Joseph Bunel, born in France, had become…
January 1799 CE
Although white and a slave-holder, his wife, Marie Fanchette Estève, is a free-black Creole, and he has been sympathetic to the 1791 Haitian Revolution through which the former-colony will win its independence from France.
He serves as a diplomatic and trade envoy for Governor Toussaint Louverture, a self-educated former slave.
He will do the same for Louverture's successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
He plays an important administrative role in Louverture's regime, drafting trade and non-aggression agreements between Saint-Domingue and the United States and Great Britain.
Louverture trusts Bunel enough to make him the country's Paymaster General
In early-December 1798, Bunel had come to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at this time the capital of the United States, to try to end the American trade embargo against Saint-Domingue.
He had met and dined with Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, and had been invited to meet President John Adams, with whom he had dined in early January 1799, he dined with Adams.
Debate in Congress over "Toussaint's Clause" focuses on the consequences of legitimizing a revolutionary government run by former-slaves, and how American slave-holders will be endangered by interaction between their slaves and Saint-Dominguans.
Pennsylvania Congressman Albert Gallatin appeals to racial prejudice in his notorious "Black Speech" (January 21, 1799), using Bunel (who has brought his wife with him) as an example of miscegenation taking place in Philadelphia:
"The General [L'Ouverture] is black, and his agent here is married to a black woman in this city."
Congress passes "Toussaint's Clause," and the Bunels will return to Saint-Domingue in mid-February.