a nation free of slavery and racial prejudice.8 Born in Connecticut, Saunders interacted with free blacks from Philadelphia to Boston early in his career as an educator in the African school in Colchester, Connecticut, and Boston’s African School. As a teacher at the African School, Saunders lived amongst Boston’s “Brahmins,” meeting Paul Cuffe, the wealthy black ship captain, and most certainly winning his approval, and then developing a relationship with Cuffe’s daughter. In 1811 these ties allowed him to rise to the role of secretary of the African Masonic Lodge, alongside Baptist clergyman Thomas Paul. As a member of the Lodge, Saunders first began to consider joining with Paul and others to organize a Haitian emigration movement.9
While traveling with Paul on a fund-raising effort to Britain in 1815, Saunders learned about the Haitian project from British dignitaries who had applauded Cuffe’s efforts a few years earlier to settle black Americans on the coast of West Africa.10 Perhaps because of Haiti’s instability during its first fifteen years of statehood, Cuffe had instead placed his hopes in a new African colony to be founded near British Sierra Leone.11 But Paul and Saunders had sailed to Britain to try to convince antislavery activists and politicians that black Americans were just as eager to relocate to Haiti as they were to Sierra Leone or anywhere else in West Africa.12 Even if Paul and Saunders had shifted their plans from Africa to Haiti, they still built upon Cuffe’s previous efforts to unify British and American abolitionists interested in destroying the transatlantic slave trade and ending the oppression of Africans in the West. As it turned out, several leading British abolitionists agreed that Haiti remained an apt site for black American settlement. According to a newspaper account of the meeting with British abolitionists, Saunders and Paul listened to William Wilberforce praise “Christophe, the black king of Hayti,” for having “every princely quality.” Wilberforce declared that Christophe had “a right more legitimate than the ex-emperor of France, or the kings of Spain and Naples . . . besides being the Farther [sic] of his people.” In addition, Christophe was, in Wilberforce’s view, “a patriot, liberator, and hero . . . and pious christian . . . [who] wanted nothing but Bibles, prayer books, implements of agriculture, and information respecting the arts, sciences, and humanity of Europe.”13 Evidently, Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce succeeded in confirming Prince Saunders’s view about Haiti, leaving Saunders with the intention to sail to the island and learn more about King Christophe’s plan for African American emigration.
King Henry Christophe had risen to power in Haiti after the previous ruler, Dessalines, was murdered near Port-au-Prince on October 17, 1806.14 Christophe, described as “a fine portly looking man . . . quite black, very intelligent, pleasant, and expressive,” had a domineering personality that was “useful on the battlefield, but a liability as a political leader.”15 Soon after he became king, he found himself faced with opposition from Alexandre Pétion, the leader of the “mulatto faction” who sought to impose upon Haiti an executive system based on the national assembly of representatives from different regions. Christophe, upon learning of Pétion’s manipulation of the Assembly, rushed towards Port-au-Prince prepared to do battle with Pétion and his men. After two days of combat, Pétion’s army stood its ground, and Christophe retreated to the north. Thus, in 1807, Haiti remained a divided nation, with Christophe in control of the North Province and the valley of the Artibonite in the West Province, and Pétion commanding most of the west and the South Province.16
While Pétion struggled to maintain his command in the south and west, and to begin engaging in negotiations with the French, Christophe sought English support and guidance. Ever fearful of a French invasion, Christophe forged ties with England and declared English to be Haiti’s official language and Protestant Christianity its state religion. Hoping that English abolitionists would use their influence to help Haiti create diplomatic ties with England, Christophe reached out to William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. In 1814 Wilberforce commented, “I am very sure I should not lose a day in embarking for Hayti. To see a set of human beings emerging from slavery, and making most rapid strides towards the perfection of civilization, must I think be the most delightful of all food for contemplation.” Wilberforce embraced Christophe and Haiti, sending financial assistance, plows, and farmers to teach Haitians English methods of agriculture.17
Like Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, the famed abolitionist who rose to public attention when he became one of the original members of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787, took to Christophe’s vision as well, and he became his adviser in Europe. Clarkson kept Christophe informed about the probability of French invasion, and more generally of French and English opinions about Haiti, while offering him advice about his policies—especially the nature of his military rule. When a friend described to Clarkson the American Colonization Society–inspired movement to colonize African Americans in West Africa, Clarkson sent word to Christophe that he ought to reach out to African Americans interested in leaving the United States. Clarkson mentioned to him the advantages of black American emigration to Haiti, explaining, “Such persons would be very useful to your Majesty. They would form that middle class in society which is the connecting medium between rich and the poor and which is the great cause of prosperity in Europe, but which cannot at present have been raised up in your Majesty’s Dominion.” Clarkson hoped that Christophe “would of course give to each family a few acres of land.”18
African American emigration from the United States to Haiti, Clarkson believed, was good government policy. He explained to Christophe that an African American presence in Haiti could compel the United States to recognize the new republic. Clarkson, however, was not fully aware that southerners in the United States opposed Haitian independence, and this stood as a major obstacle to such a plan. Not until the Civil War, four decades after Christophe’s death, would the United States ultimately recognize the black republic as an independent nation.19
Christophe embraced Clarkson’s African American emigration plan, offering an initial donation of $25,000 for those free black Americans who were interested in resettling in Haiti.20 Learning of this financial allocation, Saunders traveled to Haiti to meet Christophe and provide help for his emigration project. When Christophe and Saunders first met, each seemed impressed by the other. Saunders praised Christophe’s vision for Haiti as expressed in his “Manifesto of the King,” in which Christophe proclaimed, “True to our oath, we will sooner bury ourselves beneath the ruins of our native country, than suffer an infraction of our political rights.”21 Christophe delighted in meeting a man with such pronounced “African features,” refined manners, and high intellect. Christophe immediately appointed Saunders his “official courier,” hoping that Saunders could help him gain diplomatic recognition from Britain.22 With letters and documents from the king, Saunders traveled to London to meet with British abolitionists and London’s high society to further such ends.
When Saunders arrived in London he established himself as the principal African American advocate of Haitian emigration in Europe. Upon publication of The Haytian Papers, a series of documents related to Haiti, he had impressed British dignitaries so favorably that he became the “darling of British royalty.” At a party thrown by Countess of Cork, for instance, his eloquence and refined manners served him well as he dined with members of the English court and London’s social elite. So well did Saunders ingratiate himself with the English upper crust that word of his “flamboyant lifestyle” got back to Christophe, who recalled him to Cap-Henri, Christophe’s capital.23
When Saunders returned to Haiti in 1816, he brought two English teachers familiar with the Lancastrian method, a technique employed in England that included “mechanical teaching devices, and used advanced children to monitor the work of beginners.”24 His confidence in his “official courier” restored, Christophe named him his minister of education, and Saunders organized several schools and introduced vaccination in Haiti.25 Over several years, Saunders traveled back and forth between the United States, England, and Haiti, attempting to gain support and to convince other African Americans to emigrate there. Recognizing the linkages among the abolition of slavery, black self-determination, and international
