by Dr. Jean Richard Sévérin

In 2026, the United States marks 250 years of independence and Ayiti marks 222. These anniversaries should invite more than ceremonies. They should compel two republics born from revolutionary struggle to ask whether the freedom they celebrate has become a freedom their people can use.

The United States declared that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Ayiti forced the Atlantic world to confront a question that declaration left unresolved in practice: could a person be both a human being and someone else’s property? The revolution that secured Ayiti’s independence answered with an uncompromising rejection of enslavement.

Our countries are not strangers. They belong to an intertwined history of independence, exclusion, commerce and power. I describe their prospective partnership as a brothership: an older and a younger republic choosing to advance one another’s freedom. The image expresses kinship, not a hierarchy of sovereignty. Ayiti needs neither a permanent guardian nor another arrangement in which its people supply the labor while others define the future.

The opportunity is to make independence productive. That requires confronting the interests that betrayed republican principles without confusing those interests with every person in the countries they governed.

The principle must outgrow its author

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” The Declaration’s language remains powerful because its implications reach beyond the conduct of its authors. Its promise provides a standard against which a republic can judge itself. [1]

Thomas Jefferson embodied the contradiction. He articulated universal equality while owning more than 600 enslaved people over his lifetime. Monticello’s own scholarship documents how enslaved people’s labor, sale, leasing and use as collateral were embedded in his finances. His position was not merely an abstract inconsistency. Other people’s freedom was entangled with his wealth and debt. [2]

Economic context matters. It explains why liberation threatened powerful material interests. But explanation must not become absolution. Jefferson’s financial interests did not make enslavement unavoidable or morally defensible; his choices and racial assumptions also belong in the account. The insight worth retaining is not that he should be excused. It is that a principle can expose the failures of the person who articulated it.

The present task is to carry that principle further. A government cannot honor human equality only when doing so leaves every established fortune undisturbed. The real test comes when a principle becomes expensive.

A nation is more than the interests that govern in its name

Serious historical criticism identifies actors, institutions and decisions. It does not replace one prejudice with another by treating whole peoples as a single criminal personality.

American policy toward Ayiti was contested from the beginning. John Adams’s administration supported Toussaint Louverture; Jefferson subsequently pursued isolation. Slaveholding interests feared the implications of a successful Black revolution, but resistance to recognition was not confined to one party. Federalist acquiescence also belongs in this history. [3]

Southern proslavery Democrats must be named where their conduct warrants it. They should not, however, become a shorthand that erases other actors or collapses Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans into today’s Democratic Party. The indictment is strongest when it is specific. The point is to trace how interests operated, not to make every generation inherit an identical political role.

Lincoln’s December 1861 annual message questioned continued nonrecognition of Ayiti and Liberia and identified potential commercial benefits from diplomatic relations. The United States recognized Ayiti in 1862, nearly six decades after independence. Southern secession had changed the congressional conditions in which that decision became possible. [4]

This history reveals both obstruction and the possibility of change. America contains a tradition that defended enslavement and a tradition that challenged it. A new partnership should appeal to the latter without pretending that the former left no consequences.

Different empires, a shared hierarchy

Britain and France were rivals, not a single interchangeable empire. Their conflicts were real. So were the overlapping interests of those who profited from enslaved labor and sought to protect the value assigned to human ownership.

British abolition offers a revealing example. Under the legislation of 1833, the government provided £20 million in compensation to slaveowners. A Bank of England research paper documents the Bank’s administration of the scheme and how intermediaries profited from the collection and transfer of compensation. The formerly enslaved did not receive equivalent compensation through that scheme. Freedom arrived within a financial settlement that protected those whose property claims depended on bondage. [5]

Ayiti confronted a different mechanism. In 1825, France imposed a 150 million franc indemnity for former colonists’ losses, backed by the threat of force. The country borrowed to meet the demand; the indemnity was later reduced to 90 million francs in 1838. The Bibliothèque nationale de France’s historical account describes the armed pressure and the debt arrangements accompanying recognition. [6]

These were not the same transaction. British taxpayers financed compensation to slaveowners; France imposed an indemnity on a country created by emancipation. But the moral hierarchy is unmistakable: institutions assigned enforceable value to the losses claimed by former owners while the people whose lives had been appropriated bore the costs of freedom.

Colonial rule can end while a financial claim remains. Political independence does not automatically dissolve economic dependence, inherited ownership or unequal bargaining power.

That observation warrants scrutiny of the institutions and arrangements that carried wealth forward. It does not establish that a contemporary bank secretly controls every conflict, or that all Anglo-French policy follows one uninterrupted conspiracy. Such claims require evidence of particular present-day decisions. The documented history is powerful enough without asking it to prove what it cannot.

Recognition without restraint

Responsibility does not stop at Europe’s shoreline. Washington made its own decisions, and a serious partnership cannot rest on excusing them.

The United States occupied Ayiti from 1915 to 1934. The State Department’s historical account describes American control over finances, political intervention, censorship and coercive labor practices. It also recounts the removal of $500,000 from the national bank in 1914. These are not merely accusations made by America’s critics; they appear in its own institutional account. [7]

Recognizing that record need not make cooperation impossible. It clarifies what a different relationship must avoid. Assistance cannot mean treating Ayitian sovereignty as an inconvenience to be managed. Nor can sovereignty become an excuse for domestic officials to escape accountability to the people they serve.

External exploitation and internal corruption can coexist. Naming one does not absolve the other. An honest renewal must confront both.

Independence has an economic content

A republic that imports almost every essential, loses productive talent and cannot reliably sustain its basic services may possess formal independence while its practical choices remain painfully narrow. The answer is not another declaration of dependency dressed as generosity. It is a program that expands the country’s capacity to produce, maintain and govern.

Agriculture offers a practical beginning. A partnership should connect producers to water, suitable equipment, storage, processing and dependable buyers. A machine delivered without spare parts, training or a maintenance budget is a ceremony waiting to become scrap. A crop grown without a route to market is not yet an economic success.

Ayitian producers should help determine priorities, land arrangements and operating terms. American partners could contribute equipment, technical expertise and commercial relationships. Both sides should be able to identify their benefits. Ayiti seeks stronger food production, producer earnings and skilled work; American businesses can seek legitimate sales and durable partnerships rather than political privilege.

Manufacturing demands the same seriousness. Nearshoring is not a magic word. A viable enterprise needs reliable power, transport, trained workers, realistic costs and customers. A proposal that ignores these conditions is a brochure, not an investment strategy.

Nor should the country’s principal competitive advantage be the desperation of its workers. The aim is productive employment that improves living standards, develops skills and builds local capacity. A partnership that exports goods while reproducing permanent insecurity has failed the people in whose name it was announced.

Infrastructure proposals should publish responsibilities, procurement rules, maintenance arrangements and measurable milestones. Airports and transport corridors matter because they connect people and markets. Their operation must also satisfy the safety and regulatory conditions applicable to each service. Credibility comes from meeting those conditions, not announcing that they no longer matter.

Each initiative should answer three questions: what does each country gain, who is responsible for delivery, and how will the public know whether it worked? Those questions are not obstacles to ambition. They distinguish ambition from performance.

Law and justice are productive institutions

Investment and justice cannot be separated. A business cannot confidently plan when contracts depend on personal favor, and a citizen cannot enjoy freedom when an official can sell access to protection.

Anti-bribery measures should reach both the official demanding payment and the person offering an improper inducement. Procurement must be open to scrutiny. Public accounts should be intelligible. Courts need the professional capacity and independence to decide disputes rather than merely confirm the wishes of the powerful.

The recovery of stolen public wealth belongs within that institutional program. Evidence must identify transactions, beneficial owners and the legal basis for action. Appropriate authorities can then pursue investigation, freezing, forfeiture or restitution under applicable law. An allegation is not a judgment; an account freeze is not recovered money available for a budget.

These distinctions protect the durability of recovery. Arbitrary confiscation does not become justice because its author invokes a worthy cause. A state seeking the return of stolen resources must be able to show why the money belongs to its people and how its return will be protected from another cycle of diversion.

The same principle applies to human trafficking, forced labor and exploitation. Enforcement must target conduct and evidence, not permit another market in accusation. The objective is a system in which neither wealth nor office purchases immunity.

A foundation deeper than administration

There is also a philosophical foundation to the renewal I advance through PGI. My work on Voodoo explores relationships among Ayiti’s spiritual inheritance, Hebrew and Judaic traditions, and Kemet, ancient Egypt. That inquiry informs my vision of the Judaic Republic of Ayiti, with laws grounded in Judaic law and a commitment to human rights: restoring law, justice and public order would be central responsibilities of government. [8]

This is a philosophical argument, not a claim that comparative symbolism by itself establishes a historical genealogy. Its relevance here is practical: power should be judged by the obligations it honors. A society cannot speak convincingly about sacred inheritance while tolerating the theft of public resources, the degradation of labor or the abandonment of its children.

National renewal must therefore be economic, social, political and spiritual in the broad sense of restoring purpose and responsibility. It requires institutions that function and a public ethic that makes their functioning matter. A new title cannot substitute for either.

A brothership measured by its results

The Trump administration has an opportunity to approach Ayiti as a potential partner in production and regional stability rather than principally as an object of crisis management. An America confident in its independence should welcome another republic determined to exercise its own.

That invitation does not ask the United States to abandon its interests. It asks both countries to distinguish durable national interests from arrangements that enrich a narrow circle while distributing insecurity to everyone else. Productive trade, lawful investment, skilled employment and accountable institutions can serve both peoples.

The relationship should begin with defined projects, realistic budgets and public measures of progress. A successful agricultural partnership, a dependable processing operation or a transparent procurement process would say more than another declaration of friendship. Results create the confidence on which broader cooperation can grow.

Ayiti’s contribution is not merely its need. It brings a revolutionary inheritance, a people with knowledge and enterprise, a diaspora with extensive experience, and a determination to turn survival into development. America brings capabilities that can complement those strengths. Neither side needs to disappear into the other’s story.

At 250 and 222, our republics have lived long enough to know that independence is unfinished work. The question is whether they will continue carrying inherited patterns of extraction or choose a partnership that makes freedom materially real.

The unfinished promise of independence will not be fulfilled by another anniversary speech. It will be fulfilled when the freedom a republic celebrates becomes a freedom its people can actually use.

 

 

References

[1] National Archives. Declaration of Independence: A Transcription. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

[2] Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Monticello. The Business of Slavery at Monticello; Slavery FAQs. https://www.monticello.org/encyclopedia/the-business-of-slavery-at-monticello ; https://www.monticello.org/slavery/slavery-faqs/

[3] U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. The United States and the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1804. Historical Milestones series (retired). https://history.state.gov/milestones/1784-1800/haitian-rev

[4] Abraham Lincoln. Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861, excerpt reproduced by University of Nebraska, Teaching Legal History. https://teachinglegalhistory.unl.edu/s/oer/item/2222 ; Office of the Historian, country history. https://history.state.gov/countries/haiti

[5] Michael Anson and Michael D. Bennett. The Collection of Slavery Compensation, 1835–43. Bank of England Staff Working Paper 1006, November 25, 2022. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-collection-of-slavery-compensation-1835-43

[6] Gusti-Klara Gaillard-Pourchet. Haiti’s Independence Debt: From the Slave to the Unit of Account (1794–1922). Bibliothèque nationale de France, France in the Americas. https://heritage.bnf.fr/france-ameriques/en/haitis-independence-debt-slave-unit-account-1794-1922

[7] U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. U.S. Invasion and Occupation of Haiti, 1915–34. Historical Milestones series (retired). https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/haiti

[8] Jean Richard Sévérin. VOODOO, consolidated manuscript, author review draft v7, September 2026, chapter 4, pp. 49–51, and conclusion, pp. 90–92. Unpublished author manuscript. Cited as the source of the author’s philosophical interpretation, not independent verification of historical genealogy.

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