Pétion wrote to Christophe, offering him the government in the name of the army of the South and the West.

At headquarters at Port-au-Prince, 16 October 1806 (1).
General of division Pétion, commander in chief of the 2nd division of the West, to His Excellency the general in chief of the army of Haiti, Henry Christophe.

General,

Having escaped from the destroying blows that the agents of an ungrateful and barbarous government struck upon the inhabitants of this country, we had thought we should entrust the means of our regeneration into the hands of a man who, by his personal dangers and his own experience, could wisely have fixed happiness among us. When, abusing our patience, he forced our wills, by covering his head with the splendor of the diadem, we could think that at the summit of grandeur and power he would have recognized that his power was the work of our hands and the price of our courage. He even seemed to have been penetrated by this, and we hoped that, sheltered by the laws, we should have been able to enjoy in a peaceful state all the sacrifices that we had not ceased to make for so long. What has been the result, general? Scarcely did he feel his authority strengthened, when he forgot all his duties and, in contempt of the sacred rights of a free people, believed that there was no true power except that exercised by the most despotic authority and the most pronounced tyranny.

Our hearts have long groaned, and we employed only submission and docility to bring him back to the principles of justice and moderation with which he had promised to govern us. His last journey into the part of the South at last unveiled his designs even to the least clear-sighted eyes, and proved to us that no means of preservation remained to us, for ourselves and to oppose the attacks of the external enemy, other than to rise en masse, if we wished to avoid an imminent and resolved destruction. This spontaneous movement, the impulse of our oppressed hearts, produced an effect as prompt as that of lightning; in a few days the divisions of the South were on their feet; nothing was to stop this outburst, because it was a movement as just as it was sacred, that of the rights of the citizen violated with impunity! We joined our arms to those of our brothers of the South. Penetrated by the same sentiments as they, the army marched to Port-au-Prince in the most admirable condition and with the most exact discipline, respecting properties, without the labor of agriculture having been disturbed for a single moment, and without blood having been shed.

Providence, which is infinite in its decrees, was pleased to manifest itself in so just a cause, by leading our oppressor toward the fate that awaited him, and made him find the punishment of his crimes at the foot of the ramparts of a city which he was coming, with forces, to flood with the blood of his fellow men, since, to use his last expressions, he wished to reign in blood.

We should not have completed our work, general, had we not been penetrated by the assurance that there exists a chief made to command the army with all the latitude of a power of which he had until this day had only the name.

It is in the name of this army, ever faithful, obedient, disciplined, that we pray you, general, to take the reins of the government, and to make us enjoy the fullness of our rights, of the liberty for which we have fought so long, and to be the depositary of our laws, which we swear to obey since they will be just.