Other historians say the Haitian Revolution influenced slave rebellions in the US as well as in British colonies. The biggest slave revolt in US history was the 1811 German Coast Uprising in Louisiana. This slave rebellion was put down and the punishment the slaves received was so severe that no contemporary news reports about it exist. The neighboring revolution brought the slavery question to the forefront of US politics, and though inspiring to the enslaved themselves the resulting intensification of racial divides and sectional politics ended the idealism of the Revolutionary period. The American President Thomas Jefferson—who was a slaveholder himself—refused to establish diplomatic relations with Haiti (the United States did not recognize Haiti until 1862) and imposed an economic embargo on trade with Haiti that also lasted until 1862 in an attempt to ensure the economic failure of the new republic as Jefferson wanted Haiti to fail, regarding a successful slave revolt in the West Indies as a dangerous example for American slaves.