Port-au-Prince. Dessalines disarms the whites and lays a contribution on them.

The next day (11 October) Dessalines, after receiving the congratulations of every class of citizens, assembled on the Place du Gouvernement the population of the three colors able to bear arms and passed it in review, after ordering the whites to step out of the ranks. He had all the young Black and colored men who belonged to the national guard enrolled. He swelled his army, which was soon to march on Le Cap, by more than 1,600 men already seasoned and disciplined. He put more than 400 of these young men into the 3rd battalion of the 4th. He then went up to the whites, who were standing apart at one end of the square, obliged them to give up their arms, and told them that they could go home and that the burdens of the State would never weigh upon them. This was to declare to them that they would not be citizens under the new order of things. That same day they were treated as a conquered people by the imposition of a heavy contribution upon them, in proportion to their incomes. Dessalines’s words on the parade ground and this contribution threw into consternation the European families, who at the same time were forbidden to embark. Those of the French whom self-interest had kept in the city when the troops evacuated were heard saying to one another: “We shall give them our money, and they will kill us none the less.”