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Dessalines Jean-Jacques
(1758—1806)

Jean-Jacques Dessalines became a general in the French army. While we do not know his original name, we know that he was African and an Ashanti. When he was brought to the island as a slave, he was able to win the trust of his white master and the fellow workers at the Dessalines plantation. He had the chance of meeting F.D.Toussaint l’Ouverture at an exhibition staged by the authorities during which two mulattos (Oge and Chevannes) were to be broken on the rack because of a new insanity affecting Africans called freedom. Both Africans and mixed blood persons shared the same feelings and the whites felt very uneasy. The two mulattos were put to death and two soldiers paraded the two heads on pikes. In 1802 Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe and other mulatto generals, fearful that Bonaparte would restore slavery, stepped the war against the French. Arms and supplies provided by American merchants helped to change the situation. In addition yellow fever decimated the French soldiers and an armistice was signed on November 18, 1803. Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared the independence of the entire island with the aboriginal name of Haiti in 1804. Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor Jacques I. The emperor had acquired a reputation for being brave and cruel. For example he had ordered the massacre of the remaining French troops after he had been elected governor general. His idea of reviving agricultural production by reinstating forced labor was not met with favor by his followers. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, regarded as the chief Hero of the Haitian war for Independence was the one who gave back the original name of Haiti to Espanola or Saint Domingue, The illiterate slave of a free negro, Jean-J. Dessalines was finally killed in an ambush at Port au Prince, Martinique, while he was attempting to suppress a revolt among mulattos in the South.

Cuba, 1988, Jean Jacque Dessalines

Haiti, 1904, Jean Jacque Dessalines

Haiti, 1947, Jean Jacque Dessalines