Dessalines was the first leader of an independent Haiti. As a young man, he became embittered by the extreme brutality with which enslaved people in Haiti, then a French colony, were treated. In the Haiti Revolution, he rose to power after the betrayal and capture of Toussaint L’Ouverture by the French. After declaring Haiti an independent nation in 1804, Dessalines ordered the mass execution of French settlers, resulting in the deaths of 3,000–5,000 people of all ages and genders. In September 1804 Dessalines was declared Emperor Jacques I of Haiti by a group of Revolutionary generals. He was assassinated in 1806.

Text: Jean-Jacques Dessalines, “Liberty or Death Proclamation, 1 January 1804,” https://mjp.univ-perp.fr/constit/ht1804.htm, downloaded on July 18, 2019. Translated by Susan Castillo Street.

LIBERTY OR DEATH PROCLAMATION

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Governor-General, to the Inhabitants of Haiti

The most extraordinary crimes heard of, that would cause Nature itself to shudder, have been committed. The vessel has overflowed … At last the moment of revenge has arrived, and the implacable enemies of the Rights of Man have suffered just punishment for their crimes.

My arm, raised over their guilty heads, had refrained too long from striking. At that signal from a just God, your righteously armed hands have brought down the axe on the ancient tree of slavery and prejudice. Time, and the infernal politics of Europeans, had surrounded it with a triple shield of brass. You have torn away its armour and have placed it on your own hearts so that you can become as cruel and pitiless as your natural enemies. Like a mighty torrent that overflows its banks, your vengeful rage has swept all before it. Thus may all perish all those who tyrannise innocence, all those who oppress humankind.

And now? Burdened for centuries under an iron yoke, the sport of human passions, of their injustices and the whims of fate; mutilated victims of the greed of white Frenchmen, insatiable bloodsuckers who have fattened themselves on our toil; we suffered with unprecedented patience and resignation: should we watch these heathen hordes attempt our destruction, without regard to sex or age? Should we, men stripped of energy and virtue and delicate sensibility, not plunge the dagger of despair into their breasts?