Haiti declares independence

After defeating a French army in late 1803, the Haitian generals declared independence on January 1, 1804. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave who led the revolutionary army, became governor-general and later, in October 1804, emperor as Jacques I. He chose the name Haiti, from a Taino word often rendered as land of mountains. The new state ended slavery for good in what had been France's richest colony, Saint-Domingue.¹²

The revolt began in 1791 and was shaped by the French Revolution, which abolished slavery in the colonies in 1794. Toussaint Louverture, the revolution's greatest early leader, ruled the colony until Napoleon sent an expedition under his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc in 1802 to restore French control and slavery. Toussaint was captured and died in a French prison in April 1803. Yellow fever killed Leclerc and thousands of French soldiers, and Haitian forces under Dessalines won the last battle at Vertieres on November 18, 1803. Napoleon, who had also lost interest in an American empire, sold Louisiana to the United States the same year.²⁴

Independence came at heavy cost. Years of war had devastated the plantations, and in early 1804 Dessalines ordered massacres of many French colonists remaining on the island. Dessalines was assassinated in 1806 and the country split for a time between a northern kingdom and a southern republic. Slaveholding powers refused to recognize the new state: the United States did not do so until 1862, and France demanded payment in 1825. Even so, Haiti's example alarmed slave owners across the Americas and inspired enslaved and free Black people everywhere.¹²³