Impunity for Acts of Peremptory Enslavement: James Madison, the U.S. Congress, and the Saint Domingue Refugees.

The article examines the petition of a group of wealthy men to U.S. President James Madison in 1809 about exempting them from a federal statute ending the legal transportation of captives of African descent to the U.S. Topics discussed include the description made by the petitioners about the individuals they sought to bring from Cuba to the U.S., strategies used by the petitioners to avoid a breach of federal law, and origins of the petition in the events surrounding the Haitian Revolution.