Les Cayes. Dessalines leaves the town
The Emperor, being due to leave the next day for Port-au-Prince, invited to dinner at the palace General Moreau, Papalier, Bauregard, Bourdet, colonel of the 13th, and Inginac. Papalier had been touched by the marks of confidence the Emperor had given him since his stay at Les Cayes, and had wholly drawn away from those who were pressing for his fall. During the meal Inginac obtained from Dessalines the pardon of Boisrond Canal, who was to have been sent to Marchand to be thrown into irons there, and that of one Daniel Thomas, a Creole of the Windward Islands, who had been in prison for twenty days for having brought into the country two gazettes containing articles against the Emperor. The Emperor said of Daniel Thomas: I thought he had already been executed; since he has not been, I pardon him; but he will leave the empire at once; and if he comes back, he will be hanged from the yards of the ship that brings him.” As there was no ship about to sail, Daniel remained at Les Cayes, was overtaken there by the revolution that broke out against Dessalines, and later became a public official in Haiti.
After the meal Alexis Dupuy, one of the Emperor’s secretaries, who had already gone through Geffrard’s papers, took Inginac aside and said to him: my dear friend, there are papers in this study that you are charged with sending to Marchand; you will find among them letters that may compromise a great many people; Diaquoi and I have already taken out several, and it was impossible for us to do more, but I hope that you will do the rest; promise me not to forget what I am telling you; you will save the lives of many citizens. Inginac gave him his word that he would complete the good work that had been begun. He did in fact destroy all these papers.
On the 9th of September Dessalines left Les Cayes, carrying away the secret curses of nearly the whole population, whose dearest interests he had wounded. Since the death of Geffrard the conspiracy had had no leader in the South; but it still lived in every mind; men understood one another by a look, by a gesture; ten men gathered together and declaring themselves in revolt at any point in the countryside could have rallied, one after another, the largest battalions sent against them. One had only to unfurl a flag to bring the Haitians, Black and mixed-race, of every condition, running to arms, for the animosity was equal in the two shades that make up our population. The men who already held positions in 1806 all affirm that Christophe and Geffrard were the first contrivers of Dessalines’s fall, and that Pétion, who was not unaware of their conspiracy and had even communicated with them by word of mouth through secret agents, had long been irresolute and declared himself only after the rising in arms of the South. Many years after the events of October 1806, it was said that Geffrard and Pétion had organized the conspiracy of the South, and, because no document existed proving that Christophe had taken part in it, that he had remained a stranger to it. There exists today no authentic document, not even a letter, that could serve as evidence against anyone, * dated before the rising in arms (8 October 1806); and if few persons at the time were willing to compromise themselves by setting out their plans against Dessalines in letters, is that a reason why there should have been no conspiracy? Yet when the insurrectionary movement broke out, it had been long prepared. But by whom? By Christophe and Geffrard, as our traditions, invariable on this point in the South, the West, the Artibonite and the North, tell us; and these traditions are only forty-two years old. And after the death of Dessalines, what do we see? Every part of the Empire of Haiti adheres to the revolution; and these adhesions, which are nothing but statements of grievances against Dessalines, are gathered in a pamphlet entitled Resistance to Oppression; and Christophe, who after the battle of the 1st of January 1807 declares himself the avenger of the Emperor, calls him in October 1806, in his address to his brothers of the South and the West, a devouring hydra; and yet he knew, from the time of the revolt of Port-Salut, before the Emperor’s death, that the insurgents had proclaimed him supreme head of the State. If history, setting out the facts faithfully, did not soar in its severity above the passions of the parties who accuse one another, as their interests of the moment dictate, of the violent fall of the immortal founder of Haiti, it would follow that this event was an effect without a cause. For in the absence of authentic documents proving the participation in the conspiracy, from 1805 onward, of Haitians both Black and mixed-race, why should we accept those versions that run counter to the traditions of the immense majority of the population contemporary with Dessalines, and that rest on no official document earlier than the rising in arms? On the occasion of the conspiracy that preceded the fall of Dessalines, of which Geffrard and Christophe were the leaders, we will say that there are truths no one disputes, though no immediate proofs of them can be furnished, and that it is impossible to believe that an absurd lie should become a universal tradition.