kindly disposed toward the Haitians; they also were slave-owners in Cuba and Porto Rico. Their attitude was most unfriendly; they availed themselves of every opportunity to humiliate the new State. Their disagreement with Haiti concerning the Spanish portion of the island made the position still more delicate.
France, apart from the fear she entertained for the safety of her other colonies in the West Indies, where slavery was abolished only in 1848, could not at the outset be other than unfriendly toward Haiti; she could not easily accept with resignation the loss of one of her most important American possessions. Her long-standing grudge against the Haitians is noticeable in the many books written by or under the influence of former colonists of Saint-Domingue, their descendants or their sympathizers. It need hardly be said that in the first days of her existence Haiti could look for no help or sympathy from France.
Neither could she rely on the United States of America. Their attitude was so irreconcilable that even Simon Bolivar, in order to please them, thought it advisable to overlook the services rendered him by Haiti and the Haitians. Upon summoning the Congress of Panama he, who was personally under the greatest obligation to Pétion and his fellow-citizens, deliberately ignored the people who had helped him, thereby slighting the only nation that had supported him in his struggle for the independence of his country.
The slavery question was unquestionably the principal cause of the ill will of the American people toward Haiti.[1] Since the abolition of this inhuman institution, however, the relations between the two countries have
- ↑ Concerning the Congress of Panama, Mr. John W. Foster (A Century of American Diplomacy, p. 453) says: "The debates in the Congress of the United States were of a most acrimonious character, and were conducted upon domestic party lines, the opponents of the Administration almost unanimously voting against the mission. The two strong points of opposition were, first the objection to no alliance, especially an armed one, with any other nations; and, second, the recognition of the negro Republic of Haiti which opened up the slavery question."
