of race relations in United States history have much to learn from the Haitian Revolution. Slave revolts in the United States did not succeed, but the Haitian example shows that their failure was not inevitable. Toussaint Louverture and his supporters demonstrated that blacks were capable of defeating white armies and setting up a functioning government. Between 1798 and 1802, Saint Domingue under Toussaint’s rule offered a glimpse of the possibility that a New World slave society could be transformed into a genuinely multi-racial community.