1844–1845, April 15: (Guerrier: The First of the Three Old Men): Philippe Guerrier, an affranchi of the olden times born at Grande Rivière du Nord, had led o…

1844–1845, April 15: (Guerrier: The First of the Three Old Men): Philippe Guerrier, an affranchi of the olden times born at Grande Rivière du Nord, had led one of the great charges at Vertières — he was brave, popular, kindly, illiterate, often drunk, and very old. In his simple terms, the elaborate constitution of 1844 was an irrelevancy; he governed by decree through a Council of State, and behind him the mulâtre establishment — the Ardouins and their set — pulled the strings in what they called “gouvernement de doublure” (government by understudies). Within eleven months, on April 15, 1845, carried away by his infirmities, Guerrier was dead at St. Marc, his funeral oration comparing him favorably with Titus, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan, Solomon, Cincinnatus, and George Washington, though his achievements had been more modest. The regime is chiefly remembered because it established internal postal service and because Honoré Féry, Minister of Education, opened lycées modeled on the Lycée Pétion in Les Cayes and the Cap, where Guerrier proudly gave the North its first printing press since Christophe. His successor, immediately chosen by the Council of State, was Jean-Louis Pierrot — an illiterate dotard of eighty-four and, like his predecessor, an affranchi — selected not only because he was a noir but also because as a patriarch of the North and brother-in-law of Henry Christophe, he could propitiate a region whose separatist tendencies Port-au-Prince knew only too well.