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General Jean Jacques Dessalines, 1804. "Live free or die!"

Citizens,

It is not enough to have expelled from your country the barbarians who have bloodied it for two centuries; it is not enough to have put a brake to these ever reviving factions which take turns to play-act this liberty, like ghost that France had exposed before your eyes; it is necessary, by a last act of national authority, assure forever an empire of liberty in this country our birth place; we must take away from this inhumane government, which held for so long our spirits in the most humiliating torpor, all hope to resubjugate us; we must at last live independent or die.

Independence or death... May these sacred words bring us together, and may they be the signal of our struggles and of our gathering.

Citizens, my compatriots, I have gathered in this solemn day these courageous servicemen, who on the eve of harvesting the last crotchets rest of liberty, have given their blood to save it; these generals who led your efforts against tyranny, have not yet done enough for your well being...The French name still glooms our countryside.

All is there to remind us of the atrocities of this barbarian people: our laws, our customs, our cities, all bear the French imprint; what do I say? There are French in our island, and you believe yourself to be free and independent of that republic which fought all nations, it is true, but who has never been victorious over those who wished to be free.

Well what! Victims for over fourteen years of our own credulity and our own indulgence; defeated, not by the French armies, but by the shamefaced eloquence of the proclamation of their agents; when will we get tired of breathing the same air than them? Its cruelty compared to our moderated patience; its color to our; the vast seas that keep us apart, our avenging climate, tell us enough that they are not our brothers, and that they will never become and that, if they find asylum amongst us, they will be once more the schemers of our troubles and our divisions.

Indigenous citizens, men, women, girls and children, bear your regards on all the parts of this island; look for, yourself, your spouses, your husbands, yourself, your brothers, you, your sisters; what do I say? Look for your children, your children, those that are being breast fed! What have they become?...I tremble to say it... the prey of these vultures. Instead of these interesting victims, your eye dismayed can only perceive their assassins; may the tigers that are still dripping their blood, and whose horrible presence reproach your insensibility and your slowness to avenge them. What are you waiting for to appease their souls? Remember that you have wished that your remains be buried near the remains of your fathers, when you had chased away tyranny; would you go down to your tomb without avenging them? No, their skeleton would push away yours.

And you, precious men, intrepid generals, whose lack of insensibility to your own misfortunes, have resurrected liberty by giving it all your blood; you should know that you have done nothing if you do not give to the nations a terrible example, but just, of the avenge that must exercise a proud people who have recovered their liberty, and jealous to maintain it; let us instill fear in all those whom would dare try to take it away from us again; let us begin with the French... May they tremble when they approach our coasts, if not by the memory of the cruelty that they have inflicted, at least by the terrible resolution that we are about to take to devote to death, anyone born French, who would dirty of his sacrilegious foot the territory of liberty.

We dared to be free, let us dare to be so by ourselves and for ourselves, let us emulate the growing child: his own weight breaks the edge that has become useless and hamper its walk. What nation has fought for us? What nation would like to harvest the fruits of our labors? And what dishonorable absurdity than to vanquish and be slaves. Slaves! Leave it to the French this qualifying epithet: they have vanquished to cease to be free.

Let us walk on other footprints; let us imitate these nations whom, carrying their solicitude until they arrive on a prospect, and dreading to leave to posterity the example of cowardliness, have preferred to be exterminated rather than to be crossed out from the number of free peoples.

Let us be on guard however so that the spirit of proselytism does not destroy our work; let our neighbors breath in peace, may they live in peace under the empire of the laws that they have legislated themselves, and let us not go, like spark fire revolutionaries, erecting ourselves as legislators of the Caribbean, to make good of our glory by troubling the peace of neighboring islands: they have never, like the one that we live in, been soaked of the innocent blood of their inhabitants; they have no vengeance to exercise against the authority that protects them.

Fortunate to have never known the plagues which have destroyed us, they can only make good wishes for our prosperity. Peace to our neighbors! But anathema to the French name! Eternal hate to France! That is our cry.

Indigenous of Haiti, my fortunate destiny reserved me to be one day the sentinel who had to watch guard the idol to which you are making your sacrifice, I have watched, fought, sometimes alone, and, If I have been fortunate to deliver in your hands the sacred trust that you had under my care, remember that it is up to you now to conserve it. Before you consolidate it by laws which assure your individual liberty, your leaders, which I assemble here, and myself, we owe you the last proof of our devotion.

Generals, and you, leaders, reunited here near me for the well being of our country, the day has come, this day which must make eternal our glory, our independence.

If there could exist amongst you a half-hearted, may he distance himself and tremble to pronounce the oath that must unite us.

Let us swear to the entire universe, to posterity, to ourselves, to renounce forever to France, and to die rather than to live under its domination.

To fight until the last crotchet rest for the independence of our country!

And you, people for too long misfortuned, witness to the oath that we are pronouncing, remind yourself that it is on your perseverance and your courage that I depended on when I threw myself in this career for liberty in order to fight against despotism and tyranny against which you struggled since fourteen years. Remind yourself that I sacrificed myself to jump to your defense, parents, children, fortune, and that now I am only rich of your liberty; that my name has become in horror to all nations who wish for slavery, and that the despots and tyrants do not pronounce it only while cursing the day that saw me born; and if for whatever reason you refused or received while murmuring the laws that the genius which watch over your destiny will dictate me for your good fortune, you would deserve the fate of ungrateful peoples.

But away from me this horrible idea. You will be the support of the liberty that you cherish, the support to the chief which command you.

Take then in your hands this oath to live free and independent, and to prefer death to all those who would love to put you back under the yoke.

Swear at last to pursue forever the traitors and the enemies of your independence.

Done at the general headquarter of Gonaïves, this January 1st 1804, the first year of Independence.

Words of General in Chief: Jean Jacques Dessalines, hero of the Haitian war of Independence.

Emperor Jean Jacques Dessalines, Father of Haitian Independence, 1804. 

White residents felt the sting most sharply. While Toussaint, a former privileged slave of a tolerant white master, had felt a certain magnanimity toward whites, Dessalines, a former field slave, despised them with a maniacal intensity. He reportedly agreed wholeheartedly with his aide, Boisrond-Tonnerre, who stated, "For our declaration of independence, we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!" Accordingly, whites were slaughtered wholesale under the rule of Dessalines.

Although blacks were not massacred under Dessalines, they witnessed little improvement in the quality of their lives. To restore some measure of agricultural productivity, Dessalines reestablished the plantation system. Harsh measures bound laborers to their assigned work places, and penalties were imposed on runaways and on those who harbored them. Because Dessalines drew his only organizational experience from war, it was natural for him to use the military as a tool for governing the new nation. The rule of Dessalines set a pattern for direct involvement of the army in politics that continued unchallenged for more than 150 years.

In 1805 Dessalines crowned himself Emperor of Haiti. By this point, his autocratic rule had disenchanted important sectors of Haitian society, particularly mulattoes such as Pétion. The mulattoes resented Dessalines mostly for racial reasons, but the more educated and cultured gens de couleur also derided the emperor (and most of his aides and officers) for his ignorance and illiteracy. Efforts by Dessalines to bring mulatto families into the ruling group through marriage met with resistance. Pétion himself declined the offer of the hand of the emperor's daughter. Many mulattoes were appalled by the rampant corruption and licentiousness of the emperor's court. Dessalines's absorption of a considerable amount of land into the hands of the state through the exploitation of irregularities in titling procedures also aroused the ire of landowners.

The disaffection that sealed the emperor's fate arose within the ranks of the army, where Dessalines had lost support at all levels. The voracious appetites of his ruling clique apparently left little or nothing in the treasury for military salaries and provisions.

Although reportedly aware of discontent among the ranks, Dessalines made no effort to redress these shortcomings. Instead, he relied on the same iron-fisted control with which he kept rural laborers in line. That his judgment in this matter had been in error became apparent on the road to Port-au-Prince as he rode with a column of troops on its way to crush a mulattoled rebellion. A group of people, probably hired by Pétion or Etienne-Elie Gérin (another mulatto officer), shot the emperor and hacked his body to pieces.

Under Dessalines the Haitian economy had made little progress despite the restoration of forced labor. Conflict between blacks and mulattoes ended the cooperation that the revolution had produced, and the brutality toward whites shocked foreign governments and isolated Haiti internationally. A lasting enmity against Haiti arose among Dominicans as a result of the emperor's unsuccessful invasion of Santo Domingo in 1805. Dessalines's failure to consolidate Haiti and to unite Haitians had ramifications in the years that followed, as the nation split into two rival enclaves.

Plan of defense against invasion.

The plan for defending their liberty and lives in the event of another invasion, had been deliberately settled by Dessalines and the other. chiefs, and the requisite preparations were made for carrying it into execution. On the first appearance of an invasion force,. the towns which were all on the coast were to be destroyed and the negro army to retreat to forts built in very strong positions in the interior of the country. The position's they had chosen were well selected and strongly fortified. The artillery of the Cape, which consisted chiefly of brass cannon, and was in great abundance, had been removed to these hill forts, where great magazines of ammunition were also collected. The sides of the hills, and ravines, connecting them, were all cleared and planted with bananas, plantains, yams, and other native provisions, which flourish so much and were so quickly reproduced, that they calculated on the garrison's being subsisted without foraging beyond the reach of their guns. Many of the hills were of a conical form, with an agreeable ascent, on the summit of which the forts were constructed, so as to sweep the sides to the utmost range of cannon-shot, and as they believed, to make it impossible for an enemy to cut off their communication with these native magazines. These positions were also well supplied with water.

Character and Death of Dessalines.

Dessalines, at the time of the insurrection in 1791, was slave to a negro, who lived to see him become his sovereign. He was short in stature, but strongly made; of great activity and undaunted courage. His military talents were thought superior to those of Toussaint; but in general capacity he was very inferior to that ill-fated chief. He commanded great respect, but it was chiefly by the terror he inspired. He could not read, but he employed a reader and used to sit in a most attentive attitude to bear the papers that were read to him. He was distinguished by some strange caprices, evidently the effect of personal vanity. He was fond of embroidery and other ornaments, and dressed often with much magnificence, at least according to his own taste: yet sometimes he would exhibit him- self publicly in the meanest clothes he could find. But what was still more singular and ridiculous, he had a great ambition to become an accomplished dancer, and actually carried about with him a dancing-master in his suite, to give him lessons at leisure hours. Nor was it possible to pay him a more acceptable compliment than to tell him that he danced well, though, different from the negroes in general, he was very awkward at that exercise.

He had daughters by a former wife, but no son. His last wife-had been the favourite mistress of a rich planter, at whose expense she had been well educated. She was one of the most handsome and accomplished negresses in the West Indies; her disposition was highly amiable, and she used her utmost endeavours to soften the natural ferocity of her husband, though unhappily with little success.

His cruelties were not confined to the whites. Suspicions and jealousies constituted a sufficient inducement to him to deprive of life many of his own subjects and officers, without even the formality of a trial: and every attempt thus to terminate danger and suspicion, tending, in the natural order of things, only to increase them, his conduct was at length distinguished by all the caprices and atrocities of tyranny. These crimes inevitably suggested projects for their counteraction. He was conspired against by his army, and arrested most unexpectedly at the head-quarters, on the 17th of October, 1806, when, in struggling to escape, he received a blow which terminated his tyranny and his life.