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1803-10-10

The whites of Port-au-Prince were disarmed on the place du Gouvernement and told by Dessalines that they could claim no civil or political right.

Haitian

The next day, very early, Pétion left his house, rue de la Révolution, and went to join the commander-in-chief at the Palace. The call to arms assembled all the citizens on the place du Gouvernement. The whites were disarmed. Dessalines said to them: “That they would be respected in their persons and their properties; that they might continue the exercise of their professions, but that in the new order of things they could aspire to no civil or political right.” That was, it must be admitted, a just and legitimate reprisal for all that our fathers had suffered, since 1791, in order to attain the conquest of the principle of equality. But it was not to be expected that it would reach all white peoples. Were there not, then as today, many among them with whom we never had any conflict?

Source  ·  p. 238 Joseph Saint-Rémy (des Cayes), Pétion et Haïti: étude monographique et historique, tome 3 (Paris: chez l'auteur, 1855), p. 238; English translation, Rasanblaj.