Port-au-Prince. The Senate elects Pétion President of Haiti amid the joy of the population

During this interval the Republicans were busy with the election of a president of Haiti. The people of the West designated General Pétion, and that of the South General Gérin. Most of the senators leaned toward the latter. Bonnet was perhaps the only one who ardently desired the nomination of Pétion, in whom he recognized the principal qualities of a head of state: gentle and democratic manners, everything needed to make the new institutions take root. Gérin, on the contrary, was violent, despotic and always ready to put his own will in place of the law. He had already roused the passions of many citizens against himself by maintaining, in a circle of officers and in the presence of David Troy, that a peasant’s son was not the equal of his own, even in the eyes of the law.

On 9 March the Senate met, under the presidency of Citizen Barlatier, to proceed to the nomination of the first magistrate of the Republic. The presence of the number of members prescribed by article 68 of the Constitution was verified. Pétion had had the skill not to appear at the sitting; but Gérin had come, although most of his colleagues were favorable to him. He believed himself so certain of election that he had already had his costume as president of Haiti made.

Before the election was held, violent debates arose over the bill on the general administration that Bonnet had drafted and had read to the Senate on 25 February. This bill ran contrary to all of Gérin’s administrative views. Wishing that it should not be accepted by the Senate, which was to discuss it at one of its coming sittings, and transgressing the rules of the body, he had taken the floor and endeavored to influence his colleagues. Instead of combating the bill, he attacked its rapporteur himself, General Bonnet, whose sympathies were then entirely with Pétion. He went so far, with regard to him, as to make personal remarks that offended the dignity of the assembly. Auguste Daumec, though one of his warmest partisans, took the floor and declared himself in favor of the report and of the bill. Nevertheless he did not end his speech without extolling Gérin’s civic virtues and administrative abilities.

Gérin, of a fiery temper, seeing himself thwarted, said angrily to Daumec: “Your speech is full of absurdities; besides, ought you not to know that one humiliates a citizen by praising him in his presence?” He at once left the hall, full of fury. A large number of officers, most of them from the South, whom he had gathered at the door of the Senate to overawe the assembly on the occasion of the election of the president, followed him to his residence. From this moment dates the beginning of the decline of his prestige.

Bonnet, who had already despaired of Pétion’s nomination, took advantage of this circumstance and said to the senators: “My colleagues, if General Gérin, who is our equal, thus offends every propriety toward us, what will he not do if he becomes the first magistrate of the Republic? Would it not be in the interest of sound liberty to name as president General Pétion, who by his moderation, his proven patriotism and his true republicanism offers us every kind of guarantee?”

His words made a deep impression on the assembly; and on his motion it prepared at once to name a president of Haiti.

Senator Daumec, taking the floor, said that since the rebellion of Henri Christophe, named president of Haiti by the constituent assembly at its sitting of 28 December 1806, the presidency had been vacant, and that the public good imperatively required that a new president be named without delay, in accordance with articles 106 and 108 of the constitution. This motion was put to deliberation, and it was resolved unanimously that the election of a new president should proceed and that the matter was urgent. The votes were at once collected and counted: General Pétion received thirteen votes; Generals Gérin, Magloire Ambroise and Yayou one each. General Pétion was proclaimed President of Haiti for four years, according to the terms of the constitution.