or North Carolina, the Pointe Coupee inventories of the late eighteenth century showed that most slaves brought by traders came directly from Africa. In 1763 settlements from New Orleans to Pointe Coupee (north of Baton Rouge) included 3,654 free persons and 4,598 slaves. By the 1800 census, which included West Florida, there were 19,852 free persons and 24,264 slaves in Lower Louisiana. Although the censuses do not always cover the same territory, the slaves became the majority of the population during these years. Records during Spanish rule were not as well documented as with the French slave trade, making it difficult to trace African origins. The volume of slaves imported from Africa resulted in what historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall called "the re-Africanization" of Lower Louisiana, which strongly influenced the culture. In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for some two years. Documents have revealed that he harbored secret ambitions to reconstruct a large colonial empire in the Americas. This notion faltered, however, after the French attempt to reconquer Saint-Domingue after its revolution ended in failure, with the loss of two-thirds of the more than 20,000 troops sent to the island to suppress the revolution. After French withdrawal in 1803, Haiti declared its independence in 1804 as the second republic in the Western Hemisphere. Incorporation into the United States and antebellum years (1803–1860) As a result of his setbacks, Napoleon gave up his dreams of American empire and sold Louisiana (New France) to the United States. The U.S. divided the land into two territories: the Territory of Orleans, which became the state of Louisiana in 1812, and the District of Louisiana, which consisted of the vast lands not included in the Orleans Territory, extending west of the Mississippi River north to Canada. The Florida Parishes were annexed from the short-lived and strategically important Republic of West Florida, by proclamation of President James Madison in 1810. The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) resulted in a major emigration of refugees to Louisiana, where they settled chiefly in New Orleans. Thousands of Saint Dominican refugees arrived to Louisiana, which included Creoles of color, white Creoles, and slaves. Some refugees had earlier gone to Cuba, and were expelled from Cuba in another wave of immigration in 1809. The Saint Dominicans increased the Creole community of New Orleans substantionally, enlarging the French-speaking community. In 1811, the