A Dark Spectre: The Haitian Revolution and American Politics, resituates the post-revolutionary development of the United States in the context of the Haitian Revolution. Looking at the United States from the perspective of a post-colonial nation, my study utilizes perceptions and attitudes towards the Haitian Revolution as a means to resituate party conflict and the boundaries of American nationalism in the Early Republic. The concept of nationalism is utilized in both the shaping of political culture and in the institutional formation of the state. As a result, the Haitian Revolution generated contradictory factional responses between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans to the emergence of revolutionary abolitionism in the Atlantic. On a more popular level, the ordeal of Haiti engendered a fear of black militant abolitionism that hardened American attitudes towards the possibility of further slave emancipation in the United States. With regard to political parties, the Haitian Revolution not only illuminated the abolitionist potential within the Federalist faction, but also incorporated Federalism to revolutionary Saint Domingue led by Toussaint Louverture. The Democratic-Republicans, on the other hand, disavowed universal liberty from their revolutionary project, and in abetting the French attempt to re-enslave and isolate Haiti exhibited their fusion of racism with popular politics.