olts. To the final revolution foreign nations and foreign
ideas gave the necessary impulse. A few members of the intellectual
class had read in secret the writings of French and English
philosophers. Others had traveled abroad and came home to whisper to
their countrymen what they had seen and heard in lands more progressive
than Spain and Portugal. The commercial relations, both licit and
illicit, which Great Britain had maintained with several of the colonies
had served to diffuse among them some notions of what went on in the
busy world outside.

By gaining its independence, the United States had set a practical
example of what might be done elsewhere in America. Translated into
French, the Declaration of Independence was read and commented upon by
enthusiasts who dreamed of the possibility of applying its principles
in their own lands. More powerful still were the ideas liberated by the
French Revolution and Napoleon. Borne across the ocean, the doctrines of
"Liberty, Fraternity, Equality" stirred the ardent-minded to thoughts
of action, though the Spanish and Portuguese Americans who schemed
and plotted were the merest handful. The seed they planted was slow to
germinate among peoples who had been taught to regard things foreign as
outlandish and heretical. Many years therefore elapsed before the ideas
of the few became the convictions of the masses, for the conservatism
and loyalty of the common people were unbelieveably steadfast.

Not Spanish and Portuguese America, but Santo Domingo, an island which
had been under French rule since 1795 and which was tenanted chiefly
by ignorant and brutalized negro slaves, was the scene of the first
effectual assertion of independence in the lands originally colonized
by Spain. Rising in revolt against their masters, the negroes had
won complete control under their remarkable commander, Toussaint
L'Ouverture, when Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, decided to
restore the old regime. But the huge expedition which was sent to reduce
the island ended in absolute failure. After a ruthless racial warfare,
characterized by ferocity on both sides, the French retired. In 1804 the
negro leaders proclaimed the independence of the island as the "Republic
of Haiti," under a President who, appreciative of the example just set
by Napoleon, informed his followers that he too had assumed the august
title of "Emperor"! His immediate successor in African royalty was the
notorious Henri Chr