Why would Napoleon Bonaparte sell the Louisiana Territory to the recently formed United States of America? It all comes back to the island nation of Haiti, which Napoleon had planned to use as a base for trade with North America. While Napoleon climbed the ranks of the French army and government, enslaved people were organizing in Haiti under the leadership of Franois Mackandal, Dutty Boukman, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Touissant LOuverture, who in 1791 led the largest uprising of enslaved people in historythe Haitian Revolution.