Pétion assembled the officers of the combined army of the South and the West, who proclaimed Christophe provisional chief of the government and signed an address to him.

Such was the conduct of Boisrond and Mentor when, on the 21st, Pétion assembled at the seat of government all the officers of the army of the South and of the West, which was then called, as in 1791, the combined army. Mentor went there too. Pétion put before them two addresses, one to the people, under the title *Resistance to Oppression*, in which all the Emperor’s wrongs were enumerated. This address ended with the announcement made to the people, “that a wise constitution will soon fix the rights and the duties of all. Until the moment when it will be possible to establish this constitution, we declare, the address added, that union, fraternity, and good friendship being the basis of our reunion, we shall lay down our arms only after having cut down the tree of our servitude and of our abasement, and placed at the head of the government a man whose courage and virtues we have long admired, and who, like us, was the object of the tyrant’s humiliations.”

Finally this address ended thus: “The people and the army, whose organs we are, proclaim General Henry Christophe provisional chief of the Haitian government, until the constitution, in conferring on him definitively this august title, shall have designated its qualification (1).”

The second address was voted and addressed to Christophe himself: