1843, April–September: (The Salomon Affair and the Noir-Mulâtre Collision): Arrests were not confined to the East, as the Salomon family — influential noirs …

1843, April–September: (The Salomon Affair and the Noir-Mulâtre Collision): Arrests were not confined to the East, as the Salomon family — influential noirs of the South — was at daggers drawn with the volatile jaunes of Les Cayes, and after a heated clash, the elder Salomon and his twenty-eight-year-old son Lysius retired under arms to Castel Père, the Salomon plantation two miles west of Les Cayes. When a messenger came from Hérard ordering the Salomons’ arrest, he was sent flying with a volley of musket balls, and Lazarre himself — top general of the regime — hurried to Les Cayes with a regiment and revoked the order, but as soon as the two Salomons incautiously left their stronghold, they were arrested and hustled off to exile at Neyba in the East. Back in Port-au-Prince, the historian Lepelletier de Saint-Rémy recorded that “vanity strutted forth in a tide of cockfeathers; all you could hear in Port-au-Prince was the symphony of sabers, boots, and spurs rattling about the streets.” On the bright moonlit night of September 9, 1843, with the complicity of Guerrier — old soldier and veteran of Vertières, Duc de Marmelade under Christophe, and a noir of the North — the garrison at Fort National silently formed to march on the Palais National, but as usual the conspiracy was betrayed. As Dalzon, leader of the revolt, led his men down into the city, one of Hérard’s soldiers let off a chance shot and killed him in Post Marchand — Dalzon perhaps deserved better of the republic, for it had been his stand in 1812 that had saved Port-au-Prince when Henry and the army of the North fell on the city.