Haitian Revolution Begins — Shock Wave Across American Slavery

On August 22, 1791, enslaved people in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) launched a revolution that would produce the only successful large-scale slave revolt in history and the first Black republic in the Americas. News reached the United States within weeks. American slaveholders reacted with terror; the Virginia legislature convened emergency sessions. The revolution reshaped American slave policy for the next three decades.