1812, March: (The Fall of Borgella and the Reunification of the South): The sea fight off Miragoâne was the most desperate, courageous, and well-fought actio…

1812, March: (The Fall of Borgella and the Reunification of the South): The sea fight off Miragoâne was the most desperate, courageous, and well-fought action in the naval history of Haiti, yet Borgella’s cause did not long outlast his navy’s destruction. On March 7, 1812, Pétion blandly stage-managed an almost bloodless sedition against Borgella in Les Cayes, and soon afterward magnanimously welcomed the South back into the republic as if nothing had happened. Borgella was allowed to remain one of the South’s first citizens and, full of years and honors, died in 1844, having survived every upheaval of the post-independence era. This reunification ended the four-way fracture of Haiti, consolidating the island once more into the binary confrontation between Christophe’s North and Pétion’s republic in the South and West. Pétion’s ability to absorb rivals without bloodshed — first Rigaud, then Borgella — demonstrated a political suppleness that stood in sharp contrast to the violent methods employed by every other Haitian leader of the era.