Les Cayes. Dessalines enters and finds disorder in administration and police

The emperor, well aware that his authority was shaken in the South, resolved to go there to thwart his enemies and strike them to the heart. He left Marchand and reached Port-au-Prince full of fury, seeming to see nothing but conspirators about him, and speaking of striking down those who resisted his will. A few days after his arrival he received the news of General Geffrard’s death; he appeared grieved by it, and the next day he had a funeral service sung in that general’s memory. Yet on the following evening he gave a ball, pretending that he needed some diversions to drive away the sorrows that assailed him. He told his favorites that God, in taking Geffrard, had been in more of a hurry than he. From Port-au-Prince he set out for Jacmel, crossed the morne Campan, and stopped on the morne of the Crête-à-Piton to inspect the fortifications he had had raised there. From there he reached Jacmel, where he was magnificently received. In the week after the day of his entry into that town, Thomas Thuat was denounced to him, a man always accused of engaging in smuggling. After having his house searched by police agents, Dessalines convinced himself of the truth of the reports that had been sent him. He had Thomas Thuat murdered one night by officers of his staff and by the dragoons of the Artibonite who escorted him. Thomas Thuat’s warehouses were sequestered for the benefit of the State; his strongbox, full of gold and silver, was handed over to Dessalines; the sums the emperor drew from it were used to create a short-lived commercial house under the firm name Innocent and Company. A citizen of Jacmel was charged by the Emperor with managing this new house. The Emperor also had all titles of property verified, even those of citizens who had already been regularly put in possession of their property. He left Jacmel after having stirred up much discontent, and passed through Grand-Goâve and Petit-Goâve without stopping. He stayed a few days in each of the quarters of Miragoâne, L’Anse-à-Veau, Petit-Trou, Les Baradères and Le Corail only to inspect the fortifications of the interior. At L’Anse-à-Veau he had ordered the remains of Jean-Louis François, laid at the foot of the tree of Liberty that stood on the parade ground, to be carried to Fort Desbois. From Jacmel to Le Corail he had had more than two million logwood burned, cut and stacked for export in breach of his decrees. Yayou and Lamarre had themselves had the cut wood burned in the quarters of Léogane; but everywhere else the Emperor, finding in the populations a strong resistance to the execution of his orders and a marked ill will on the part of the local authorities, had been obliged to have it burned by the officers of his staff. He had taken this measure because in most of these quarters the principal crops, cacao and coffee, were being abandoned for the cutting of wood. He said in his indignation: “I know very well that the people of the Bas de la Côte (of the department of the South) want to rise against me; very well! I am pressing the sword to their backs to drive them to take up arms; I do not fear them; I am waiting for them to take the field so that I may overthrow them; they are bad Indigenous; they sacrifice everything to their private interests; they want everything for themselves and nothing for others. But I await them standing firm; I shall bring back into the domains many properties that men have made themselves masters of through inquiries drawn up by bad faith or complaisance; I see that they are angry; what do I care!” He entered Jérémie under the influence of these unhappy dispositions. There he learned that General Férou, who had been Geffrard’s friend and admirer, had been involved in the conspiracy Geffrard had organized. Férou commanded the arrondissement of the Grand’Anse, of which Jérémie is the chief town. Since he was then ill, Dessalines took advantage of it to tell him that he needed some rest after the important services he had rendered his country. He entrusted the provisional command of the arrondissement to Bazile, colonel of the 18th, and that of the place to Réné, the only officers on whose devotion he could count. He was still under the sway of great agitation of mind. Crossing the parade ground, at the sight of several groups of men of color and Black men, he cried out: when then will these conspirators rise? An exclamation that well depicts the impatience of his temper, his small aptitude for government, and his tendency to cut through every difficulty with the saber. He was weary of the forbearance he was forced to observe, although he was certain that a conspiracy existed; he would have preferred to these underhand maneuvers a revolt that would have given him, as he thought, the occasion to rid himself of those who gave him umbrage. He charged Lhérisson, an administrative officer and a man of color who had his entire confidence, with verifying titles of property and grants of possession in the arrondissement of the Grand’Anse, and left Jérémie after staying there a week. He took the road to Les Cayes, passing through Les Irois, Les Anglais, La Chardonnière, Port-à-Piment, Les Côteaux and Port-Salut. In all these places he had all the logwood the inhabitants had cut for export burned. He entered Les Cayes on 1 August, leaving behind him populations incensed against his authority. The people of that town received him without enthusiasm. Disorder there was at its height, as in the surrounding countryside; policing was no longer carried out, work in the fields was neglected; discipline was slackening in the ranks of the troops of the garrison; the accounts of the administrations, irregularly kept, were in the greatest confusion. General Moreau Coco-Herne had held provisional command of the division since Geffrard’s death; Adjutant-General Papallier, withdrawn from the administration of finance, was attached to the arrondissement; Adjutant-General Bauregard commanded the place; battalion commander Louis Boisquenez was administrator of finance; Boisrond Canal, brother of Boisrond-Tonnerre, was director of customs; Eugène Hais, comptroller; Labbé, storekeeper; Constant, treasurer; Chalviré, president of the court of first instance. The State’s warehouses were empty of produce, the coffers of the treasury exhausted, and most of the national domains taken from the State by irregular grants of possession.