a great problem in the control of the United States over Haiti.

My dissertation examines the cultural, political, and economic relationship between Haiti and the United States in the early nineteenth century--a key period in the development of both young nations. Most scholarship on this relationship has revolved around either the Haitian Revolution or later periods, from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Through trade, migration, and politics, the two countries had a more substantial role in one another's formative years than the literature currently suggests. Haitian leaders actively sought to attract African Americans to the island and believed they were crucial to improving Haiti's economic and political standing. African Americans became essential players in determining the nature of Haiti and U.S. relations, and the migration of thousands to Haiti in the 1820s proved to be the apogee of the two countries' interconnectedness. Drawing on a variety of materials, including emigrant letters, diary accounts, travelers' reports, newspaper editorials, the National Archives' Passenger Lists, Haitian government proclamations, Haitian newspapers, and American, British, and French consulate records, I analyze the diverse political and social motivations that fueled African American emigration. The project links Haitian nation building and Haitian struggles for recognition to American abolitionism and commercial development. / text