Delpêche died at Les Cayes after five or six days of illness.

Sonthonax had ordered the execution of the proclamation of general liberty only in the North, and could order it nowhere else. Polvérel, after assuring himself that it had been wrung from the colony by no brutal pressure, had it carried out in the West: on 21 September, the anniversary of the founding of the Republic, he gathered the troops, the officials and the notable residents in an august ceremony; he invited those who held enslaved people to sign the deeds of their manumissions; in all the municipalities of the Artibonite and of the West the same eagerness appeared. The old advocate wished in this way to reconcile the rights that slavery confers with what natural equity dictates. To make the measure general there remained only the assent of Delpêche, who was at Les Cayes. He at first disputed the legality of the measure. He was nevertheless preparing to go to Port-au-Prince, to modify the views of his colleagues “so that they would have no other fault than that of being premature (1),” when he died on 27 September, after five or six days of illness.