CHAPTER VII.
Independence declared.—Dessalines attempts to take the city of Santo Domingo.—Raised to the imperial dignity.—New constitution.—His atrocious massacres.—Attempts to import negroes from Africa.—Encourages cultivators.—Census taken.—State of his army.—His death and character.
The independence of Hayti was declared on the 1st of January, 1804, and the first step taken by Dessalines, who had been vested with the chief command, was to endeavour to stop the emigration which was going on, and remove the delusion under which the blacks were labouring. For this purpose he caused it to be made generally known, that all previous opinions would be buried in oblivion, and those who had been allured to take part with the enemies of the colony, and had been induced to emigrate from apprehension of the consequences which such conduct might entail upon them, were invited to return to their homes, being assured of protection and security; at the same time, however, he gave it out, that all those who were disposed to accompany the French army were at liberty to do so, and should be allowed to depart unmolested. This augured favourably, and many took advantage of this declaration of clemency, who afterwards had to regret their credulity and condemn their own want of foresight and discretion.
To give a colour of clemency and humanity to this declaration of the black general-in-chief, and to stamp it with the mark of sincerity, another proclamation was issued signed by Dessalines, Christophe, and Clerveaux, a mulatto, in which the independence of the colony is declared, and encouragement given to the emigrants to return to their properties. It says, “towards those men who do us justice, we will act as brothers; let them rely for ever on our esteem and friendship; let them return amongst us. The God who protects us, the God of freemen, bids us stretch out towards them our conquering arms.” Allured by a proclamation which held out a promise of security and protection, many returned from the interior of the island, whither they had fled for safety.
As a great many freemen of colour, as well as slaves, had emigrated to the United States at the commencement of the revolution, and as many had manifested a desire to return, but were without the means of accomplishing it, Dessalines devised a plan to enable them to do so; but this plan does not appear to have succeeded, for there is no authentic proof that any of them ever returned: it is on the contrary known, that although the emissaries of Dessalines were industriously employed in America, but very few of the negroes and people of colour availed themselves of the advantages which were so glowingly held out to them; doubting the sincerity of the general-in-chief on the one hand, and on the other, living in some degree of comfort and tranquillity with their new masters, they had no wish to try an experiment by which they might lose a great deal, and gain nothing. As it afterwards turned out, their decision was prudent and wise, for it was no doubt the aim of the inhuman Dessalines to make them all objects of his brutal ferocity, and this was the impression of those who were beyond the reach of his vengeance; they could never be inspired with the hope of safety, were they to give up the hold of which they had obtained possession. To hazard a security, by visionary schemes of improvement is a proof of weakness and indiscretion; and those who had obtained that security were determined to preserve it, by not listening to the proposals of the negro chief. Had such a proposal been made by Toussaint, many, from an innate love of their native soil, would no doubt have accepted it; but a proposition from a man so base and sanguinary as Dessalines, surely, could never have found one individual who would have had faith or confidence in it. It is evident, that he meditated the destruction of all those who returned, and that too in the most cruel and brutal way; such a thing as mercy formed no constituent of the character of the most ferocious tyrant that ever afflicted the inhabitants of any country. Those who had emigrated to America, I think, would have returned, had the proposition for their doing so been made by any other of the chiefs; but coming from such a wretch as Dessalines, it deterred instead of having encouraged them.
A short time after Dessalines had been invested with the chief command, he began to discard all the appellations which were used in the time of the French, and Hayti, the name given to the island by the Aborigines, was adopted instead of Saint Domingo, and he was severe in the extreme towards any one who might by the smallest and purest accident use any of the abrogated terms. This was followed by a general call on the people to revenge the wrongs which they had endured, and to execute vengeance upon those whom they conceived to have been the authors of it. The white French people, therefore, were indiscriminately sacrificed, not indeed by the inhabitants or cultivators, who preferred peace, and wished clemency to be shewn towards all, but by the troops, headed by their officers, and under the orders of the general-in-chief. No age nor sex was spared: the brutal soldiers, led on by their merciless officers, ran from door to door, and left not one alive whom they could find within; the females, whose amiable softness might have stayed the hand of the savage in his native wilds, first endured the most dreadful violation, and then were bayoneted and most shockingly mangled.
Military execution is at all times, and in all countries, to be greatly dreaded. It is always attended with those appalling enormities and barbarities, which make it the scourge of those nations which resort to it; it shews not the least mercy to either the innocent, the child, or the female with all her sweetness and charms, but all are indiscriminately the objects of its ravages, and the innocent with the guilty feel its atrocious influence, without being able to avert its vengeance and fury. In Hayti the effects of it must have been heavy indeed, and from the fact of its having been perpetrated by people who were little advanced over the unlettered savage of the desert, its consequences must have been horrible beyond the powers of language to describe. The measures which the merciless Dessalines adopted were enough to deter people from expressing their abhorrence for such vindictive proceedings. He made all his officers assume the capacity of spies, and in consequence, it became dangerous even to speak; all therefore being silent spectators of his enormities, he took it for granted that they approved, whilst fear alone prevented them from loudly pronouncing their abhorrence and detestation of his most flagitious conduct.
This crafty and execrable monster had recourse to one of the most diabolical acts recorded in the annals of history, for the purpose of collecting all those people together, who had escaped from the military massacres. He gave it out by a proclamation, that as he intended to stay his vengeance for the sufferings to which his brethren had been exposed, all those who had escaped execution under his military decree, should appear at an appointed spot for the purpose of receiving tickets, which might in future protect them from the vengeance of the people; and many who had been fortunate enough to escape, as they thought, in the first massacre, became the victims of the second; for no sooner did these unsuspecting and deluded creatures obtain what they conceived an assurance that their lives would be spared, than leaving their hiding places, they ran with eagerness to the place announced for issuing the tickets, when they were immediately seized and led away for instant execution. Before he perpetrated so deliberate, base, cool blooded, and horrible an act, even Nero would have paused; but the infamous and blood thirsty negro Dessalines secretly rejoiced at the success of his inhuman stratagem.
Another of this monster’s acts of barbarity is recorded. A young Frenchman, the son of a very opulent planter, had escaped during the early part of the revolution, with his father and the rest of his family, to Jamaica, where he had followed the occupation of a clerk in a mercantile house in Kingston. On its being known that all persons were invited back to their native country, he adopted the resolution to go up to Port au Prince, and procure leave to settle there. Speaking English fluently, he obtained a clerkship in the counting-house of an English merchant in that city. After having been there for some time, the monster heard of him, and it was intimated that he was a Frenchman. When he was sent for to appear at the government-house, the young man complied, and attended at the time appointed. Dessalines received him in the presence of his numerous officers, and told him that he had sent for him to ascertain if he were a Frenchman. The young man replied in the negative, and that he was a native of Jamaica, born of French parents, and had come to the city as a clerk to an establishment connected with the house in which he had lived in that island. Dessalines expressed much regret at the disappointment he felt, said he hoped to discover in him the son of a planter of his name, from whom he, Dessalines, had received much kindness, and who had once saved his life; and stated that he was most anxious to learn if any of the family were living, that he might be enabled to shew his gratitude, by restoring them to their estates, and affording them encouragement and protection. The young man elated with this expression of kindness and good will, and in the moment of credulous joy, declared himself to be the son of the man whom he had represented as having been his benefactor. The inhuman savage with a laugh which resounded through the whole apartment, and jumping, as he was wont to do whenever he had succeeded in entrapping an individual, from his chair, ordered the young man to be bayoneted in his presence, which was instantly done, whilst he looked on with the most ferocious countenance, indicative of the inward satisfaction he felt in having sacrificed another victim on the altar of revenge.