"Dessalines should be remembered as somebody who, above all else, prioritized the abolition of slavery."

Julia Gaffield in an Associate Professor of History at William & Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia. Having identified the only known official copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence during her archival research in 2010, she is the author of two books, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2015, and the subject of our conversation today, I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom, published by Yale University Press.