Untitled - African American History

clxxxvi HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SLAVERY.
On 8th October, 1804, Dessalines was declared emperor.
He ruled with a rod of iron. His hatred of the
whites was intense. In May, 1805, a constitution was
published, by which a white man was prohibited from
emigrating thither to purchase land or acquire any other
property. In 1806, Pe'tion, a mulatto general, headed a
conspiracy against him, and caused him to be assassinated.
The war of races again commenced between the mulattoes
and blacks ; Pe'tion heading the former, and
having control of the South and West ; Christophe, a
black, controlling the North. The latter was nominated
President of the Republic by the Assembly at Port au
Prince, on 27th December, 1806. On 9th January, 1807,
he was deposed by the same Assembly, and Pdtion
named in his stead. Hence the claim of each.
Petion continued, in name, President of the Republic.
Christophe soon had himself declared King, under the
name of Henry I. He established a court, and granted
vast numbers of titles and orders of nobility, and of the
grand cross. He maintained, essentially, a military
government. He compelled the laborers to continue at
their posts with an iron arm ; and required his soldiers
to furnish their own equipments, under pain of death.
Two of his mulatto officers having deserted at St. Marc,
he butchered, in cold blood, every mulatto man, woman,
and child, in the city.
A deliverer appeared about the year 1820, in a negro,
Richard, Duke of Marmelade, who led a conspiracy of
the principal officers of the army, and delivered the
North to Boyer, then President of the South. The two
sons of the King were massacred, after he himself com-
mitted suicide.
Petion took a different course. He encouraged idleness.
He was faithless to the constitution under which
he was elected, and dispersed the Senate, who sought to