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before the United States recognized Haiti. Bunel’s visit, argued David
McCullough in his Pulitzer Prize-winning John Adams, was also notable
for marking ‘‘the first time a man of African descent was the dinner guest
of an American president.’’ Given U.S. racial mores prevalent in 1798,
authors from Garry Wills and Douglas Egerton to Nicholas Santoro and
Robert Levine similarly emphasized how highly unusual it was for a U.S.
president to engage in close political intercourse with a person of color.
When Independence National Historical Park prepared in 2003 to add
a President’s House to its existing monuments in downtown Philadel-
phia, one of the architectural firms proposed to honor Joseph Bunel as a
leading member of Philadelphia’s free-colored community.2
Bunel also appears in many French-language works on the Haitian
Revolution—but, surprisingly, as a white man. The incertitude over such
a basic fact as Bunel’s race is one of many enigmas in the life of a histori-
cal figure who is often mentioned in passing in the literature, but is rarely
discussed at length. The main hurdle is practical. Bunel left behind a
significant documentary trail, but his life was spent between France, the
Caribbean, and the United States, and relevant documents are dispersed
between the British National Archives in Kew (for his negotiations with
Jamaica), the U.S. National Archives in College Park (for his 1798 visit
to Philadelphia), the Archives Nationales in Paris (for his disputes with
the French government), and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (for
2. ‘‘The first time’’ from David McCullough, John Adams (New York, 2001),
519. For other works that describe Joseph Bunel (hereafter JB) as a Mulatto, see
Douglas R. Egerton, ‘‘The Empire of Liberty Reconsidered,’’ in The Revolution
of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic, ed. James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis,
and Peter Onuf (Charlottesville, VA, 2002), 314; Garry Wills, ‘‘Negro President’’:
Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston, 2003), 38; Nicholas J. Santoro, Atlas of
Slavery and Civil Rights: An Annotated Chronicle of the Passage from Slavery and
Segregation to Civil Rights and Equality Under the Law (New York, 2006), 30;
Robert S. Levine, Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century
American Literary Nationalism (Chapel Hill, NC, 2008), 29. For other works on
JB and U.S.–Haitian relations, see Alexander DeConde, The Quasi-War: The Poli-
tics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 1797-1801 (New York,
1966), 135; Tim Matthewson, A Proslavery Foreign Policy: Haitian–American
Relations during the Early Republic (Westport, CT, 2003), 66–67; Gordon S.
Brown, Toussaint’s Clause: The Founding Fathers and the Haitian Revolution
(Jackson, MS, 2005), 137. On the President’s House, see http://www.phila.gov/
presidentshouse/howardrevis.htm.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 353
his wife). The conflagration of the Haitian Revolution and subsequent
instability in Haiti have compounded the problem as some relevant de-
posits were lost or sold to private and university collections from Gaines-
ville, Florida, to New York.3
These archival sources establish with quasi-certainty that Joseph
Bunel was white, but, even more importantly, they help shed light on
three peculiarities of his career that have been ignored in the existing
scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic. The first is Bunel’s unexpect-
edly close association with black Haitian rebels. One could expect that a
lengthy servile war would have further polarized a colonial society
founded on the twin pillars of slavery and racial inequality, but recent
scholarship has shown that racism was a rather novel, and far from com-
prehensive, ideology in Saint-Domingue. Bunel’s personal trajectory as a
white Frenchman who served a succession of black regimes (while find-
ing himself at odds with metropolitan authorities) confirms that revolu-
tionary Saint-Domingue was a societal kaleidoscope in which racial,
social, political, financial, gender, and national affiliations competed as
an individual’s defining characteristic; of those, monetary gain was possi-
bly the most relevant in Bunel’s case.4
Conversely, one could have expected rebellious slaves to pursue a
radical, messianic diplomatic agenda aimed at spreading the Dominguian
slave revolt to neighboring sugar colonies, Jamaica in particular. Instead,
3. For French-language works on JB, see Beaubrun Ardouin, Etudes sur l’his-
toire d’Haı̈ti suivies de la vie du général J.-M. Borgella (11 vols., Paris, 1853),
4: 44; Faine Scharon, Toussaint Louverture et la révolution de Saint-Domingue
(2 vols., Port-au-Prince, 1957), 2: 128–37; Pierre Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture:
un révolutionnaire noir d’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1989), 364–67; Jacques de Cauna,
ed., Toussaint Louverture et l’indépendance d’Haı̈ti: témoignages pour un bicenten-
aire (Paris, 2004), 82, 100. For sources on the Haitian Revolution, see David P.
Geggus, ‘‘Unexploited Sources for the History of the Haitian Revolution,’’ Latin
American Research Review 18, no. 1 (1983), 95–103.
4. On racism as a novel phenomenon in Saint-Domingue, see Laurent Dubois,
Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, MA,
2004), 5; John D. Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-
Domingue (New York, 2006), 47–49. On racism as a minor phenomenon even in
the 1780s, see Dominique Rogers, ‘‘On the Road to Citizenship: The Complex
Route to Integration of the Free People of Color in the Two Capitals of Saint-
Domingue,’’ The World of the Haitian Revolution, ed. David P. Geggus and
Norman Fiering (Bloomington, IN, 2009), 65–78.
354 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)
shaping their existence. To this list must be added financial self-interest,
which was the single most relevant factor as their eventful lives unfolded
between France, Saint-Domingue, and Philadelphia.
Relatively little is known about the Bunels before the Haitian Revolution,
but one can make some educated guesses based on clues left in the
archival record and what is known of the typical lives of men and women
of their social and racial background. Taken together, these identify the
Bunels as an upwardly mobile multiracial couple: she, a black freed-
woman who had become a slave owner and a merchant; he, a French-
born plantation manager and merchant.
Accounts are unanimous in describing Marie Bunel as black, but in
prerevolutionary Saint-Domingue this label applied to a socially diverse
6. ‘‘Slave of Mr. Estève’’ from Aurora (Philadelphia), Mar. 22, 1802. On Marie
Bunel (hereafter MB) as a Creole, see Grand-Jean to [MB], Sept. 18, 1804, Folder
22, Bunel Papers, Arthur Bining Collection, (Phi)1811, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (hereafter BP-HSP). On MB’s various names, see [Un-
known] to MB, Oct. 24, 1803, Folder 7, BP- HSP; MB, ‘‘Know all men by these
presents . . . ,’’ Oct. 11, 1810, Folder 32, BP- HSP. On slave names, see Jean
Fouchard, The Haitian Maroons: Liberty or Death (1972; repr., New York, 1981),
184.
356 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)
GA, 2001), 119, 141. On women of color owning slaves, see Socolow, ‘‘Economic
Roles of the Free Women of Color,’’ 286, 289.
10. ‘‘Bourgeois’’ from Abbé Piel, Inventaire historique des actes transcrits aux
insinuations ecclésiastiques de l’ancien diocèse de Lisieux (Lisieux, 1895), 5: 339.
For JB’s batismal record, see ‘‘Registres paroissiaux, Pont-Audemer, Notre-Dame
du Prey,’’ 8 Mi 3150, Archives Départementales de l’Eure, Evreux. On JB’s ances-
tors, see M. Charpillon, Dictionnaire historique de toutes les communes du départe-
ment de l’Eure (Les Andelys, 1879), 867, 933. On JB’s siblings, see Piel,
Inventaire historique 5:339, 631, 718. On the number of people of color in
France, see Sue Peabody and Tyler Edward Stovall, eds., The Color of Liberty:
Histories of Race in France (Durham, NC, 2003), 2; Michael D. Sibalis, ‘‘Les
noirs en France sous Napoléon: L’enquête de 1807,’’ in Rétablissement de l’escla-
vage dans les colonies françaises 1802: Ruptures et continuités de la politique colo-
niale française (1800–1830), ed. Yves Bénot and Marcel Dorigny (Paris, 2003),
100; Pierre Boulle, Race et esclavage dans la France de l’Ancien Régime (Paris,
2007), 109, 142. On the large proportion of newcomers in Saint-Domingue, see
Girod-Chatrans, Voyage d’un Suisse, 227–30, 239, 245; Auberteuil, Considérations
sur l’état présent, 1: 147–49, 158–67, 2: 33, 40–57, 273–76.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 359
‘‘European,’’ or, even more clearly, as ‘‘a bad White.’’ All three witnesses
were from metropolitan France, where mixed-blood individuals lighter
than Quadroons were generally considered white, which leaves open the
possibility that Bunel was a light-skinned individual whom the more
race-conscious colonists, who argued that it took six generations to wipe
out the stigma of miscegenation, would have refused to accept as one of
their own, but the odds for such a distant African ancestry are quite low.
Bunel’s metropolitan background may also explain his later willingness
to collaborate with Louverture and Dessalines, since modern concepts
of ‘‘scientific’’ racism had not yet taken hold among the French rank-
and-file as of the late eighteenth century.11
The earliest document mentioning Joseph Bunel in Saint-Domingue
is a 1788 legal ruling sentencing ‘‘le sieur Bunel,’’ a négociant (merchant)
in Port-au-Prince, to pay 4,372 livres to a captain from the Norman port
of Le Havre. The term ‘‘sieur’’ (‘‘sir’’) was normally reserved for white
males, whereas men of color had to go by the moniker le nommé, or
‘‘known as.’’ Such racial characterizations continued to appear in legal
documents even after the abolition of racial inequality in 1792, and in
his 1807 will Bunel described himself as the legitimate son of ‘‘sieur’’
Bunel and ‘‘dame’’ Anne Durand, a term normally reserved for white
women. Bunel’s use of such terms is another clue to his racial affiliation,
though social status could occasionally preempt race in Saint-Domingue
and some prominent mixed-race individuals managed to receive the
sought-after ‘‘sieur’’ in legal documents notwithstanding their African
ancestry. Using a French name like Bunel was another giveaway, since a
12. ‘‘Sieur Bunel’’ from Extrait des registres du greffe de l’amirauté de Port-
au-Prince,’’ June 11, 1788, Folder 13, BP-HSP. ‘‘Dame’’ from ‘‘Testament de
J[ose]ph Robert Eustache Bunel,’’ Jan. 28, 1807, Folder 11, BP- HSP. On the
use of ‘‘sieur,’’ see Garrigus, ‘‘Colour, Class, and Identity on the Eve of the Haitian
Revolution: Saint-Domingue’s Free Coloured Elite as Colons Américains’’ Slavery
and Abolition 17 (Apr. 1996), 19–43; Garrigus, Before Haiti, 164–69; King, Blue
Coat or Powdered Wig, 8, 163. On the continued use of racial terms after 1792,
see Dubois, ‘‘Inscribing Race in the Revolutionary French Antilles,’’ in The Color
of Liberty, 95–107. On free-colored and French names, see Auberteuil, Considéra-
tions sur l’état présent, 2: 81; Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods (1995;
repr., Berkeley, CA, 1998), 227; Garrigus, ‘‘Redrawing the Colour Line,’’ 38;
King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, 166, 168.
13. ‘‘A former procureur’’ from Kerversau, ‘‘Rapport sur la partie française de
Saint-Domingue,’’ 1 Germinal 9 [Mar. 22, 1801]), Box 2/66, Rochambeau Pa-
pers, University of Florida, Gainesville (hereafter RP-UF). ‘‘Despised by public
opinion’’ from Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture, 365. ‘‘Scoundrel’’ and ‘‘mean char-
acter’’ from Charles Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 1798–1873:
A chapter in Caribbean diplomacy (Baltimore, 1938), 17, 45. On typical careers
for free people of color, see King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, xiii, xvii, 146, 154.
On negative views of procureurs and merchants, see Girod-Chatrans, Voyage d’un
Girard, TRADING RACES • 361
Altogether, the Bunel of the prerevolutionary era comes across as an
ambitious, up-and-coming individual who was financially far more suc-
cessful than the many petits blancs starving in urban centers, but who
had yet to achieve social respectability as a well established grand blanc.
Bunel’s later interracial marriage can only have added to public scorn.
Despite the frequency of the practice, a white man was generally stigma-
tized if he was officially married to a woman of color, or mésallié (‘‘mis-
matched’’), and two white authors specifically criticized him for being
married to a ‘‘négresse [black woman].’’14
What, then, of the various authors who identify Bunel as a mixed-race
individual? Their evidence is quite unconvincing, as they draw their
information from other secondary sources or ambiguous primary
sources. Santoro’s work cites McCullough’s biography of Adams, which
itself referred to Alexander DeConde’s 1966 history of the Quasi-War,
in which Bunel was merely described as Louverture’s ‘‘personal repre-
sentative.’’ The books by Levine and Wills both referred to Egerton’s
essay, in which he claimed that U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Albert
Gallatin fumed that Adams would dine with ‘‘the light-skinned Bunel, a
mulatto ‘married to a black woman.’ ’’ But Egerton’s footnote lists a letter
by Thomas Jefferson and a Congressional debate involving Gallatin, nei-
ther of which specified Bunel’s race; instead, Gallatin described Louver-
ture as a black general while saying nothing of Bunel’s racial affiliation,
thus implying that he was white. These historians most likely assumed
that the diplomatic representative of a former slave must have been a
person of color, a logical shortcut that overlooked the considerable racial
complexity prevailing in Dominguian society.15
Suisse, 227–30, 234, 253; Wimpffen, A Voyage to Saint Domingo, 86, 327;
Pluchon, Toussaint Louverture, 33.
14. ‘‘Négresse’’ from Ferrand to Decrès, 20 Germinal 13 [Apr. 10, 1805], B7/
11, SHD-DAT and Guillaume Mauviel, ‘‘Mémoires sur Saint-Domingue . . .,’’
May 24, 1806, 1M599, SHD-DAT. On the mésalliés, see Alfred de Laujon, Souve-
nirs de trente années de voyages à Saint-Domingue, dans plusieurs colonies étrang-
ères, et au continent d’Amérique (2 vols., Paris, 1835), 1: 120; Garrigus, Before
Haiti, 178.
15. ‘‘Personal representative’’ from DeConde, Quasi-War, 135. ‘‘Married to a
black woman’’ from Egerton, ‘‘The Empire of Liberty Reconsidered,’’ 315. On
Jefferson’s letter, see Jefferson to James Madison, Feb. 5, 1799, in http://lcweb2
.loc.gov/master/mss/mjm/06/0600/0646d.jpg. On Gallatin’s speech, see Thomas
362 •
JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)
Hart Benton, Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, from 1789 to 1856 (New
York, 1857), 2: 334–39.
16. On JB’s first stay in the United States, see General Assembly of Penn-
sylvania, ‘‘An act for the relief of Joseph Robert Eustache Bunel,’’ Mar. 10, 1806,
in http://files.usgwarchives.org/pa/1pa/xmisc/1805-1806laws.txt. For his possible
presence in 1793–1794 (as ‘‘Benet de Blancamp’’ and ‘‘Bund de Blancamp’’), see
‘‘Wills: Abstracts, Will Book W.691 no. 418’’ (1793), in http://files.usgwarchives
.net/pa/philadelphia/wills/willabstrbkw.txt; ‘‘Wills: Abstracts, Book X– Part I’’
(1794), in http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/philadelphia/wills/willabstrbkx1.txt. On
free people of color in Philadelphia, see Gary B. Nash, ‘‘Reverberations of Haiti
in the American North: Black Saint Dominguans in Philadelphia,’’ Pennsylvania
History 65, no. 5 (1998), 50.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 363
firebrands like Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, many exiles returned to Saint-
Domingue in 1798. Both Bunels were in the colony by that date.17
Saint-Domingue had prospered by exporting colonial crops, so
Louverture’s hopes of reviving the colony’s sagging economy lay on his
ability to secure an outlet for its trade. Naval war with England had
annihilated the French merchant fleet, forcing Saint-Domingue to trade
almost exclusively with U.S. merchants, so after the United States im-
posed a trade embargo in 1798 Louverture expressed his ‘‘surprise and
sadness’’ in a letter to Adams ‘‘upon seeing that your nation’s ships have
abandoned Saint-Domingue’s ports.’’ Louverture selected Joseph Bunel
for the critical missions of delivering the letter and defending Saint-
Domingue’s interests before the U.S. government. Louverture employed
a virtually white cadre of secretaries, priests, merchants, and civil ser-
vants in his administration (blacks and mulattoes dominated in the
army), so for him to select a white envoy was far from extraordinary. As
a keen politician and diplomat, he was also unlikely to send a person of
color to represent him in the United States (and later England and
Jamaica), regimes governed by a white, race-conscious, and often slave-
owning ruling class.18
That Louverture selected Bunel specifically for this mission may also
have been connected to his recent stay in Philadelphia, while the gover-
nor of Jamaica ascribed his influence to the fact that he was one of
Louverture’s relatives. Details on Bunel’s exact place in Louverture’s
sprawling extended family are missing, but given Louverture’s penchant
for nepotism it is entirely possible that the two were indeed related by
marriage (one letter mentions that Marie Bunel took care of Louverture’s
wife Suzanne when she was sick, and they may have been relatives).
Bunel’s motives for accepting the diplomatic appointment are easier to
ascertain. The U.S. embargo had a devastating impact on the export
business, and when the embargo was later lifted he immediately wrote to
his business contacts in Philadelphia to inform them that they could now
resume their lucrative commercial links.19
Given Saint-Domingue’s importance for U.S. commerce, Bunel’s ar-
rival in Philadelphia was noted in numerous U.S. newspapers and private
letters. All but one failed to mention his race, which would likely not
have gone unnoticed if he had indeed been the first diplomat of color in
U.S. history. In his correspondence, U.S. Secretary of State Timothy
Pickering specified that Louverture was the ‘‘black commander in chief
of St. Domingo’’ when he merely described Bunel as ‘‘a messenger.’’
U.S. newspapers articles describing Bunel’s 1798 visit also simply re-
ferred to him as ‘‘Mr. Bunel’’ and a ‘‘gentleman.’’ A March 1802 article
from the Philadelphia Aurora even more categorically described the
Bunel couple as ‘‘Bunel, a white man, and his wife, a negress.’’20
Joseph Bunel met Pickering and a Congressional delegation from
South Carolina, and then dined with Adams in January 1799. Hopeful
that bilateral negotiations would drive a wedge between France and its
colony and ultimately push Saint-Domingue to independence, Pickering
responded enthusiastically to Louverture’s request for a trade treaty.
After a four-month stay in Philadelphia, which he no doubt also em-
ployed to further his private business interests, Bunel headed back to
Saint-Domingue on the USS Kingston, bringing with him his friend
Jacob Meyer, a Philadelphia merchant who had served as unofficial U.S.
21. On JB’s stay in the United States, see Pickering to Alexander Hamilton,
Feb. 9, 1799, in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold Syrett (New York,
1975), 22: 473–75; Gazette (Philadelphia), Mar. 12, 1799; DeConde, Quasi War,
135; Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 45; Stanley Elkins and Eric
McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York, 1993), 657. On JB’s return to Saint-
Domingue, see Massachusetts Mercury (Boston), Mar. 29, 1799; Edward Stevens
to Louverture, Apr. 10, 1799, 208 MI/1, AN; Louverture to Adams, 9 Floréal 7
[Apr. 28, 1799], RG 59, Microfilm M9/1, NARA-CP; Brown, Toussaint’s Clause,
155. On the Bunel–Meyer friendship and the Meyer–Stevens feud, see JB to
Meyer, 18 Nivôse 9 [Jan. 8, 1801]), RG 59, Microfilm M9/1, NARA-CP; Tansill,
The United States and Santo Domingo, 17, 58. On the Stevens–Maitland–
Louverture convention, see Roume to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord,
17 Floréal 7 [May 6, 1799], Papers of Philippe Roume, Manuscript Division,
Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
366 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)
22. On JB’s lawsuit, see ‘‘Extract from the Minutes of the Clerk’s Office of the
Tribunal of Commerce sitting at the Cap,’’ 17 Prairial 7 [June 5, 1799], Folder 7,
BP-HSP. On JB’s links to Philadelphia merchants, see JB to Jacob Meyer, 26
Messidor 8 [July 15, 1800], RG 59, Microfilm M9/1, NARA-CP; ‘‘This charter
party of affreightment . . .,’’ Aug. 1802, Box 7:3, Borie Family Papers, (Phi)1602,
HSP (hereafter BFP-HSP); [French merchant in Cap] to Richard Gernon, July
29, 1802, Box 7:6, BFP-HSP; Gellibert to Bunel, Jan. 18, 1802, Folder 14, BP-
HSP. On JB’s financial gains, see JB, ‘‘Doit monsieur Bivél . . .,’’ 22 Vendémiaire
9 [Oct. 14, 1800], Folder 22, BP-HSP; ‘‘Doit le citoyen Bunel . . .,’’ 14 Floréal 9
[May 4, 1801], Folder 109, BP-HSP. On arms purchases in Hamburg, see Plu-
chon, Toussaint Louverture, 414. For the power of attorney, see ‘‘Extrait des
registres du greffe du tribunal civil du département du nord . . .,’’ 9 Vendémiaire
10 [Oct. 1, 1801]), Folder 16, BP-HSP. On MB’s plantations, see Grand-Jean to
[MB], Sept. 18, 1804, Folder 22, BP-HSP.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 367
that Bunel managed to direct some slavers to Saint-Domingue, since
contraband was rampant in Jamaica and British traders had routinely
smuggled slaves into French colonies before the revolution. Anger at
Louverture’s contacts with slave traders played an important role in
sparking a major cultivator uprising near Cap Français in October
1801.23
After months of negotiations, Joseph Bunel and the governor of
Jamaica reached an agreement in November 1801 to stop British attacks
on Louverture’s commerce, but news of the London peace preliminaries
between England and France reached Jamaica soon thereafter and the
agreement proved stillborn. The peace, which Louverture learned about
from Bunel upon his return from Jamaica, meant that France was now
free to ship squadrons across the Atlantic. Two months later, as he stood
in Cape Samaná during a visit to Santo Domingo (modern-day Domini-
can Republic), Louverture witnessed the arrival of a massive French fleet
that First Consul Napoléon Bonaparte had sent to remove him from
office. Bonaparte had also instructed the expedition’s commander, Vic-
toire Leclerc, to deport all of Louverture’s white supporters—people like
Joseph Bunel.24
JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)
cial standing. Quite amazingly in a period rife with judicial arbitrariness,
she quickly obtained her release and headed for Philadelphia. Her hus-
band was deported to France and was only freed late in 1803.27
26. On JB’s arrest, see Christophe to JB, 14 Pluviôse 10 [Feb. 3, 1802], Folder
109, BP- HSP; Pierre Boyer to JB, 20 Ventôse 10 [Mar. 11, 1802], CC9B/21,
AN; JB to Bonaparte, 18 Messidor 11 [July 7, 1803], CC9/B23, AN. On the
confiscation of JB’s assets, see Leclerc to Decrès, 20 Pluviôse 10 [Feb. 9, 1802],
CC9B/19, AN; Leclerc, [untitled], 20 Germinal 10 [Apr. 10 1802], Box 4/218,
RP-UF; Louis-André Pichon to Hector Daure, 9 Prairial 10 [May 29, 1802], B7/
13, SHD-DAT; Pichon to Leclerc, 9 Prairial 10 [May 29, 1802], BN08269 / lot
107, RP-UF; Liot to Daure, 30 Messidor 10 [July 19, 1802], B7/13, SHD-DAT;
Decrès to Coursault, 11 Ventôse 11 [Mar. 2,1803], Folder 7, BP-HSP. On
Leclerc’s mistreatment of U.S. merchants, see Leclerc, ‘‘Arrêté,’’ 28 Pluviôse 10
[Feb. 17, 1802]), CC9/B22, AN; Tobias Lear to Boyer, Mar. 11, 1802, Folder 1,
Env. 2, General claims, 1799-1844, RG 76 / MLR Pl 177 239, NARA-CP; John
Rodgers to Madison, June 1802, Box 1:14, Rodgers Family Papers, (Phi)1208,
27. ‘‘I cannot believe that the government’’ from MB to Rochambeau, 2 Fri-
maire 11 [Nov. 23, 1802], Box 14/1363, RP-UF. For her other appeals, see MB
to [Leclerc], 11 Brumaire 11 [Nov. 2, 1802], B7/12, SHD-DAT; MB to Daure,
21 Brumaire 11 [Nov. 12, 1802], B7/12, SHD-DAT. On MB’s release, see Maurin
to MB, 10 July 1803, Folder 7, BP-HSP. On JB’s release, see JB to Bonaparte, 18
Messidor 11 [July, 7 1803], CC9/B23, AN; Marguerite Ansalle to MB, Aug. 9,
1803, Folder 7, BP-HSP; [Unknown] to MB, Oct. 24, 1803, Folder 7, BP-HSP.
370 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)
28. On MB’s role in the mercantile business, see JB to MB, May 16, [1803?],
Folder 109, BP-HSP. On her demand for reimbursement, see MB to Boyer, Mar.
24, 1803, Folder 7, BP-HSP. On her philanthropic role, see Denayve to MB, c.
1803, Folder 109, BP-HSP; MB, ‘‘Bon pour quatre pains d’un escalin,’’ no date,
Folder 109, BP-HSP. On her contacts in Saint-Domingue, see Veuve Bellony
Tardieu to MB, Apr. 8, 1804, Folder 22, BP-HSP; César Télémaque to MB, Apr.
12, 1804, Folder 22, BP-HSP. On requests for news, see Léaumont to MB, Apr.
1, 1804, Folder 22, BP-HSP.
29. ‘‘Sashameny’’ from JB to MB, Aug. 15, 1804, Folder 22, BP-HSP; ‘‘Femme
Bunel’’ from MB to Boyer, Mar. 24, 1803, Folder 7, BP-HSP; ‘‘Madame Bunel’’
from MB, ‘‘Know all men by these presents . . .,’’ Oct. 11, 1810, Folder 32, BP-
HSP. On ‘‘femme’’ as demeaning, see Garrigus, Before Haiti, 142. For examples
of MB’s signature, see MB, ‘‘Bon pour quatre pains d’un escalin,’’ no date, Folder
109, BP-HSP. On Dominguan freemasonry, see Garrigus, Before Haiti, 291–97.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 371
While Marie Bunel continued her lifelong journey toward upper class
respectability, her white husband maintained his association with Saint-
Domingue’s black rebels, a role that is only described in the literature in
a sparsely footnoted article by Maurice Lubin. In a lengthy letter written
from Baltimore in October 1803, Joseph Bunel explained to Dessalines
(now leading the rebel forces vying for independence) that he had just
managed to escape from the ‘‘claws’’ of the French government, who had
persecuted him because of his diplomatic missions to the United States
and Jamaica, and was on his way to Philadelphia to reunite with his wife.
Eager to help ‘‘our unfortunate brothers’’ in Saint-Domingue, Bunel of-
fered to meet the British ambassador to the United States on Dessalines’s
behalf, explained that he had incited various merchant friends to ship
goods to rebel-controlled areas, and noted that many French merchants
had suffered so much under Leclerc’s reign that they now regretted
Louverture. Warning that France’s policy would be to divide ‘‘colors’’
and ‘‘nations’’ (African tribal groups), he also told Dessalines that ‘‘the
greatest union must reign among you.’’ His letter was remarkable for
presenting the ongoing conflict as a struggle for colonial autonomy, not
as a racial war, this one year after the French army in Saint-Domingue
had begun large-scale massacres of colonial (black) units.30
Joseph Bunel must have received an encouraging response from
Dessalines, because in August 1804, seven months after Haiti formally
declared its independence, he prepared to sail back to the island. No
doubt aware that Dessalines had massacred most of Haiti’s white French-
men in February–April 1804, Bunel expressed great concern about his
upcoming journey and in a touching letter to Marie Bunel he asked his
wife to pray to her patron the Virgin Mary for his safe return (he left on
Assumption Day). It was thus with a sense of relief and jubilation that a
month later he wrote from Haiti that his voyage had gone better than he
could ever have expected. Dessalines had rushed to meet him within six
hours of his landing in Gonaı̈ves and had bought his entire cargo on the
spot, leaving Bunel with a quick 70,000-gourde profit. Bunel may have
misleadingly claimed diplomatic status to further his commercial goals,
because a Haitian historian, drawing from his country’s oral tradition,
described his September 1804 visit as an official mission on behalf of the
U.S. government.31
A few days later, Marie Bunel’s nephew Grand-Jean wrote from Cap
Haı̈tien (formerly Cap Français) that he had also sold a cargo in her
name and that Dessalines had expressed his ‘‘ardent desire to see you
return to the country of your birth, and how pleased he would be to see
you embrace the cause of the Haitians.’’ On a more sobering note,
Grand-Jean added that Marie Bunel’s plantations were in a sorry state
and that there was little chance for her to make money off her rental
property in Cap Haı̈tien given the recent decline in the city’s population.
Lack of economic opportunities must have carried more weight in her
eyes than appeals to Haitian patriotism, because she remained in Phila-
delphia for the time being.32
By contrast, Joseph Bunel’s involvement with Haiti was frequent and
sustained. He commissioned three ships to Haiti in subsequent months,
one of which brought a large supply of gunpowder, and he was pleased
to note that he had ‘‘more influence [on Dessalines] than all the U.S.
merchants combined.’’ The last members of the Leclerc expedition still
present in neighboring Santo Domingo were dismayed when they heard
that their compatriot was busy equipping their enemy, which may ex-
plain why Bunel’s simultaneous attempts to renew his business partner-
ships in French ports largely met with failure. Also in 1804, Christophe
told his ‘‘cher diplomatique’’ Bunel that he should transmit some corre-
31. For the Assumption Day letter, see JB to MB, Aug. 15, 1804, Folder 22,
BP-HSP. For JB’s account of his trip, see JB to MB, Sept. 7, 1804, Folder 22,
BP-HSP. On Bunel as a U.S. envoy, see Ardouin, Etudes, 6: 108. For a similar
mistake, see Denis Laurent-Ropa, Haı̈ti: Une colonie française, 1625–1802 (Paris,
1993), 239.
32. ‘‘Ardent desire’’ from Grand-Jean to [MB], Sept. 18, 1804, Folder 22, BP-
HSP.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 373
spondence to the governor of Jamaica, with whom Dessalines had en-
gaged in largely fruitless negotiations since declaring independence. No
agreement came from these latest negotiations, but Bunel was back in
business as Haiti’s white ambassador.33
One document mentions that Joseph Bunel petitioned for U.S. citi-
zenship, but he only appears in the 1804 and 1805 editions of the Phila-
delphia Directory and his residency in the United States proved short-
lived. Despite Dessalines’s notorious Francophobia and a clause in the
1805 Haitian constitution that forbade foreigners from acquiring prop-
erty on Haitian soil, Bunel established his primary residence in Cap
Haı̈tien so that he could oversee his business, and in 1807 he wrote a
will and a power of attorney in Marie Bunel’s favor to let her handle the
Philadelphia branch of their mercantile firm. Christophe, who emerged
as president (then king) of northern Haiti after Dessalines’s 1806 assassi-
nation, continued to welcome Bunel’s presence in Cap Haı̈tien (later
renamed Cap Henry), officially because he was known as ‘‘a person
known for his principles and his constant love for liberty,’’ but probably
also because both Christophes were close friends of Marie Bunel. Chris-
tophe has a reputation as an Anglophile, but his attitude toward Bunel
(and another French merchant in Cap Henry, Jean Caze) shows that he
had not completely severed all links to France.34
ment de J[ose]ph Robert Eustache Bunel,’’ Jan. 28, 1807, Folder 11, BP-HSP.
On MB’s closeness to the Christophes, see Christophe to MB, June 12, 1810,
Folder 32, BP-HSP; Mrs. Christophe to MB, Sept. 3, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP.
On Caze, see Caze to Antoine Laussat, Mar. 19, 1807, Folder 11, BP-HSP.
35. ‘‘Eager to kiss you’’ from JB to MB, Apr. 25, [1809], Folder 20, BP-HSP.
‘‘Blackman’’ from John Northrop to MB, Nov. 15, 1807, Folder 22, BP-HSP.
‘‘Servant’’ from JB to MB, c. 1808, Folder 109, BP-HSP. On JB’s retirement
plans, see JB to MB, c. 1808, Folder 109, BP-HSP; JB to MB, Nov. 5, 1808,
Folder 12, BP-HSP. On MB’s trading activities, see JB to MB, Oct. 27, 1809,
Folder 20, BP-HSP; Bazin to MB, Aug. 18, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP; Mrs.
Christophe to MB, Sept. 3, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP. On Dominguan exiles in
Philadelphia, see Catherine Hébert, ‘‘The French Element in Pennsylvania in the
1790s: The Francophone Immigrants’ Impact,’’ Pennsylvania Magazine of History
and Biography 108 (Oct. 1984), 451–70; Nash, ‘‘Reverberations of Haiti,’’ 59;
Susan Branson and Leslie Patrick, ‘‘Etrangers dans un Pays Étrange: Saint-Domin-
gan Refugees of Color in Philadelphia,’’ in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution
in the Atlantic World, ed. David Geggus (Columbia, SC, 2001), 204.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 375
sister and her nephew Grand-Jean) lived in Cap Henry, and her many
friends begged her repeatedly to move to Haiti, but they failed to sway
her until August 1810. That month, she fell sick and paid for a young
girl’s burial, two events that suggest a miscarriage or infant death and
must have been devastating as no child of the Bunels is mentioned any-
where else. This personal tragedy—or maybe Proustian flashbacks while
eating mango and guava preserves sent by Mrs. Christophe in Septem-
ber—finally awoke a desire to return to the island of her youth. In Octo-
ber, she signed a power of attorney to Antoine Laussat, the brother of
the former French governor of Louisiana and a merchant who, like Bunel
and Caze, had been persecuted under Leclerc and was sympathetic to
the Haitian rebels. Soon thereafter she headed for Haiti, a black republic
from which she had remained rather distant for the previous eight
years.36
Few documents remain from nineteenth century Haiti, and the docu-
mentary trail on the Bunels tapers off soon after they reunited, but what
evidence exists suggests that their financial aspirations went unfulfilled.
As early as 1808, Joseph Bunel was complaining that Haiti’s export busi-
ness had ebbed markedly due to growing U.S. and British hostility and
Haiti’s general economic decline. In 1811, to avenge himself of a Balti-
more merchant who had defrauded him of a large shipment of coffee,
Christophe seized 132,000 gourdes worth of property held by U.S. mer-
chants in Haiti. The episode cost Joseph Bunel, listed as a U.S. mer-
chant, 17,891 gourdes. As he was now age 58, the financial setback
(accompanied by a three-month embargo on U.S. commerce) must have
postponed his retirement plans indefinitely.37
36. On MB’s relatives, see JB to MB, Sept. 10, 1808, Folder 12, BP-HSP;
Femme Grandjean to MB, June 16, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP. On demands for
MB’s return, see Grand-Jean to [MB], Sept. 18, 1804, Folder 22, BP-HSP;
[Bazin?] to MB, Aug. 6, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP. On MB’s health problems,
see [Receipt], Aug. 27, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP; Robert Cooke to MB, Aug.
29, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP. On the preserves, see Mrs. Christophe to MB,
Sept. 3, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP. On Caze and Laussat’s persecutions, see An-
toine Laussat to [Pierre Clément de] Laussat, 12 Messidor 10 [July 1, 1802],
CC9/B22, AN. For the power of attorney, see MB, ‘‘Know all men by these
presents . . .,’’ Oct. 11, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP.
37. On declining business opportunities in Haiti, see JB to MB, Nov. 5, 1808,
Folder 12, BP-HSP; Bazin to MB, Aug. 18, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP. On the
1811 dispute with Christophe, see Christophe, ‘‘Ordre général de l’armée’’ (3 Jan.
376 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)
A letter dated April 1812 mentioned that Marie Bunel lived in Cap
Henry, but no ulterior document has survived and the Bunels’ last years,
even more so than their prerevolutionary careers, are shrouded in mys-
tery. Even the better documented middle segment of their existence re-
mains mystifying in many ways. Though a black freedwoman, Marie
Bunel showed a surprising talent for prospering in worlds that, at first
sight, should have been discriminatory toward her race, class, and gen-
der, while her white husband displayed an equally remarkable ability to
collaborate with the black leaders of Saint-Domingue, particularly Dessa-
lines, whom many white colonists regarded as a monster after he massa-
cred most of Haiti’s French citizens in 1804.
As the husband of a woman closely connected to all the leading black
officers of her time, and as a political renegade frequently at odds with
French authorities, Joseph Bunel probably felt that Haiti offered the best
chance of commercial success. As a businesswoman, Marie Bunel paid
far less attention to racial or national loyalty than to pecuniary concerns
and, until her 1810 return to Haiti, lived where she was most likely to
prosper financially. In both cases, their careers underline the primacy
that contemporaries of the Haitian revolution often gave to commercial
over racial concerns. Various studies have also shown the complexity of
characters as diverse as the white planter Jean-Baptiste de Caradeux, the
black officer Jean Kina, and the French officer Charles Humbert de Vin-
cent, so a case could be made that the best way to do justice to the
complexity of this era would be to eschew sweeping generalizations
about racial warfare and instead approach the history of the revolution
from the individual level and carefully work our way up.38
1811), in US Serial Set no. 42 doc. 36 (27th Congress, 3rd Session), pp. 111,
Government Documents, McNeese State University.
38. For the last letter on the Bunels, see Duroc to MB, Apr. 18, 1812, Folder
10, BP- HSP. On Caradeux, Kina, Vincent, see David Geggus, ‘‘The Caradeux
and Colonial Memory,’’ in The Impact of the Haitian Revolution, 236–46;
Geggus, ‘‘Slave, Soldier, Rebel: The Strange Career of Jean Kina,’’ Haitian Revo-
lutionary Studies, ed. Geggus (Bloomington, IN, 2002), 137–56; Christian
Schneider, ‘‘Le colonel Vincent, officier du génie à Saint-Domingue,’’ Annales
historiques de la révolution française no. 329 (July 2002), 101–22.