For African Americans, the struggle against slavery did not begin and end in the United States; it was conceived of as a global conflict. From this perspective, the Haitian Revolution represented a great breakthrough in the Americas. Led by a former house slave by the name of Toussaint L'Ouverture, regiments of ex-slaves defeated colonial armies from England, Spain, and France who sought to re-impose chattel bondage on the former French colony. This was an epic story that people of the African Diaspora treasured deeply in their hearts. As African Americans understood – and as historians have reconfirmed – the Haitian Revolution was a major impetus for slavery abolition in the Americas. African Americans throughout the United States commemorated the Haitian Revolution in many ways. Black newspapers regularly featured stories on the anti-slavery struggle in Haiti, and parents taught their children about the brave General L'Ouverture. Black communities named streets and neighborhoods after revolutionary heroes. Students at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia were required to learn and to recite General Jean-Jacques Dessalines's “1804 Independence Address to the Haytians.” Freedom's Journal argued in 1827 that

Free African Americans in Baltimore gathered to celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of Haitian Independence in a public commemoration in August 1825. In the fashion of early nineteenth-century commemorations, those assembled raised their glasses to offer a series of toasts in honor of the auspicious occasion. The culminating toast was: “Washington, Toussaint, and Bolivar – Unequalled in fame – the friends of mankind – the glorious advocates of Liberty.” In this gesture, African Americans connected the fate of their own freedom with the emancipation of their brothers and sisters in Latin America and the Caribbean. The toast promoted an understanding of the intimate connections between movements for liberty throughout the Americas.