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1789-02-16

1789-02-16: (Charles Rivière-Hérard, Born in Port-au-Prince, the Military Officer Who Overthrew Boyer in 1843 but Could Not Hold the Country Together, Losing…

Haitian

1789-02-16: (Charles Rivière-Hérard, Born in Port-au-Prince, the Military Officer Who Overthrew Boyer in 1843 but Could Not Hold the Country Together, Losing the Dominican Republic to Independence and the Presidency to the Piquets Revolt Within a Year): Charles Rivière-Hérard was born on February 16, 1789, in Port-au-Prince. He overthrew President Boyer in February 1843, riding a wave of peasant discontent fueled by economic collapse and the devastating earthquake that had struck the country. He declared himself president in April of that year. In December 1843, the National Assembly enacted a new constitution that abolished the presidency for life, a reform aimed at preventing the accumulation of power that had defined Boyer’s twenty-three-year rule. But Rivière-Hérard’s government was besieged on multiple fronts. On February 27, 1844, revolutionaries in Santo Domingo led by Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, and Matías Ramón Mella declared the independence of the Dominican Republic from Haiti. Rivière-Hérard led 25,000 soldiers into the Dominican Republic to crush the independence movement but failed. Meanwhile, back in Haiti, the Piquets Revolt led by the Black former army officer Acaau overthrew him in May 1844, demanding the end of mulatto political dominance and the installation of a Black president. Rivière-Hérard’s presidency lasted barely a year, and in that single year, Haiti lost a third of its territory and demonstrated that the fault lines of color, class, and region that the Revolution had not resolved would continue to fracture every government that tried to govern without addressing them.