ALEXANDRE PETION, "FOUNDER OF THE REPUBLIC" (1806-1818)
During the later years of the 18th century and the early years of the 19th, many brave men battle for the independence of the Republic of Haiti. Among, them was Alexandre Petion, a young man of great vision. Petion is known as the founder of the republic of Haiti, but with his help, many Latin American countries were also liberated. In the twelve years that he ruled, Alexandre Petion endured many hardships, but created the foundation for the country. Petion was born in Port-au-Prince in 1770 to a French father and a Black mother. He was known at that time as a mulatto. At the age of 18, he was sent to study and became a soldier in France at the Military Academie de Paris. Along with Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Petion organized the mulattos with the African slave in order to fight the French army for the independence of Haiti. Following the assassination of Dessalines on October 17, 1806, P?tion championed democracy and clashed with Henri Christophe. Christophe was offered a democratic presidency, but this failed. The country divided between them and the tensons between the blacks and mulattoes were reignited. After the inconclusive struggle dragged on until 1810 a peace was agreed and the country was split in two. While Christophe made himself king of the northern Kingdom of Haiti, P?tion had himself elected President of the southern part of Ha?ti in 1806. Initially a supporter of democracy, he found the constraints imposed on him by the senate onorous and suspended the legislature in 1818. In 1816 he turned his post into President for Life.During his reign as president, he was responsible for the design of the official flag of the Haiti. He designed the coat of arms within the white square. Less than a decade later after its independence, Haiti, began to help its neighbors in South America to gain liberty as well. Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of South America, came to Haiti to seek help for his struggle to liberate his country Venezuela from Spain. After numerous unsuccessful military campaigns, Bolivar, in 1815, fled to Jamaica, where he petitioned the Haitian leader Alexandre P?tion for aid.
Petion gave Bolivar: money, weapons, ammunitions, ships and even Haitian volunteer soldiers to help him fight for freedom. The only thing Petion asked in return was abolition of slavery in all the territories that he may later help liberate. Simon Bolivar with the help of Haiti proclaimed Venezuela's independence in 1812 and truly liberated: Colombia in 1819, Venezuela in 1821, Ecuador and Peru in 1822. The first Black independent nation in the world was created by many different people. Among them, one of the greatest and most influential, was Alexandre Petion. He ruled during the infancy of the young nation and serve until his death, on March 29, 1818.
| View Show | Create Your Own“Voodoo is a profound and vitally alive religion alive as Christianity was in its beginnings and in the early Middle Ages when miracles and illuminations were common and every day occurrences…The High God enters by the back door and abide in the servants lodge…it has been a polite company, high-sounding titles, parlors and fine houses…indifferent indeed to all wordly and splendor. We have built domed temples and vast cathedrals, bated with glories of polychrome and marble to trap them, but when the gods come uninvited of their own violation, or send their messengers, or drop their flame script cards of visits from the skies, it is not often these gilded temples or the proud of the earth they seek, but rather some road-weary humble family asleep in a wayside stable, some illiterate peasant dreaming in a orchard as she tends her sheep, some cobbler in his hunt among the Alps.
--William Seabrook, The Magic Island, (New York: Paragon House, 1929, rpt. 1989)
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Toussaint L'Ouverture, Fran?ois Dominique
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE, FRAN?OIS DOMINIQUE [Toussaint L'Ouverture, Francois Dominique] , c.1744-1803, Haitian patriot and martyr. A self-educated slave freed shortly before the uprising in 1791, he joined the black rebellion to liberate the slaves and became its organizational genius. Rapidly rising in power, Toussaint joined forces for a brief period in 1793 with the Spanish of Santo Domingo and in a series of fast-moving campaigns became known as L'Ouverture [the opening], a name he later adopted. Although he professed allegiance to France, first to the republic and then to Napoleon, he was singleheartedly devoted to the cause of his own people and advocated it in his talks with French commissioners. Late in 1793 the British occupied all of Haiti's (formaly known as Saint-Domingue) coastal cities and allied themselves with the Spanish in the eastern part of the island. Toussaint was the acknowledged leader against them. Racial tensions eased under Toussaint leadership because he preached reconciliation and believed that for the Blacks, a majority of whom were African born, there were lessons to be learnt from whites and Europeanized mulattoes. In 1796, Felicite Sonthonax, was sent to Haiti, by the French government to maintain french order. Instead, Sonthonax, an extremist French commissioner, whom French authorities had labeled a terrorist, also allowed Toussaint to rule and promoted him to General de Division. But Toussaint was repelled by the proposals of this white radical to exterminate the Europeans, and found Sonthonax's atheism, coarseness, and immorality offensive. Toussaint, in the meantime, was consolidating his own position. The Black general arranged for Sonthonax to leave Saint-Domingue as one of its elected representatives, in 1797, and when Sonthonax showed himself to be hesitant, Toussaint placed him under armed escort onto a ship bound for France on August 24. Toussaint soon rid himself of another nominal French superior, Gabriel Hedouville, who arrived in 1798 as representative of the Directory. Aware that France had no chance of restoring colonialism as long as the war with England continued, Hedouville tried pitting Toussaint against the mulatto leader Andre Rigaud, who ruled a semi-independent state in the south. Toussaint, however, figured out his purpose and forced Hedouville to flee. Hedouville was succeeded by Philippe Roume, who deferred to the black governor. A bloody campaign in October 1799 eliminated Rigaud who was driven out and forced to flee to France,and his mulatto state destroyed. A purge that was carried out by Jean-Jacques Dessalines in the south was so brutal that reconciliation with the mulattoes was impossible. Next to go were the British, whose losses caused them to negotiate secretly with Toussaint, notwithstanding the war with France. Treaties in 1798 and 1799 secured their complete withdrawal. On May 22, 1799 Toussaint signed a trading treaty with the British and the Americans. In return for arms and goods, Toussaint sold sugar and promised not to invade Jamaica and the American South where most of the major white planters (who rejected Toussaint's notion of free slaves) had fled to. In 1799 the mulatto general Andre Rigaud enlisted the aid of Alexandre P?tion and Jean Pierre Boyer , asserted mulatto supremacy, and launched a revolt against Toussaint; the uprising was quelled when P?tion lost the southern port of Jacmel. In the United States, Alexander Hamilton was a strong supporter. However, after Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he reversed the friendly American policy. Once he had control over all of Saint-Domingue, Toussaint turned to Spanish Santo Domingo, where slavery persisted. Ignoring the commands of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had become first consul of France, Toussaint overran the eastern part of the island, in January 1801, officially taking control on the 24th, and freed the slaves. For the first time in Santo Domingo's history, since the arrival of Christopher Columbus, a non-European was able to, militarily, conquer the country. Toussaint drafted a committee to write a constitution for the colony, which went into effect on July 7, 1801, establishing his own authority across the whole island of Hispaniola. In command of the entire island, Toussaint dictated a constitution that made him governor general for life with near absolute powers. Catholicism was the state religion, and many revolutionary principles received ostensible sanction. Many white Spaniard colonists were impressed with Toussaint's administrative abilities and sense of discipline. Infuriated, Napoleon, in 1802, sent his brother-in-law General Leclerc with an expedition of 20,000 soldiers and secret orders to retake control of the colony and to reinstitute slavery. Toussaint's rebel forces put up fierce resistance, and inflicted considerable damage to the world's most powerful army, at the time, ultimately causing Napoleon to commit 40,000 additional troops. Realizing they would never conquer Toussaint militarily, the french decided to use a ruse, annouced a bogus peace treaty as a way to lure him. Toussaint himself was treacherously seized and before he was sent to France, he uttered these prophetic words:"In overthrowing me, you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty It will spring up again by the roots for they are numerous and deep". Words Toussaint told his French captors as he was being led away to his imprisonment in France. In 1802, he arrived in France and was sent to the famous Fort-de-Joux prison, located in the French Jura (French Alps). Toussaint Louverture would die in Fort de Joux on April 7, 1803, unaware that his army would rally behind the leadership of his former general, Jean Jacques Dessalines, to win the colony's independence for good. After a many very hard fought battles, the last of which was the Battle of Verti?res, the newly liberated Haiti declared independence on January 1, 1804. Today, Fort de Joux is a tourist site and a source of historical information. It maintains a visitors' schedule except during the winter off-season, and for renovations and other special closings. Toussaint's valiant life and tragic death made him a symbol of the fight for liberty, and he is celebrated in one of Wordsworth's finest sonnets and in a dramatic poem by Lamartine.Bibliography: See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins (1938, 2d ed. 1963); C. Moran, Black Triumvirate: A Study of L'Ouverture, Dessalines, Christophe (1957); A. M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., Toussaint L'Ouverture: Haitian Liberator (1989).Encyclopedia Britannica; Wikipedia Encyclopedia.
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Revelation 5:5
5. And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.
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