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The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804

What people fought for us? What people wanted to gather the fruits of
our labor?

And what dishonorable absurdity to conquer in order to be enslaved.

Enslaved?...

Let us leave this description for the French; they have conquered but are
no longer free.
Toussaint Dessalines

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804

Translation by Laurent Dubois and John Garrigus

Source: http://www.nathanielturner.com/haitiandeclarationofindependence1804.htm

The Commander in Chief to the People of Haiti

Citizens:

It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two
centuries; it is not enough to have restrained those ever-evolving factions that one after
another mocked the specter of liberty that France dangled before you. We must, with one
last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our
birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government that
for so long kept us in the most humiliating torpor. In the end we must live independent or
die.

Independence or death . . . let these sacred words unite us and be the signal of battle and of
our reunion.

Citizens, my countrymen, on this solemn day I have brought together those courageous
soldiers who, as liberty lay dying, spilled their blood to save it; these generals who have
guided your efforts against tyranny have not yet done enough for your happiness; the
French name still haunts our land.

Everything revives the memories of the cruelties of this barbarous people: our laws,our

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habits, our towns, everything still carries the stamp of the French. Indeed! There are still
French in our island, and you believe yourself free and independent of that Republic
which, it is true, has fought all the nations, but which has never defeated those who
wanted to be free.

What! Victims of our [own] credulity and indulgence for 14 years; defeated not by French
armies, but by the pathetic eloquence of their agents' proclamations; when will we tire of
breathing the air that they breathe? What do we have in common with this nation of
executioners? The difference between its cruelty and our patient moderation, its color and
ours the great seas that separate us, our avenging climate, all tell us plainly that they are
not our brothers, that they never will be, and that if they find refuge among us, they will
plot again to trouble and divide us.

Native citizens, men, women, girls, and children, let your gaze extend on all parts of this
island: look there for your spouses, your husbands, your brothers, your sisters. Indeed!
Look there for your children, your suckling infants, what have they become?... I shudder
to say it ... the prey of these vultures.

Instead of these dear victims, your alarmed gaze will see only their assassins, these tigers
still dripping with their blood, whose terrible presence indicts your lack of feeling and
your guilty slowness in avenging them. What are you waiting for before appeasing their
spirits? Remember that you had wanted your remains to rest next to those of your fathers,
after you defeated tyranny; will you descend into their tombs without having avenged
them? No! Their bones would reject yours.

And you, precious men, intrepid generals, who, without concern for your own pain, have
revived liberty by shedding all your blood, know that you have done nothing if you do not
give the nations a terrible, but just example of the vengeance that must be wrought by a
people proud to have recovered its liberty and jealous to maintain it let us frighten all
those who would dare try to take it from us again; let us begin with the French. Let them
tremble when they approach our coast, if not from the memory of those cruelties they
perpetrated here, then from the terrible resolution that we will have made to put to death
anyone born French whose profane foot soils the land of liberty.

We have dared to be free, let us be thus by ourselves and for ourselves. Let us imitate the
grown child: his own weight breaks the boundary that has become an obstacle to him.
What people fought for us? What people wanted to gather the fruits of our labor? And
what dishonorable absurdity to conquer in order to be enslaved. Enslaved?... Let us leave
this description for the French; they have conquered but are no longer free.

Let us walk down another path; let us imitate those people who, extending their concern
into the future, and dreading to leave an example of cowardice for posterity, preferred to
be exterminated rather than lose their place as one of the world's free peoples.

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Let us ensure, however, that a missionary spirit does not destroy our work; let us allow our
neighbors to breathe in peace; may they live quietly under the laws that they have made
for themselves, and let us not, as revolutionary firebrands, declare ourselves the lawgivers
of the Caribbean, nor let our glory consist in troubling the peace of the neighboring
islands. Unlike that which we inhabit, theirs has not been drenched in the innocent blood
of its inhabitants; they have no vengeance to claim from the authority that protects them.

Fortunate to have never known the ideals that have destroyed us, they can only have good
wishes for our prosperity.

Peace to our neighbors; but let this be our cry: "Anathama to the French name! Eternal
hatred of France!"

Natives of Haiti! My happy fate was to be one day the sentinel who would watch over the
idol to which you sacrifice; I have watched, sometimes fighting alone, and if I have been
so fortunate as to return to your hands the sacred trust you confided to me, know that it is
now your task to preserve it. In fighting for your liberty, I was working for my own
happiness. Before consolidating it with laws that will guarantee your free individuality,
your leaders, who I have assembled here, and I, owe you the final proof of our devotion.

Generals and you, leaders, collected here close to me for the good of our land, the day has
come, the day which must make our glory, our independence, eternal.

If there could exist among us a lukewarm heart, let him distance himself and tremble to
take the oath which must unite us. Let us vow to ourselves, to posterity, to the entire
universe, to forever renounce France, and to die rather than live under its domination; to
fight until our last breath for the independence of our country.

And you, a people so long without good fortune, witness to the oath we take, remember
that I counted on your constancy and courage when I threw myself into the career of
liberty to fight the despotism and tyranny you had struggled against for 14 years.
Remember that I sacrificed everything to rally to your defense; family, children, fortune,
and now I am rich only with your liberty; my name has become a horror to all those who
want slavery. Despots and tyrants curse the day that I was born. If ever you refused or
grumbled while receiving those laws that the spirit guarding your fate dictates to me for
your own good, you would deserve the fate of an ungrateful people. But I reject that awful
idea; you will sustain the liberty that you cherish and support the leader who commands
you. Therefore vow before me to live free and independent, and to prefer death to
anything that will try to place you back in chains. Swear, finally, to pursue forever the
traitors and enemies of your independence.

* * * * *

Done at the headquarters of Gonaives, the first day of January 1804, the first year of

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independence.

The Deed of independence

Native Army

Today, January 1st 1804, the general in chief of the native army, accompanied by the
generals of the army, assembled in order to take measures that will insure the good of the
country;

After having told the assembled generals his true intentions, to assure forever a stable
government for the natives of Haiti, the object of his greatest concern, which he has
accomplished in a speech which declares to foreign powers the decision to make the
country independent, and to enjoy a liberty consecrated by the blood of the people of this
island; and after having gathered their responses has asked that each of the assembled
generals take a vow to forever renounce France, to die rather than live under its
domination, and to fight for independence until their last breath.

The generals, deeply moved by these sacred principles, after voting their unanimous
attachment to the declared project of independence, have all sworn to posterity, to the
universe, to forever renounce France, and to die rather than to live under its domination.

* * * * *

January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti

The twelve-year struggle was over. What had begun as a protest against cruelty, and
continued as a fight for liberty, had ended with independence. The land still shuddered
with the terror that had gripped it and the horrors it had seen. The white world that sighed
with relief when Toussaint was kidnapped now found itself confronted by an entirely new
nation of Blacks, victors of the greatest slave revolt in history.

Dessalines summoned his generals to les Gonaïves to renew the oaths they had taken a

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year before at L'Arcahaye and to confirm him as governor-general of the state to which
they restored the ancient Carib name of Haiti—the land of the mountains. On January 1,
1804, they swore "to each other, to posterity and to the entire universe, to renounce France
for ever and to die rather than live under her domination" -- and proudly dated their
declaration "the 1st day of the independence of Haiti."

The generals returned to their command—Christophe in the North, Pétion in the West and
Geffrard in the South, while Dessalines occupied himself with drawing up regulations for
uniforms and badges of rank, and ordered a capital city to be built at Fort Marchand on his
favourite plantation and to be named Dessalines.

There were French soldiers in the former Spanish part of the island and isolated bands of
unsubmitted brigands in the South— notably one led by Jean-Baptiste Perrier, who called
himself Goman. To deal with them Dessalines still had need of arms and ammunition and
for these he turned to the British once more.

* * * * *

The Conspirators against Dessalines

[Christophe] knew that Dessalines disapproved of his inclusion of both white and mulatto
advisors in the group of administrators that he had formed at Le Cap and with whom he
discussed events in the world outside and the future of his own troubled country, using
their learning and experience to supplement his own lack of education.

In August he sent a schooner laden with flour to the principal ports of the West and the
South, ostensibly to barter its cargo for sugar and coffee. But besides flour the schooner
carried one of his confidential agents, Bruno Blanchet, who had conversations at Jérémie
with General Férou, at Les Cayes with General Geffrard, and, on the return journey, at
Port-au-Prince with General Pétion. The talks were secret, their purpose obscure -- a
tentative sounding of the generals' attitude towards the emperor.

All of them were suspicious, none went further than agreeing that he was not entirely
satisfied with the existing government. If Christophe intended recruiting allies in a plot
against Dessalines, the attempt was a failure. . . .

* * * * *

The Rise and Decline of Emperor Dessalines

Another version

* * * * *

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The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the

Atlantic World

Reviewed by Mimi Sheller

The slave revolution that two hundred years ago created the
state of Haiti alarmed and excited public opinion on both
sides of the Atlantic. Its repercussions ranged from the world
commodity markets to the imagination of poets, from the
council chambers of the great powers to slave quarters in
Virginia and Brazil and most points in between. Sharing
attention with such tumultuous events as the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic War, Haiti's fifteen-year
struggle for racial equality, slave emancipation, and colonial
independence challenged notions about racial hierarchy that
were gaining legitimacy in an Atlantic world dominated by
Europeans and the slave trade. The Impact of the Haitian
Revolution in the Atlantic World explores the multifarious
influence—from economic to ideological to psychological—
that a revolt on a small Caribbean island had on the
continents surrounding it.

Fifteen international scholars, including eminent historians David Brion Davis, Seymour
Drescher, and Robin Blackburn, explicate such diverse ramifications as the spawning of
slave resistance and the stimulation of slavery's expansion, the opening of economic
frontiers, and the formation of black and white diasporas. Seeking to disentangle the
effects of the Haitian Revolutionfrom those of the French Revolution, they demonstrate
that its impact was ambiguous, complex, and contradictory.—Publisher, University of South
Carolina Press

David P. Geggus is a professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville and a

former Guggenheim and National Humanities Center fellow. He has published extensively
on the history of slavery and the Caribbean, with a particular focus on the Haitian
Revolution. He is the author of Slavery, War and Revolution: The British Occupation of
Saint Domingue, 1793–1798 and an editor of A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution
and the Greater Caribbean. Geggus lives in Gainesville.

* * * * *

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Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804

A Brief History with Documents

By Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus

This is the most succinct, convenient and accurate history

of the Haitian Revolution currently available. It fills a
significant gap in the historiography between monographs
and general histories on one side and novels and creative
literature on the other. The authors have produced an
intelligent and highly useful collection of documents,
many virtually inaccessible, and conveniently translated
them for the English-speaking audience. Their ability to
contextualize the events of the revolution briefly is simply
exemplary.' - Franklin Knight, Johns Hopkins University,
USA 'This is the most amazing document collection I have
ever read. It is emotionally gripping, intellectually
stimulating, morally provocative, action-packed and full of
points of comparison to histories of slavery and freedom
everywhere. It has a terrific narrative flow and inherent
pathos. . . .This is a wonderful achievement for which all
sorts of teachers will be most grateful.—Evan Haefeli, Tufts
University

This volume details the first slave rebellion to have a successful outcome, leading to the
establishment of Haiti as a free black republic and paving the way for the emancipation of
slaves in the rest of the French Empire and the world. Incited by the French Revolution,
the enslaved inhabitants of the French Caribbean began a series of revolts, and in 1791
plantation workers in Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, overwhelmed their planter
owners and began to take control of the island. They achieved emancipation in 1794, and
after successfully opposing Napoleonic forces eight years later, emerged as part of an
independent nation in 1804. A broad selection of documents, all newly translated by the
authors, is contextualized by a thorough introduction considering the very latest
scholarship. Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus clarify for students the complex
political, economic, and racial issues surrounding the revolution and its reverberations
worldwide. Useful pedagogical tools include maps, illustrations, a chronology, and a
selected bibliography.—Publisher, Bedford/St. Martin's

* * * * *

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The Haitian Revolution, 1791 to 1804: Or, Side Lights

On the French Revolution

By Theophilus Gould Steward

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.

This book may have occasional imperfections such as
missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc.
that were either part of the original artifact, or were
introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is
culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have
elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing
commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the
imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you
enjoy this valuable book.—Amazon.com

The Haitian Revolution, 1791 to 1804. By T. G. Steward. Thomas Y. Crowell

Company, New York, 1915. 292 pages. $1.25.

Reviewed by J.R. Fauset. The Journal of Negro History. Vol. I., No. 1, January. 1916.

In the days when the internal dissensions of Haiti are again thrusting her into the limelight
such a book as this of Mr. Steward assumes a peculiar importance. It combines the
unusual advantage of being both very readable and at the same time historically
dependable. At the outset the author gives a brief sketch of the early settlement of Haiti,
followed by a short account of her development along commercial and racial lines up to
the Revolution of 1791. The story of this upheaval, of course, forms the basis of the book
and is indissolubly connected with the story of Toussaint L'Overture. To most Americans
this hero is known only as the subject of Wendell Phillips's stirring eulogy. As delineated
by Mr. Steward, he becomes a more human creature, who performs exploits, that are
nothing short of marvelous. Other men who have seemed to many of us merely names—
Rigaud, Le Clerc, Desalines, and the like--are also fully discussed.

Although most of the book is naturally concerned with the revolutionary period, the author
brings his account up to date by giving a very brief resumé of the history of Haiti from
1804 to the present time. This history is marked by the frequent occurrence of
assassinations and revolutions, but the reader will not allow himself to be affected by
disgust or prejudice at these facts particularly when he is reminded, as Mr. Steward says,
"that the political history of Haiti does not differ greatly from that of the majority of South
American Republics, nor does it differ widely even from that of France."

The book lacks a topical index, somewhat to its own disadvantage, but it contains a map
of Haiti, a rather confusing appendix, a list of the Presidents of Haiti from 1804 to 1906

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and a list of the names and works of the more noted Haitian authors. The author does not
give a complete bibliography. He simply mentions in the beginning the names of a few
authorities consulted.—J. R. Fauset.

Books on the Caribbean

Hubert Cole. Christophe: King of Haiti. New York: The Viking Press, 1967.

C.L.R. James. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938)

Edourad Gissant. Caribbean Doscourse (2004) / Barbara Harlow. Resistance Literature (1987)

Josaphat B. Kubayanda. The Poet's Africa: Africanness in the Poetry of Nicolas Guillen and Aime Cesaire
(1990)

Paul Laraque and Jack Hirschman. Open Gate An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry (2001)

David P. Geggus, ed. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. University of South Carolina
Press, 2001.

Jean-Bertand Aristide. Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization

* * * * *

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