Jean-Jacques Dessalines: The rise from Slave to Emperor

One of, if not the founding father of Haiti, is undoubtedly Jean-Jacques Dessalines. To some, he is one of the reasons why Haiti was stymied in its early development due to his ferocious brutality towards the white French population right after the new republic declared independence in 1804. For others, this brutality was necessary to ensure that the world knew of the determination of its leader to destroy all who threatened it.

 No matter which side of the controversy you position yourself, there is no question that without Dessalines, the Republic of Haiti would probably not have been created. So who was this man? 

Dessalines was born into slavery with the name of Duclos on Cormier, a plantation near Grande-Riviere-du-Nord, Saint-Domingue. His enslaved father had adopted the surname from his owner Henri Duclos. The names of Jean-Jacques's parents and their region of origin in Africa are a mystery, but probably west or central West Africa.

 Dessalines labored in the Cormier sugarcane fields where the 7-day, 12-hour work week was as brutal as the punishment for non-conformance.

Rising to the rank of Foreman on the Cormier Plantation

It was reported that his body had welts from whippings received as a young man. It is there that he rose to the rank of Commandeur, a foreman or slave driver until he was about 30 years old. 

While at Cormier Dessalines became close with Victoria Tòya Montou who he referred to as his aunt, though there was no direct biological link. Montou was reportedly a skilled warrior, midwife, and healer believed to have been born in the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin.

His Aunt Toya provided his first military training

Some sources indicate that she was a soldier there. It is unclear precisely when she was abducted and enslaved, or when she arrived in Haiti. She organized several rebellions before the momentous meeting at Bois Caiman in 1791, the spark of the rebellion, and reportedly gave Dessalines his early military training though it is not known if Dessalines participated in any of these early battles.

 Still enslaved, Jean-Jacques was bought by a man with the last name of Dessalines, an affranchi (meaning a slave freed in his lifetime), who assigned his surname to Jean-Jacques. From then on he was called Jean-Jacques Dessalines. He worked for that master for about three years. Dessalines kept this name after he gained his freedom. 

  He joined in the slave uprising of 1791 that began in the Plaine-du-Nord and was the chief lieutenant to Toussaint Louverture and fought valiantly under him. Years later, at the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot against the French, Dessalines rallied his troops and declared "I want to keep with me only brave men. Let those who want to become French slaves come out of the fort. Let those, on the contrary, who wish to die as free men, rank themselves around me"

Switching Sides to the French

However, after the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot, Dessalines defected from his long-time ally Louverture and briefly sided with French General Leclerc who at the time was coaxing the black generals over to the French side.

In 1802 Louverture was betrayed, captured, and sent to prison in France where he died. Several historians attribute Dessalines as being at least partially responsible for Louverture's arrest, as later did Louverture's son Isaac.

 Thereafter, Dessalines defected from the French army along with many of the black officers after they learned that Napoleon Bonaparte

was going to re-establish slavery in the colony after doing so in Martinique. He became the leader of the revolution and Général-Chef de l'Armée Indigène in May 1803.

 Dessaline's forces defeated the French army at the Battle of Vertières on November 18, 1803. Saint-Domingue was declared independent on November 29th and then as the independent Republic of Haiti, derived from the indigenous name from Ayiti (land of mountains) on January 1, 1804. Haiti became the first country in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery. 

Dessalines was chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general. He ordered the genocidal 1804 massacre of the

"After what I have done in the South, if the citizens do not rise up, it is because they are not men"

remaining European population in Haiti, many of whom were French, resulting in the deaths of between 3,000 and 5,000 people, including women and children.  

He excluded from the massacre Corsecans, teachers, doctors, and pharmacists as well as surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans, as well as the Germans who did not take part in the slave trade. He granted them full citizenship under the constitution and classified them as Noir (Black), the new ruling ethnicity.

Tensions remained with the minority of Mulatto Gens de Couleur, especially in the South where Dessalines had conducted an extermination campaign in 1801 during the Civil War of Knives. He is credited with declaring  "After what I have done in the South, if the citizens do not rise up, it is because they are not men";

 Dessalines named himself Governor-General-for-life and in September of 1804, he was proclaimed Emperor of Haiti by the Generals of the Haitian Revolution Army. He was crowned Emperor Jacques I in a coronation ceremony in October in the city of Le Cap (now Cap-Haïtien). 

 In May 1805, his government released the Imperial Constitution, naming Jean-Jacques Dessalines emperor for life with the right to name his successor.

Disaffected members of Dessalines's administration who thought his brutality had gone too far, including Henry Christophe and Alexandre Pétion, began a conspiracy to overthrow the Emperor. Dessalines was assassinated north of the capital of Port-au-Prince, at Larnage (now known as Pont-Rouge), on October 17, 1806, on his way to fight the rebels. Although Dessalines had serious issues with Gens de Couleur Mulattos, ironically it was Charlotin Marcadieu a famous Mulatto colonel of the Haitian army who lost his life trying to save the Emperor where the two were murdered. However, who the actual assassins were remains a mystery today. Some say Petion, others Christophe, others believe it was Dessaline's closest officers.

 No matter how you view Jean-Jacques Dessalines, he is the key component in the independence of Haiti.