1833–1843, January 27: (The Praslin Manifesto and the Fall of Boyer): Boyer faced two kinds of opposition: noir discontent especially in the North with his m…

1833–1843, January 27: (The Praslin Manifesto and the Fall of Boyer): Boyer faced two kinds of opposition: noir discontent especially in the North with his mulâtre rule, and the dissatisfaction among a rising generation of young mulâtres educated in France and charged with the effervescence of nineteenth-century Europe, who founded two anti-Boyer newspapers — Le Manifeste and Le Patriote — while Boyer simply countered with his own paper, Le Temps, edited by the historian Beaubrun Ardouin. The soul of mulâtre opposition was Hérard-Dumesle, who had been Lamarre’s secretary during the Guerre du Môle; in 1833 Boyer expelled him from the legislature for an indiscreet speech, and when Hérard returned and was re-elected speaker in 1837, Boyer expelled him again, locked him up, and in 1842 barred twenty-eight out of seventy-two deputies at bayonet point. In August 1842, at Habitation Praslin southwest of Les Cayes, a Society of the Rights of Man and of Citizens was formed, its charter a list of grievances known as the Praslin Manifesto, with an executive committee led by Hérard-Dumesle and the soldier Charles Rivière-Hérard ready in the wings to profit by the revolt. On January 27, 1843, Rivière-Hérard’s outriders spilled out of Praslin; on February 11, at Mapou Dampuce, the government formed its last army, but after a desultory exchange of shots the defenders faced about and led the march on the capital. Boyer, in the grip of a miserable cold, sent Ardouin to the British consul general Thomas R. Ussher, who arranged passage aboard H.M.S. Scylla, and on February 13 — as the sun was dropping behind La Gonâve — Boyer, accompanied by Inginac, Choute Lachenais (now brevetted “Mme Boyer”), Villevaleix, and a few others, took final leave of the soil of Haiti.