1847-03-01: (Faustin Soulouque Elected President by the Mulatto-Dominated Senate, Who Believed They Were Installing Another Controllable Black Figurehead and…

1847-03-01: (Faustin Soulouque Elected President by the Mulatto-Dominated Senate, Who Believed They Were Installing Another Controllable Black Figurehead and Discovered Instead That They Had Unleashed a Strongman Who Would Purge Them From Power): On March 1, 1847, the mulatto-dominated Senate elected Faustin Soulouque president of Haiti following the death of Jean Baptiste Riché. Soulouque was born into slavery on August 15, 1782, in Petit-Goâve. He had fought under Pétion in southern Haiti during the latter stages of the Revolution and had spent four decades rising through the military ranks, eventually becoming commander of the Presidential Guard. The mulatto elite selected him because they believed, as they had believed with Guerrier, Pierrot, and Riché, that they were installing a docile Black figurehead who would protect their economic interests while providing the appearance of racial representation. Within months, Soulouque shattered that calculation. He distanced himself from the mulatto elite, placed Black loyalists in charge of key military and government positions, and doubled his military strength by creating a paramilitary force of loyal Blacks known as the Zinglins. By 1849, he had purged the officer corps and the civilian government of most of the nation’s prominent mulattos. The tactic would inspire François Duvalier a century later when he created the Tonton Macoutes.