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.