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Trading Races

Joseph and Marie Bunel, a Diplomat and a Merchant in


Revolutionary Saint-Domingue and Philadelphia
PHILIPPE R. GIRARD

Late in 1798, a merchant and diplomat named Joseph Bunel


arrived in Philadelphia to meet with U.S. President John Adams. He had
been sent by Toussaint Louverture, the dominant political and military
figure in northern Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), to obtain a re-
sumption of U.S.–Dominguian commercial relations. The U.S. Congress
had instituted an embargo in retaliation for French privateering attacks,
bringing Saint-Domingue’s once-prosperous trade to a sudden halt.
Bunel’s mission proved a resounding success. Within six months,
Louverture signed a treaty that reopened Saint-Domingue to U.S. com-
merce, even as the Quasi-War still raged and the U.S. embargo contin-
ued to affect other French colonies.1
This interesting episode of U.S.–Haitian relations has appeared in
several English-language scholarly works in recent years, all of which
mentioned Bunel as Haiti’s de facto first ambassador to the United States,
five years before Haiti’s formal declaration of independence and 64 years

Philippe R. Girard is associate professor of history at McNeese State University.


Research for this article was made possible in part by a PEAES fellowship from
the Library Company and the archival resources of the Historical Society of Penn-
sylvania. The author would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers
whose comments greatly helped refine the original argument of this article.
1. On the impact of the U.S. embargo, see Gazette (Philadelphia), Mar. 12,
1799; Toussaint Louverture to John Adams, 16 Brumaire 7 [Nov. 6, 1798], RG
59, Microfilm M9/1, U.S. National Archives, College Park (hereafter NARA-CP).
On the 1799 treaty reopening trade, see Edward Stevens to Timothy Pickering,
May 3, 1799, 208 MI/1, Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN).

Journal of the Early Republic, 30 (Fall 2010)


Copyright 䉷 2010 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. All rights reserved.
352 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)

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)

far from employing Bunel as the revolutionary vanguard of the black


proletariat, Louverture and—more surprisingly—his successor Jean-
Jacques Dessalines used him to pursue traditional aims such as expand-
ing trade and enhancing national defense. In one particularly troubling
case, Louverture even instructed Bunel to purchase African plantation
workers from British slave traders.5
The last, wholly overlooked dimension of Bunel’s life is his partner-
ship with his wife, Marie Bunel. Mirroring her husband’s unexpected
role as the white representative of a black revolution, she was a black
woman engaged in long-distance trade, a career path normally dominated
by white men. For many years after Haiti’s independence, while her
husband resumed his diplomatic and commercial ties with Haiti, Marie
Bunel lived a financially rewarding life in Philadelphia and remained
quite aloof from the destiny of the young black republic where she had
been born. Altogether, the career arcs of the two Bunels reinforce the
growing trend toward describing Saint-Domingue’s racial taxonomy as
merely one of many historically relevant social markers, since gender,
class, place of birth, and political views all played a significant role in


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

5. On Louverture and Dessalines’s refusal to export the revolution, see Jean-


Jacques Dessalines, ‘‘Proclamation,’’ Jan. 1, 1804, AB/XIX/3302/15, AN; Phil-
ippe Girard, ‘‘Black Talleyrand: Toussaint Louverture’s Diplomacy, 1798–1802,’’
William and Mary Quarterly 66 (Jan. 2009), 106.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 355
group that ranged from despised, impoverished Congo (African-born)
field slaves to elite Créole (Caribbean-born) free-coloreds. Marie Bunel
was a Creole, which immediately gave her some prominence in a popula-
tion dominated by recently imported slaves. Before she married Joseph
Bunel, she was known as Fanchette Estève or Marie-Françoise Mouton,
which may reflect her past slave status since slaves often went by the
name of their master or of their plantation (one U.S. newspaper article
described her as the ‘‘slave of Mr. Estève,’’ but the article also mistakenly
reported Dessalines’s capture and is of uncertain reliability). As for Fan-
chette (diminutive for Françoise), it was a decidedly undignified first
name, which she may have abandoned in favor of her other, more main-
stream first name as she moved up the social ladder.6
In the French Caribbean, another important social distinction sepa-
rated the masses of nouveaux libres (freed when France abolished slavery
in 1794) from the anciens libres (whose freedom predated the revolu-
tion). Marie Bunel most likely belonged to the latter group. In her 1999
dissertation on free people of color in Cap Français before the Haitian
Revolution, Dominique Rogers listed a Fanchette Mouton as one of sev-
eral highly prosperous free women of color (despite contemporary ste-
reotypes castigating all free women of color as prostitutes and courtesans,
many made their living as small entrepreneurs). A 1798 letter described
Marie Bunel as a merchant specializing in clothing items, and three years
later a merchant about to leave Cap Français gave her full legal authority
to run his business in his absence. Both documents confirm her financial
prominence, while backing Rogers’s more general conclusion that free
people of color had achieved a high degree of social and economic inte-
gration by the late 1780s, at least in Cap Français. Marie Bunel’s later
correspondence also indicates that she was a close friend of famous revo-
lutionary families from the Cap Français area, the Louvertures and the

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)

Christophes in particular, and it is highly possible that they had known


each other since the prerevolutionary era.7
The most common path to emancipation in prerevolutionary Saint-
Domingue was for a master to free his mixed-race offspring and their
slave mother, so a black woman like Marie Bunel had most likely been
emancipated in her lifetime in exchange for sexual services. That she
was Joseph Bunel’s former slave is a tempting, but ultimately unproven,
hypothesis. Alternatively, their relationship may have started when he
was still a young man recently arrived from France, since it was common
for penniless newcomers to live with free black women in the popular
neighborhoods of Cap Français. Such partners could be unofficial con-
cubines (ménagères) or outright wives. In the Bunels’ case, one source
indicates that the two only married ‘‘under Toussaint’’; that is, after Lou-
verture became the most prominent figure in the colony in late 1798.
When in power, Louverture insisted that long-standing common-law
unions be sanctified by marriage, so the Bunels probably formalized their
relationship at his insistence. One source also describes Marie Bunel as
Louverture’s mistress, a relationship that is not altogether improbable
since Louverture (his outward Puritanism notwithstanding) had many
affairs; but the documentary record is too sparse to reach a definite con-
clusion on that particular point.8

7. On free women of color in Cap, see Susan M. Socolow, ‘‘Economic Roles


of the Free Women of Color of Cap Français,’’ in More than Chattel: Black Women
and Slavery in the Americas, ed. David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine
(Bloomington, IN, 1996), 279, 281, 293; Dominique Rogers, ‘‘Les libres de
couleur dans les capitales de Saint-Domingue: fortune, mentalités et intégration à
la fin de l’Ancien Régime (1776–1789)’’ (PhD diss., Université Michel de Mon-
taigne, Bordeaux 3[?]), 1999); Garrigus, Before Haiti, 72, 176; Rogers, ‘‘On the
Road to Citizenship.’’ On MB as a 1790s merchant, see Augustin Clervaux to
MB, 6 Pluviôse 6 [Jan. 25, 1798], Folder 13, BP-HSP; ‘‘Aujourd’hui ving-
neuvième jour du mois de Brumaire . . .,’’ Nov. 20, 1801, Folder 16, BP-HSP.
On MB as friend of the Louvertures and the Christophes, see Pascal to [Louver-
ture], 10 Germinal [9?] [Mar. 31, 1801], Folder 9C, Kurt Fisher Collection,
Howard University, Washington DC (hereafter KFC-HU); Henri Christophe to
MB, June 12, 1810, Folder 32, BP-HSP.
8. ‘‘Under Toussaint’’ from Louis Ferrand to Denis Decrès, 20 Germinal 13
[Apr. 10, 1805], B7/11, Service Historique de la Défense-Département de
l’Armée de Terre, Vincennes (hereafter SHD-DAT). On sex as a path to emanci-
pation, see Arlette Gautier, Les sœurs de Solitude: La condition féminine dans
l’esclavage aux Antilles du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1985), 174; David P.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 357
Free people of color usually embraced the white plantation model,
and Saint-Domingue’s unusually large free-colored community owned
many plantations and slaves before the revolution. Free women of color
owned and traded slaves as well; so did, most likely, Marie Bunel. In
December 1802, nine years after slavery was abolished in Saint-
Domingue, she asked her legal representative to ‘‘protect and keep a
careful eye on my former subjects’’ [emphasis added]. A list of fourteen
black individuals followed in the manner typically used when describing
prerevolutionary estates, complete with the workers’ skills and offspring.
She also expressed her desire to ‘‘enforce all the governmental laws and
regulations that apply to them, as well as those that the government may
pass in the future.’’ As Marie Bunel well knew, France had effectively
restored slavery in Guadeloupe that year and was widely suspected of
preparing to do the same in Saint-Domingue, so the comment under-
scored her willingness to recover her former human property if France
ever restored slavery in Saint-Domingue (a restoration of slavery would
not have affected anciens libres like her).9

Geggus, ‘‘Slave and Free Colored Women in Saint-Domingue,’’ in More than


Chattel, ed. Gaspar and Hine, 268; Myriam Cottias, ‘‘La séduction coloniale:
damnation et stratégie,’’ in Séduction et sociétés: approches historiques, ed. Cécile
Dauphin and Arlette Farge (Paris, 2001), 130. On unions between poor white
men and free black women, see Michele-René Hilliard d’Auberteuil and Antoine
de Sartine, Considérations sur l’état présent de la colonie française de Saint-
Domingue: ouvrage politique et legislative, présenté au Ministre de la Marine (2
vols., Paris, 1776), 2: 273–76. On the ménagères, see Justin Girod-Chantrans,
Voyage d’un Suisse dans différentes colonies d’Amérique (Neuchatel, 1785), 140;
Gautier, Les sœurs de Solitude, 166–68. On Louverture’s insistence that his collab-
orators should marry, see F. R. de Tussac, Cri des colons contre un ouvrage de M.
l’Evêque et Sénateur Grégoire, ayant pour titre de la littérature des nègres (Paris,
1810), 231; Madison Smartt Bell, Toussaint Louverture: A Biography (New York,
2007), 198. On MB as Louverture’s mistress, see Cauna, Toussaint Louverture,
82. On Louverture’s other affairs, see Michel-Etienne Descourtilz, Voyage d’un
naturaliste en Haı̈ti, 1799–1803 (1809; repr., Paris, 1935), 153; Pamphile de
Lacroix, La révolution de Haı̈ti (1819; repr., Paris, 1995), 304.
9. ‘‘My former subjects’’ from MB, [Untitled] (27 Frimaire 11 [Dec. 18,
1802]), Folder 109, BP-HSP. On the free-coloreds’ land and slave assets, see
Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below
(Knoxville, TN, 1990), 19; John D. Garrigus, ‘‘Redrawing the Colour Line: Gen-
der and the Social Construction of Race in Pre-Revolutionary Haiti,’’ Journal of
Caribbean History, 30, no. 1–2 (1996), 39; Stewart R. King, Blue Coat or Pow-
dered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-Revolutionary Saint-Domingue (Athens,
358 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)

Joseph Bunel’s past is equally obscure. There is no known portrait of


him, so one must rely entirely on a disparate archival record to assess
his skin color and social background. Baptismal records indicate that he
was born in March 1753 in the Norman city of Pont-Audemer and that
his full name was Joseph Robert Eustache Bunel de Blancamp. His
mother, Anne-Reine Durand, was a commoner. On his paternal side, he
descended from a family of minor nobility that had produced a tanner
and an échevin (city official) earlier in the century, but his father may not
have inherited the title because a document described him as a mere
‘‘bourgeois’’ merchant. As of 1785, Joseph Bunel’s younger brother
Louis-Joseph was a vicaire (priest assistant); his sister Marguerite mar-
ried in 1787, by which time their father had died. It is technically possi-
ble that Bunel’s mother was not white, but people of color only
numbered 5,000 in all of France in the 1780s, most of them in Paris and
Atlantic ports, and finding a mixed-race couple in rural Normandy is
unlikely. Taken together, surviving documents point to a middling pro-
vincial background that was typical of the many ambitious young
Frenchmen who headed to Saint-Domingue in the 1780s in search of the
fabled wealth of the perle des Antilles.10
Several contemporaries also describe Bunel as a ‘‘Frenchman’’ and a

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

11. ‘‘Frenchman’’ from Ferrand to Decrès, 20 Germinal 13 [Apr. 10, 1805],


B7/11, SHD-DAT. ‘‘European’’ from Cauna, Toussaint Louverture, 100. ‘‘A
bad White’’ from Guillaume Mauviel, ‘‘Mémoires sur Saint-Domingue . . .,’’
May 24, 1806, 1M599, SHD-DAT. On the less stringent definitions of racial
purity prevalent in France, see M. J. La Neuville, Le dernier cri de Saint-
Domingue et des colonies (Philadelphia, 1800), 10. On racial taxonomy in the
colonies, see Auberteuil, Considérations sur l’état présent, 2: 82; Francis Alexan-
der Stanislaus Wimpffen, A Voyage to Saint Domingo in the Years 1788, 1789,
and 1790 (London, 1797), 61; Médéric Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description de
la partie française de l’isle Saint-Domingue (3 vols., 1797; repr., Paris, 1958),
1: 86–100. On the French rank-and-file’s late conversion to ‘‘scientific’’ racism,
see Boulle, Race et esclavage, 44, 80.
360 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)

1773 law required free people of color to use African-sounding names


(though some prominent free-coloreds did manage to use their fathers’
French name in practice).12
François-Marie Kerversau, a French officer whose accounts are often
reliable, described Joseph Bunel as a ‘‘former procureur, then a mer-
chant, of very low reputation.’’ Procureurs were managers who oversaw
the plantation of absentee owners and were overwhelmingly white, as
were merchants (typical male free-colored professions included small-
scale planter, militiaman, sailor, and artisan). A report by the French
agent Gabriel d’Hédouville also described Bunel as a former procureur
and a man ‘‘despised by public opinion,’’ while two U.S. and British
sources lambasted him as one ‘‘of the greatest scoundrels I ever knew in
my life’’ and a man of ‘‘mean character.’’ Such snide remarks are interest-
ing in a colony that sharply distinguished between the elite grands blancs
and the petits blancs rabble. The procureur profession was lucrative and
sought after, but it suffered from a bad reputation because managers had
a tendency to overwork the slaves to boost short-term profits at the ex-
pense of the long-term viability of the labor force. Planters also criticized
French merchants as greedy leeches.13

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)

The outbreak of the Haitian Revolution radically transformed the world


in which the Bunels had lived. The plain of Cap Français was ravaged
during the 1791 slave uprising, the city itself burned to the ground in
1793, and thousands of planters, free people of color, and slaves fled to
cities on the U.S. seaboard. Joseph Bunel is mentioned as residing in
Pennsylvania in 1792, and possibly in 1793–1794 as well, but informa-
tion on his first stay in the United States is frustratingly sparse. Whether
Marie Bunel emigrated as well is uncertain, as only 33 free people of
color reached Philadelphia during that period.16
After almost ten years of political turmoil, the situation in Saint-
Domingue stabilized somewhat in 1798, when British forces left the col-
ony and Louverture established himself as de facto ruler of the North and
West of Saint-Domingue. Louverture long had a reputation as an idealis-
tic rebel committed to emancipation, but recent scholarship has shown
that he had owned slaves before the revolution, and the gulf between the
freedman and the planter community no longer seems as wide as it once
appeared. As governor, Louverture maintained and even toughened his
predecessors’s cultivateur (semi-free) system, and many planters prag-
matically concluded that he was the only officer able and willing to re-
store the colony’s ravaged plantations. White créoles, who had long
dreamed of obtaining political autonomy from France and freeing them-
selves from mercantilist trade restrictions, were also pleased to note that
Louverture shared their political and economic goals. Confident that
Louverture would prove a more congenial leader than French radical

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

17. On Louverture as a slave owner, see Cauna, Toussaint Louverture, 61–67.


On Louverture’s strict labor rules, see Louverture, ‘‘Instructions aux fonction-
naires publics, civils et militaires,’’ 24 Floréal 9 [May 14, 1801], CC9A/28, AN.
On the planters’ ideological closeness to Louverture, see Thomas Madiou, His-
toire d’Haı̈ti (3 vols., Port-au-Prince, 1847), 2: 71. On the Bunels’ 1798 return,
see Clervaux to MB, 6 Pluviôse 6 [Jan. 25, 1798], Folder 13, BP- HSP.
18. ‘‘Surprise and sadness’’ from Louverture to Adams, 16 Brumaire 7 [Nov.
6, 1798], RG 59, Microfilm M9/1, NARA-CP. On the decline of French com-
merce to the Caribbean, see Paul Butel, ‘‘Succès et déclin du commerce colonial
français, de la Révolution à la Restauration,’’ Revue économique 40 (Nov. 1989),
1079–96. On Louverture’s white allies, see Kerversau to Eustache Bruix, 4 Vendé-
miaire 8 [Sept. 26, 1799]), CC9/B23, AN; [Philippe Roume?], ‘‘Rapport aux
consuls de la République,’’ 1 Nivôse 8 [Dec. 22, 1799]), CC9A/18, AN; Marcus
Rainsford, An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti (London, 1805),
253; Madiou, Histoire d’Haı̈ti, 2: 71.
364 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)

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.

19. On JB as a relative of Louverture, see Earl of Balcarres to William Caven-


dish, Duke of Portland, July 18, 1801, CO 137/105, British National Archives,
Kew (hereafter BNA). On the friendship between Suzanne Louverture and MB,
see Pascal to [Louverture], 10 Germinal [9?] [Mar. 31, 1801], Folder 9C, KFC-
HU. On the resumption of commercial links, see JB to [U.S. citizen], Apr. 28,
1799, RG 59, Microfilm M9/1, NARA-CP; Marine Journal, June 21, 1799.
20. ‘‘Messenger’’ from Pickering to David Humphreys, Apr. 16, 1799, RG
59, Microfilm M28/5, NARA-CP. ‘‘Mr. Bunel’’ and ‘‘gentleman’’ from Commercial
Advertiser. Dec. 26, 1798; Massachusetts Mercury (Boston), Mar. 29, 1799.
‘‘Bunel, a white man,’’ from Aurora (Philadelphia), Mar. 22, 1802.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 365
consul for years, and Edward Stevens, a Philadelphia doctor appointed
as his replacement. By May 1799, Louverture, Stevens, and a British
envoy had reached an agreement under which Louverture promised
not to allow privateers in Saint-Domingue’s ports and to refrain from
attacking Jamaica. In exchange, U.S. merchants would return to Saint-
Domingue under the protection of the British Navy.21
Well aware that a colonial governor was not supposed to conduct
diplomatic negotiations, particularly with France’s enemies, Louverture
did his best to keep the agreement secret and did not appoint Joseph
Bunel as permanent representative in the United States. Instead, Bunel
assumed the title of payeur général (paymaster) of the colony, an impor-
tant position that greatly facilitated his private business dealings. One
month after the agreement with the United States, the Tribunal of Com-
merce of Cap Français ruled in Bunel’s favor in a case that could have
forced him to repay a debt worth 36,000 colonial francs. Bunel’s political
prominence no doubt played a role, as did the fact that his friend Meyer
testified on his behalf. Bunel also did business with the Philadelphia
merchants Richard Gernon, Andrew Pettit, and Andrew Bayard, and his
personal fortune revived along with the colonial economy. By 1800, he
was managing plantations on behalf of several absentee owners, and com-
missions from a single planter earned him over 16,000 colonial francs. A
contemporary also mentioned that Bunel was charged with importing
weapons and ammunition from Hamburg on Louverture’s behalf. Marie
Bunel left no document from this period, but she must have been closely
involved in her husband’s business since he gave her full power of

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)

attorney when he left the island in 1801 on a second diplomatic mission.


A later document states that she owned a rental property in Cap Français
and two plantations outside the city, which she may have acquired
around that time.22
Louverture reached the pinnacle of his career in 1801, as he passed a
constitution that made him governor general for life and expelled the
French agent Philippe Roume de Saint-Laurent. Afraid that France might
be tempted to use force to reassert its vanishing authority in Saint-
Domingue, Louverture sent his trusted Joseph Bunel to England via Ja-
maica to renew ties with his British allies (the governor of Jamaica opted
to handle the negotiations in person, and Bunel never went beyond
Kingston). Bunel’s main goals as a negotiator were to ensure that British
warships would stop harassing Dominguian commerce, and possibly
help protect the island from a French invasion, but there was a secret
component to his mission that adds a fascinating layer to Louverture and
Bunel’s already complex personalities. In a report to his superiors, the
governor of Jamaica wrote that during one of their conversations Bunel
had requested on Louverture’s behalf Britain’s assistance ‘‘for the impor-
tation of Negroes (from the coast of Africa) into St. Domingo: cultivators
as he termed them.’’ Louverture, the son of a survivor of the Middle
Passage, rationalized his surprising demand by saying that he would
grant the slaves the semi-free cultivateur status and that their labor was
essential to the revival of the colonial economy (which as a plantation
owner was his main domestic priority). British negotiators made no men-
tion of the slave trade in their counteroffers, but it is entirely possible

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

23. ‘‘Importation of negroes’’ from George Nugent to Portland, Sept. 5, 1801,


CO 137/106, BNA. On Bunel’s trip to Jamaica, see JB to Louverture, 10 Messidor
9 [June 29, 1801], Box 1:5, John Kobler/Haitian Revolution Collection, MG 140,
Shomburg Center, New York Public Library; Louverture, ‘‘Demands made by
Toussaint through monsieur Bunel,’’ c. Aug. 1801, CO 137/106, BNA; Lady
Nugent’s Journal of her Residence in Jamaica from 1801 to 1805, ed. Philip
Wright (Kingston, 2002), 31, 41. On Louverture’s contacts with slave traders, see
also article 17 of Louverture’s 1801 constitution; Gerbier to Hédouville, Sept. 28,
1801, in H. Pauléus Sannon, Histoire de Toussaint Louverture (3 vols., Port-au-
Prince, 1933), 3: 43; Mauviel, ‘‘Mémoires sur Saint-Domingue,’’ May 24, 1806,
1M599, SHD-DAT; A. P. M. Laujon, Précis historique de la dernière expédition
de Saint-Domingue (Paris, c. 1805), 8; Lacroix, La révolution de Haı̈ti, 401. On
slave smuggling, see Geggus, ‘‘The French Slave Trade: An Overview,’’ William
and Mary Quarterly 58 (Jan. 2001), 119, 125. On the Moyse uprising, see Aurora
(Philadelphia), Nov. 30, 1801.
24. On the tentative agreement with Jamaica, see Nugent to Portland, Nov. 7,
1801, CO 137/106, BNA. On news of the peace, see W. L. Whitfield to Nugent,
Dec. 9, 1801, CO 137/106, BNA; Madiou, Histoire d’Haı̈ti, 2: 117–24. On
Louverture in Sámana, see Lacroix, La révolution de Haı̈ti, 283; Toussaint
Louverture, Mémoires du Général Toussaint l’Ouverture écrits par lui-même
(1853; repr., Port-au-Prince, 1982), 92; Antonio del Monte y Tejada, Historia de
368 •


JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)

Leclerc landed in February 1802, signed a ceasefire with Louverture


three months later, and deported him in June under suspicions that he
was planning a new uprising. The racial divide played an important role
in the continuing war, particularly as Leclerc began ordering mass execu-
tions of colonial troops in the fall of 1802, but political and economic
rivalries between metropolitan administrators like Leclerc and white col-
onists like Joseph Bunel were another important subtext. Most accounts
claim that Bonaparte sent the Leclerc expedition to assuage the planter
lobby, but Leclerc actually quarreled constantly with the colonial aristoc-
racy over issues like the status of plantation laborers, tax rates, and colo-
nial autonomy (all three of which stemmed from similar controversies
between metropolitan administrators and colonial planters before the
revolution). Leclerc questioned the planters’ loyalty to the Republic and
was eager to find funds for his army, both of which put him on a collision
course with the Bunels.25
Bonaparte had instructed that the expedition should pay for itself, and
within days of landing in Cap Français Leclerc demanded that Joseph
Bunel turn over the governmental funds he had overseen as paymaster.
When Bunel refused (explaining that the city’s commander Henri Chris-
tophe had taken all the cash with him before leaving the city), Leclerc
put him under arrest and threatened him with execution if he refused to
give one million francs. Bunel’s mercantile links with the United States
were an aggravating factor in Leclerc’s eyes, who confiscated a ship that
Bunel had sent to the United States and seized funds held on his behalf
by the merchants Richard Gernon in Philadelphia and James Dupuy in

Santo Domingo (4 vols., Ciudad Trujillo, 1952), 3: 215. On the instructions to


Leclerc, see Bonaparte, ‘‘Notes pour servir aux instructions à donner au capitaine
général Leclerc,’’ 9 Brumaire 10 [Oct. 31, 1801]), in Lettres du général Leclerc,
ed. Paul Roussier (Paris, 1937), 263–74.
25. On Leclerc’s bad relations with colonial elites, see Collette to Foache, Apr.
7, 1802, FP/92APC/16/43, Centre des Archives d’Outremer, Aix-en-Provence;
Leclerc to Inhabitants of Saint-Domingue, 5 Floréal 10 [Apr. 25, 1802]), Box 4/
277, RP-UF; Joseph-Antoine Idlinger, ‘‘Rapport sur l’objet proposé par le citoyen
général en chef, en la séance du 24 Prairial an 10,’’ June 14, 1802, Box 7/496,
RP-UF; Lacroix, La révolution de Haı̈ti, 358; Mary Hassal [a.k.a. Leonora San-
say], Secret History, or, The Horrors of St. Domingo (Philadelphia, 1808), 34.
Girard, TRADING RACES • 369
New York. Such actions were part of a larger set of punitive measures
aimed at U.S. merchants that Leclerc took in the spring of 1802 in an
attempt to bring back France’s old mercantilist trade restrictions.26
By the fall of 1802, Joseph Bunel had still not given in, and Leclerc
put his wife under arrest to ramp up the pressure. Mass executions of
soldiers of color had become the norm in Cap Français by that date, so
Marie Bunel genuinely feared for her life and appealed to Leclerc, then
to Donatien de Rochambeau, who replaced Leclerc as captain-general
after his death from yellow fever. Cleverly playing on stereotypes of
women as political and economical nonentities, Marie Bunel wrote to
Rochambeau that ‘‘I cannot believe that the government would implicate
a woman in matters of politics, finance, or accounting that are completely
foreign to her.’’ The signatures of twenty Cap Français notables accom-
panied her petition, a detail that more accurately indicated her high so-


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)

After arriving in Philadelphia, Marie Bunel settled at 59 Lombard St. and


resumed her activities as a full-fledged partner in the couple’s mercantile
business. Quite boldly for a person who had just escaped execution, she
wrote to the French commander of Cap Français to demand, in the polite
but firm tone of a businesswoman, that funds seized in New York the
previous year be returned to her. She quickly became a prominent mem-
ber of the Dominguian community in Philadelphia, offering bread cou-
pons, lodging, and wood to destitute exiles. She also maintained contacts
in Saint-Domingue, notably with the former black mayor of Cap
Français, César Télémaque, and planters routinely contacted her for
news of estranged relatives.28
Marie Bunel became increasingly bourgeois as years went by. Like
many well-off Philadelphians, she escaped the city heat and disease to
spend her summers in the countryside at ‘‘Sashameny farm, Box
County’’ (probably Neshaminy, Bucks County). When signing her corre-
spondence, she switched from ‘‘femme Bunel’’ (‘‘woman Bunel’’ or ‘‘wife
of Bunel’’) to the more dignified ‘‘madame Bunel’’ (‘‘Mrs. Bunel’’). Most
intriguingly, she placed three dots next to her name, a symbol that is
usually thought to indicate membership in a Masonic lodge. U.S. lodges
were strictly segregated by gender and race, but Dominguian lodges were
more accommodating (Louverture’s signature also boasted three dots)
and it is possible that, like many Dominguian exiles in Philadelphia, she
was truly a mason. Joseph Bunel also signed his name with three dots,
as did about 20 percent of the exiles with whom he founded a charitable
society in 1804 to assist destitute Frenchmen in Philadelphia.29

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

On French lodges in Philadelphia, see [Freemason lodge of l’Aménité], Tableau


des F. F. composant la T. R. loge française l’Aménité, régulièrement constituée à
l’O. de Philadelphie, par le T. R. Grand Orient de Pennsylvanie (Philadelphia,
1803), Freem LCP Old HSP Tt* 246 v.1, Library Company, Philadelphia. On
the charitable society, see ‘‘Les diverses nations . . .’’ (c. 1804), Box 16:1,
MSS141, HSP.
30. ‘‘Claws’’ from JB to Dessalines, Oct. 9, 1803, B7/10, SHD-DAT. On JB’s
role as Dessalines’s envoy, see Maurice A. Lubin, ‘‘Les premiers rapports de la
nation haı̈tienne avec l’étranger,’’ Journal of Inter-American Studies 10 (Apr.,
1968), 290; Brown, Toussaint’s Clause, 240. On the switch to racial war in Oct.
1802, see Leclerc to Bonaparte, 15 Vendémiaire 11 [Oct. 7, 1802], in Roussier,
Lettres du général Leclerc, 253–60.
372 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)

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

33. ‘‘More influence’’ from [Financial account], c. 1805, Folder 8, BP-HSP.


‘‘Cher diplomatique’’ from Christophe to JB, Nov. 6, 1804, Folder 22, BP-HSP.
On JB’s shipments to Haiti, see also [Ratinde?] to JB, June 14, 1805, Folder 5,
BP-HSP; JB to unknown, 24 Messidor 13 [July 13, 1805], Folder 13, BP-HSP;
John M. Fadon to MB, Aug. 20, 1807, Folder 11, BP-HSP; JB to MB, Nov. 5,
1808, Folder 12, BP-HSP. On French dismay at JB’s smuggling, see Ferrand to
Decrès, 20 Germinal 13 [Apr. 10, 1805], B7/11, SHD-DAT; Mauviel, ‘‘Mémoires
sur Saint-Domingue . . .,’’ May 24, 1806, 1M599, SHD-DAT. On JB’s declining
business in France, see Hamos St. Léger to JB, Oct. 30, 1804, Folder 22, BP-
HSP. On Dessalines’s failed negotiations with Jamaica, see Edward Corbet to
Nugent, Jan. 25, 1804, CO 137/111, BNA.
34. ‘‘Known for his principles’’ from V. Simon to MB, Aug. 11, 1807, Folder
32, BP-HSP. On JB as a U.S. citizen, see General Assembly of Pennsylvania, ‘‘An
act for the relief of Joseph Robert Eustache Bunel,’’ Mar. 10, 1806, in http://files.
usgwarchives.org/pa/1pa/xmisc/1805-1806laws.txt. On the Philadelphia Direc-
tory, see James Robinson, The Philadelphia Directory for 1804 (Philadelphia,
1804), 40. On the 1805 constitution, see Gérard Barthélémy, Créoles-bossales:
conflit en Haı̈ti (Petit Bourg, Guadeloupe, 2000), 295. On JB’s will and power of
attorney, see JB, [Power of attorney], Jan. 28, 1807, Folder 32, BP-HSP; ‘‘Testa-
374 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2010)

Quite surprisingly, Marie Bunel remained in Philadelphia even as her


husband settled semi-permanently in Haiti. Their separation had nothing
to do with emotional estrangement; Joseph Bunel repeatedly mentioned
his desire to make enough money so that he could retire with her in the
United States, and before one of his visits to Philadelphia he wrote ‘‘I
am eager to kiss you . . . you won’t hear me knock on the door, I will go
straight to number 59.’’ Marie Bunel continued her activities as a mer-
chant, selling clothes to her Haitian friends among other things, so fi-
nancial imperatives were probably the main reason she stayed put. By
1807, the Bunels’ farm in Neshaminy was large enough for their manager
to hire ‘‘a black man.’’ That year, Marie Bunel also ‘‘bought a servant’’
to serve her in Philadelphia. She might again have become a slave owner,
but more likely the term meant that she had hired an indentured servant
(a common labor form after the 1780 Pennsylvania law of gradual eman-
cipation). Interestingly, the Bunels’ diverging trajectories closely match
the general patterns of Dominguian immigration to Philadelphia as iden-
tified by previous scholars: White exiles like Joseph Bunel rarely settled
permanently, but free people of color like Marie Bunel, though few in
number, often did well financially and remained in the city.35
Marie Bunel’s correspondence dealt primarily with business issues, so
it is difficult to assess how her prolonged separation from her husband
and homeland affected her emotionally. Several relatives (including her

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.

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