In light of recent critical attention to the Haitian Revolution and its relation to Enlightenment universalism, backed by a continuation of scholarly attempts to reconstruct transatlantic histories, this essay analyzes William Wordsworth’s two sonnets written in response to the historical circumstances of 1802. In “To Toussaint L’Ouverture” Wordsworth eulogizes the famed leader of the first slave revolution, posing him as a figure who exposes the violent underside of European Enlightenment as he fights for its very ideals of universal freedom as a colonial subject. A host of historical evidence reveals that Toussaint himself was well versed in Enlightenment thought and language, and Wordsworth’s poem works to bring home an enlarged and diversified vision of the original ideal of liberalism by singing of a hero born between the two great revolutions of the era, Haitian and French. Wordsworth’s “September 1st, 1802,” a sonnet written about a black woman exiled from France under the Napoleonic regime, further explores the themes of colonial violence and the possibilities of universal freedom mirrored negatively against it. The final version of this poem closes with a global call for sympathy for the suffering blacks, reflecting the universal vision enabled by Toussaint’s sacrifice to the liberal cause. The circum-Atlantic circulation of Enlightenment thought that takes place between Wordsworth and the black figures he represents in his sonnets offers further support to such hybridized notions of universal liberalism proffered by recent revisionist critics of the Enlightenment. Along with Susan Buck-Morss’s reassessment of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic and Srinivas Aravamudan’s conceptualization of the “tropicopolitan,” this essay’s exploration of Wordsworth’s interest in the Haitian Revolution and its cosmopolitan implications opens another door to ways in which we can reimagine the possibilities of universal liberalism beyond its Eurocentric construal and practice.