In 1804, after Jefferson's landslide reelection for a second term, the president's son in law, Congressmen John W. Eppes of Virginia, rose in Congress to declare that U.S. merchants should have nothing to do with people of a race Americans needed "to depress and keep down." Congress soon concurred and passed a law prohibiting all trade with Haiti, which Jefferson signed. This ukase guaranteed Haiti's isolation for most of the nineteenth century, during which it became the poverty-ridden coup-tormented mess it remains today.
-Why We Are Partly Responsible for the Mess that is Haiti
History of Haiti from Wikipedia (don't know how reliable it is)
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