Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from Beyond the Grave

By Jean Sénat Fleury

There are men who are representatives of their race, of their nation, and of their generation. They are exceptional beings who are samples of their society, or they are at the forefront of humanity. They not only left their mark on their time but they also left their mark on the universal history of peoples and nations. They have the greatness and quality of eternal life. They belong to any time and any place. They are people who have accomplished unique facts and changed the course of history through their actions. At one point in their lives, they stood up, and they defied a system. They led the fight that opened the narrow path of justice, freedom, and equality for all. These men are called heroes, having a power of thought and a strength of unusual souls. God created them to make them forgers of conscience, revolutionaries, leaders of men, and leaders. They are the true kings of this world! Dessalines was one of those mena genius of his race. He was a giant in the history of humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984538918

Jean Sénat Fleury

Career judge, teacher, writer, Jean Sénat Fleury was born in Haiti and currently lives in Boston. A former intern at the National School of Magistrates (Paris and Bordeaux), he has held various positions within the Haitian judiciary. He was in turn a trainer at the National Police Academy (1995–1996) and director of studies at the School of Magistrates of Pétion-Ville (2000–2004). Author of the book The Stamp Trial, he wrote several other historical works such as: Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from Beyond the Grave, Toussaint Louverture: The Trial of the Slave Trafficking, Adolf Hitler: Trial in Absentia in Nuremberg, The Trial of Osama Bin Laden, Hirohito: Guilty or Innocent: The Trial of the Emperor, and Adolf Hitler and Hirohito: On Trials. Mr. Fleury had emigrated to the United States in 2007. He earned a master’s degree in public administration and a second in political science from Suffolk University. His new book, Japan’s Empire Disaster provides an understanding of the expansionist policy practiced by Japan during the end of the nineteenth and the first period of the twentieth century.

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Copyright © 2018 by JEAN SÉNAT FLEURY.

Cover: Painting by Jean-Philippe Claude

Library of Congress Control Number:      2018907878

ISBN:                  Hardcover                              978-1-9845-3893-2

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Rev. date: 07/09/2018

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CONTENTS

COMMENTS AND TESTIMONIALS

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FIRST PART

THE DECLINE

CHAPTER I THE MESSAGE

FIND YOUR WAY

DEAR COUNTRY, WAKE UP YOUR SLEEPY CONSCIOUSNESS

CHAPTER II BELIEVE IN THE GENIUSES WHO HAVE FLATTENED YOU THE WAY

YOU ARE AN EXCEPTIONAL NATION

A WARRIOR PEOPLE

CHAPTER III HAITI’S CONTRIBUTION TO HUMANITY

DESSALINES: THE GREATEST MAN

HUMANIST THAT I AM

HAITI IS A GREAT NATION

CHAPTER IV THE DESSALINIAN

FROM NATIONAL TO GLOBAL LEADERSHIP

HAITI IS THE MOTHER OF FREEDOM

THE DESSALINIAN IDEAL IS STILL ALIVE

THE DESSALINIAN DREAM

CHAPTER V BE MORE CREATIVE, MORE INVENTIVE, AND BETTER INSPIRED BY YOUR GLORIOUS PAST

HAITI IS NOT POOR

SECOND PART

CONSCIOUSNESS RECOVERED

CHAPTER VI THE DESSALINIAN VISION

VERTIÈRES

NAPOLEON DEFEATED IN SANTO DOMINGO

THE FRENCH EXPEDITION OF SANTO DOMINGO

RAVINE-À-COULEUVRES AND CRÊTE-À-PIERROT

THE EVACUATION OF CRÊTE-À-PIERROT

CHAPTER VII REWRITING OUR HISTORY

THE HEAD OF THE REVOLUTION

CHAPTER VIII ON MY BEHALF

FROM YOUR MEMORY

CHAPTER IX NATIONAL RECONCILIATION

CHAPTER X RETURNING TO YOUR ROOTS

VOODOO: A CULTURAL MATRIX

THIRD PART

THE RENAISSANCE

CHAPTER XI BUILDING HAITI

LIVING TOGETHER

NEW PLANS OF ACTION

ACCEPT YOUR IDENTITY

UNTIE THE IDENTITY CRISIS

FIND YOUR IDENTITY

CHAPTER XII TALKING ABOUT HAITI’S DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER XIII END THE HISTORIC EMBARGO ON HAITI

Chapter XIV SOME HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS AND RESOLUTIONS

THE CODE NOIR

THE ACT OF CAPITULATION OF THE FRENCH FORCES AFTER THE BATTLE OF VERTIÈRES ON NOVEMBER 18, 1803

THE FIRST PROCLAMATION OF INDEPENDENCE

PROCLAMATION OF JANUARY 1, 1804, OF THE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF JEAN-JACQUES DESSALINES TO THE HAITIAN PEOPLE

JANUARY 14, 1804, INCENTIVE ORDER TO FACILITATE THE RETURN OF BLACKS IN DIFFICULTY IN THE UNITED STATES

SLAVERY, A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COMMENTS AND TESTIMONIALS

W ith Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from beyond the Grave , Mr. Jean Sénat Fleury makes a remarkable entry into the gallery of Haitian writers who place Dessalines at the center of their patriotic concerns at the cost of a research work visibly intense. Master Fleury seizes Dessalines and Haiti in a grandiose, rich, and diverse panoramic painting. Through this work, the author has produced a true story of Haiti.

His historiographical approach seems to us very ambitious and audacious. Ambitious, the author has gleaned through a rich and varied documentation. He has been eager to capture and present Haiti and all its complexity, wealth, glorious past, resilience, and even aspirations for a bright future. That is why, in the book, the message in the mouth of the emperor presents the historical fact of Haiti through a multiplicity of facets: politics, history, geography, painting, music, literature, religion, voodoo, diplomatic relations, sport, dance, finance, the economy, and I do not know what else.

It goes without saying that Fleury conceives the historical narrative not as a place of exclusive presentation of battles or great men but as a whole. Audacious, Fleury has striven to reconcile fiction and historical facts without ever putting the reader in the embarrassment of not being able to distinguish the true from the false, the imaginary from the real. By the fiction, Fleury practices simply intelligent prosopopoeia. He brings in the emperor from the Hall of Initiates, who tells the factual, authentic, and verifiable history of Haiti, from the colonial era to the present day. In fact, through the play of fiction, it is, in a way, the author who hides behind the great insider and who dictates to the Haitian nation how they can be free from poverty while motivating them to follow redemptive recommendations.

Clearly, Fleury provides in this book abundant historical materials—some of which are not very well known—that will help us better know and understand Haiti and the liberator of the Haitian people and founding father of our state. It does so by discarding myths, perceptions, beliefs, and alienated and alienating discourses that have, up to now, neglected or even ignored the true humanistic dimensions of Dessalines as well as the true spiritual, cultural, and material assets in this country he has founded. Then the author contributes by his effort to reconnect with Africa, the alma mater, so often neglected, forgotten, and sometimes even rejected by many Haitians. Now he points out that it is Dessalines and such assets fought against us that are, in essence, capable of consolidating our freedom and our independence and of protecting ourselves from liberticidal attacks of external or internal origin.

Ultimately, Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from beyond the Grave is a work with encyclopedic aims, a reference work, and an ideological, intellectual, spiritual, religious, and cultural rupture. It is also a serum and a historical elixir designed to awaken, multiply, and put on the springboard for the dormant energies of the Haitian nation. However, this nation sighs after such ferments and aims to be a good leaven, eager to get back on the path of its historical vocation of breaking slavery, colonialist and imperialist yokes, foreign domination, and shameless exploitation of the masses and also forge economic and social justice and humanity. Indeed, Fleury also seeks, through this work, to contribute to our moral and patriotic rearmament by stating to us the conscious and obligatory choice to make. And this choice lies in refocusing our individual and collective frame of reference around the spiritual and material support base of the Haitian nation: the leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines le Grand.

In this regard, it is important to note that, with Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from beyond the Grave, more than three major books have already appeared on Jean-Jacques Dessalines in less than fifteen years in the twenty-first century. At the same time, it is a whole bloom of political, artistic, cultural, economic, and other ideas and activities that focus today on Dessalines. With such indicators, I take the optimistic risk of saying that the twenty-first-century Haitian is and will be Dessalinian. The book Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from beyond the Grave of Mr. Fleury pushes me to another prognosis, more daring, more promising, and even more grandiose: the time of the Dessalinian Renaissance is underway. The Renaissance of Haiti, like that of Africa, is announced—coming soon. The emperor has spoken through Jean Sénat Fleury: The genius of Haiti takes us to the heights of humanity. Let us simply guide [it].

Luc Rémy, professor, writer

Having reviewed the work of Mr. Jean Sénat Fleury, I have had the privilege of being able to read it before everyone else. This story has touched me greatly not only by the story that is told, in this case that of Haiti, but also by the way the author gives way to the narrator par excellence in this story, the emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines. And I remain immersed, since this reading, in a deep reflection on life and freedom. The need for a revolution has already been anchored in me for a long time so that the world can become a different place, in which everyone can express himself and will not feel like a slave to a reality that does not suit him, a revolution that must first be individual and then become collective. I have Haitian friends, but we have never explored the sad history of their country in such an explanatory and concrete way, perhaps because they have been in exile for a number of years in the foreign country where they live. I learned a lot from reading Fleury’s work. It remains to be hoped that the impact created will be as important for Haitians who will understand the importance of taking action to make their country the space that will finally be theirs after so many years of slavery, pain and suffering, and misery under the yoke of the world powers. This book is meant to be a lesson in history, but above all, it presents avenues of solution for a better future, ways to follow for the creation of a new Haiti. I wish you all the best of success in this epic so that your country can become what it wants to be: the pearl of the West Indies.

Guy Jacques

At a time when great confusion is trying to invade the Haitian collective conscience in the twenty-first century, the book Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from beyond the Grave of Mr. Jean Sénat Fleury comes at the right moment to shake taboos and disenchantment heard at the gates of the casual to update the flagship speeches of the founding father of the nation, whose universal reach continues to arouse today the curiosity of knowledgeable humanists from all corners of the planet.

Written in a new style, this book offers us an atmosphere conducive to reading where narration and argumentation form a symbiosis to make the reader receptive to each new page. Mr. Jean Sénat Fleury, a Haitian intellectual convinced of the evils that overwhelm his country, opens this page of history through imaginative monologues to awaken sleepy consciences by making Jean-Jacques Dessalines the man who has defied the status of Western barbarism toward the black peoples, leading to the foundation of the first independent black republic of the world on January 1, 1804. Times have changed, and cultures and civilizations are transformed and intertwined to adapt to the new norms imposed by the prince’s effect, but history will never change because there are no guns powerful enough to erase memoirs worthy of the virtue of great men like Jean-Jacques Dessalines that universal history cannot ignore.

Frantz Jean-Baptiste

The whole world is indignant about slavery in Libya as if slavery is a new fact formed only in the twenty-first century with the forced kidnapping of brave people from sub-Saharan Africa whom slave traders—Arabs—captured to place in servitude. It’s as if slavery is a trade that is done only within African countries without the participation of too puritanical European countries to endorse this heinous trade of man by man. It’s as if African societies have not been for centuries ransacked, exploited, eagerly abused by colonial powers—France, Spain, England, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, etc.—without measuring at the time the service of a hand of work on their own, corvéeable to thank you. Indeed, the cradle of humanity has experienced three centuries of slave trade and a century of colonization.

The Code Noir, the agreements signed between the papacy and the European leaders formalizing slavery, and the various expeditions in America to fight the revolt of the blacks, particularly the French expedition to Santo Domingo in 1801, are irrefutable proof that European nations and the Catholic Church have—between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries—paved the way for slavery. The Vatican approved the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Belgian expeditions, seeing it as an opportunity to convert to Christianity all those African populations considered pagans by the Catholic Church.

Written at a time when slavery, racism, and discrimination constitute the most serious scourge that modern society faces today, the book Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from beyond the Grave comes at the right moment to awaken the conscience on the tides of slavery and the need to combat this scourge that threatens to reappear in its hideous form in the sixteenth century. France has abolished slavery on April 27, 1848, nearly fifty-nine years after adopting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. How can one claim to respect human rights when one continues to reduce human beings to slavery?

By making Dessalines speak, the man who has changed the history of the world after forcing the colonial powers to abolish slavery on their territories, Jean Sénat Fleury carries a powerful message stating that the will to restore dignity must become a human passion. It is an obligation of world leaders to focus on fundamental priorities—education, housing, work, safety, health and food—to give hope to the poor who live in poor countries and, at the same time, to eradicate misery on our planet.

Jean Sénat Fleury

FOREWORD

T he literary inventory on the history of the emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines does not reveal much, unlike that on Toussaint-Louverture, where the books do not fail to report the genius and prowess of this great leader. Here, it is not a question of conducting any debate on the two main pillars on which the history of Haiti is based since everyone has had his mission. They are like Moses and Joshua—that is, like Moses, Toussaint is a liberator, whereas like Joshua, Dessalines has the mission to conquer Haiti. The only difference is that there is no lack of literature on Moses and Joshua, who are revered for their actions. But as for Toussaint and Dessalines, the difference is very clear. There are lots of writings on Toussaint, while very few books have been published on Dessalines.

This silence on the contribution of the emperor is ambiguous, considering his leadership in the fight for the equality of human rights. Even if the world’s popular conscience attributes to France the credit for the Declaration of Human Rights, history allows us to see that these rights have been for a very specific category of men.

In the sociopolitical context of the time, France and its allies practiced slavery and human trade. Thus, if Jean-Jacques Dessalines was the first to abolish slavery by defining what the human being is, why was he never recognized as the forerunner of the human rights defender? From there, one can clearly understand that the Dessalinian vision went in the opposite direction taken by Westerners who had a clannish vision of man.

Thus, the universal scope of the Dessalinian vision has only restored the human being so that he sees himself as egalitarian. The first constitution of the new state—that of 1805, mentioned by the author—perfectly resumes the idea of this egalitarian society, which the emperor also has wanted to cooperate.

Now one may wonder why Dessalines has never been the dominant subject among historians. The answer seems to be historical since the victims have never written the history; moreover, the inheritance of the Haitian intellectual elite is metropolitan, patterned on the Cartesian model in place of the communitarian.

This identity deficit of the Haitian elite is the result of this incessant contradiction operating in their psyche, that is to say, the dilemma of imitating their fathers or their mothers or, in other words, being Cartesian or communitarian. Pétion has a town bearing his name, Pétion-Ville. The one attributed to the emperor is preceded by the prefix merchant, Marchand-Dessalines. For a long time after the death of the emperor, his name has been erased in both national and world history. It was only thirty-eight years after his assassination that his comrade in arms, Jean-Louis Pierrot, has issued a presidential decree instituting October 17 each year as a day of national mourning to remember the tragedy at Pont-Rouge. Such facts and indices represent only a small sample of the lack of interest in Dessalines. But they clearly show that the mostly mulatto Haitian elite has taken a stand alongside their fathers.

Thus, since the Haitian elite has made this choice, we can see from afar why the country is crammed into misery. It is a communitarian-dominated people who self-destruct involuntarily by Cartesian thinking, which is based on the dilemma of God/Satan, good/evil, master/slave, mistress/servant, saved/sinner. Although the Hebrew people share these dilemmas, it should be noted that, unlike Westerners, the Hebrews have been communitarians. The idea behind all this is to make people understand how the future of a people depends on their way of thinking. That is to say, for the people to progress, they must be consistent with themselves and with their thought. This explains why, in a specific historical moment, Europeans have been in need to be reborn, and this rebirth has lasted more than 150 years. In our Haitian reality, we cannot progress without knowing ourselves and being in harmony with our thought or vision of the world. The extreme individualism that is currently raging in Haiti does not accommodate the Haitian being as Cartesian thinking is outside the model of Haitian thought.

This individualistic idea deriving from Cartesian thought is destroying the Haitian communitarian construct. This differentiation is fundamental in the development of the thought of a people since everything starts from the construct of thought. That said, in Western thought, everything is diversified and separated, whereas in the model of thought of Africans or Haitians, everything is bound by the principle of uniqueness. Thus, the imposition of the Cartesian model of thought on our parents will trigger an incessant destabilization in the Haitian psyche. Although the vast majority has resisted this model of thought, it has ended up completely succumbing them after the fall of the Duvalier regime in 1986. From that date, we can admit that lakous, chores, eating together, or sharing meals between neighbors, all this no longer exists.

This battle against Cartesian thought has been well understood by the emperor. This is why the whole Dessalinian vision is based on communitarianism, that is, the idea of unicity or the whole. The example of the practices of the chores by the Haitians proves how much this nation is communitarian in essence, and that is why the emperor has taken the initiative to verify the titles of property while initiating at once the second phase of 1804, that is, the social revolution. This revolution in the country, until now, is only a dream, and it is still waiting to be realized. This act of integration of all undertaken by the emperor expresses his radical position on the domination of man by man or extreme social disparity between the dominant and the dominated. But one wonders why this vision of integration of all has been initiated in the south, the stronghold of Rigaud, not to say mulattoes.

In this book, the author has taken care to shed light on the site of the launching of the Dessalinian vision. The south, under the leadership of Rigaud, has always been hostile to the Louvre or Dessalinian vision. After the southern war, the vanquished Rigaud and Pétion have fled to France and returned to the country alongside Leclerc in the 1801 expedition to help the metropolis restore slavery.

The arrest of Toussaint has allowed Rigaud, Pétion, and Boyer—previously with Leclerc—to turn around; their historical course proves how much they have done everything to satisfy their fathers. This bias is particularly evident in Boyer, who has decided to pay the debt of independence. To this, we can understand why we want to make believe that the Dessalinian vision has been badly received in the south. In Haitian communitarian thought, this discourse is false but valid only for the followers of those who do not see themselves as Haitian mentally but rather want to be like their fathers.

Thus say the words After what I have done in the south, if the citizens do not rise, is that they are not men? This thought attributed to the emperor after the verification of title deeds does not reflect his egalitarian and integrationist vision, but it is much more like a speech made by the dissidents for the sole purpose of justifying the assassination of the emperor. On this point, one may wonder who could have constructed this speech, which presents the emperor as a tyrant. And any thorough analysis of this discourse will undoubtedly lead to the same conclusion: the emperor is very arrogant. If the tone of these words has painted an arrogant emperor who deserves to pay for his arrogance, to which Haitians nowadays must turn to demand their integration and the improvement of their well-being? What is more, the emperor has never considered Pétion, Rigaud, and Boyer as enemies, but his leadership has rather favored the economic agreement of Arcahaie.

It has been a long time since we have been forced to believe in this false speech, which does not reflect any of the emperor’s works. If one recognizes the tree by its fruits, the seed of the one considered as the founding father of the nation cannot give birth to such a speech. Even though Dessalines has been assassinated for his communitarian vision, reading this book will give the reader the opportunity to find the additional elements necessary to reevaluate the validity of this denigrating speech toward the first protector of human rights and then discover the glorious past of the Haitian people for a redefinition of the country’s history. It must be said that the result of this work proves how timeless the thought of man is and how small the idea as it is will live, no doubt, much longer than ourselves. And in fact, this book is, in a way, the beginnings of our oral history told in the tone of the victims. I have been at the author’s side when he has established this idea in a historic march not only to plant trees but also to inspire all of those able to produce good fruits for the betterment of the Haitian being.

By reading this book, the reader will have the opportunity to trace the communitarian aspect of the Haitian ancestors and to understand the Dessalinian vision. From one chapter to another, the author presents a new facet of Haitian grandeur, knowing that progress is inconceivable without a good mastery of its past, and that makes this book a classic in Haitian literature.

To all who are interested in learning more about the history of Haiti, read this book, and you will conclude for yourself that the history of this country is far from written or at least has not been written yet. And to paraphrase the late Jolibois Jean-Baptiste—the great-grandson of Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s only sister, known as Elisabeth Danois—the story of Haiti is not yet written because the direct descendants of the emperor’s assassins are still alive. And for those who will tend to counterargue with the story of Haiti’s Thomas Madiou, it must be said that the work of Madiou is simply another version of the French history of Haiti written by a Haitian because how can the author, who has left the country for France at the age of five to return to Haiti thirty-five years later, write the history of the country when we know that he has grown up outside the Haitian culture? His case is identical to the story of a man who has disconnected from the customs of the country as described by Maurice Sixto in his play entitled Depestre.

This book is, in fact, a plea for a redefinition of the Haitian being, a direct message from the emperor delivered to the Haitian people to motivate him based on his glorious past, just as the book presents the necessary elements to confront the denigrating speech about Haitians. Using the tone of the victims, the author shows how much the emperor intercedes for Haiti, which is being crushed by the tricks of the international community, which has held an embargo since 1804. In my opinion, much more concerning is the contempt of the leaders of the time who have done nothing to do justice to Dessalines. But reading this book, I have found enough evidence for a virtual or simulationist judgment of his assassination. Although throughout the work the emperor, in his greatness of soul, forgave his assassins, in case of a virtual or simulationist judgment, one can retain as presumed guilty Pétion, who in his speech of investiture has declared, I killed the tyrant. Here, the reader does not need to break his head to deduce from me that this qualifier of tyrant refers to the emperor, knowing that his immediate competitor, Henri Christophe, is still alive at that time. Moreover, during the administrations of Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer, the name of Dessalines has been forbidden to be quoted.

Dessalines was assassinated for the following reasons: The social justice policy he advocated went against the desiderata of the old free who wanted to grab two-thirds of the arable land. For Dessalines, the blacks should have had their share. Joining word and action, the emperor had stopped a series of measures that had not failed to make him bitter enemies. The nationalization of the land he had decided and that had made the state the only real landowner caused the mulatto to growl. Indeed, the verification of the titles of ownership allowed the Haitian state to dispossess several old free of lands of which they claimed ownership. The latter became the main instigators of the conspiracy against Dessalines. The direct and strict control that Dessalines exercised over foreign trade also brought him Haitian and foreign enemies. His refusal to create a nobility attracted the animosity of most of his principal generals who, eager for power and privilege, did not hesitate to join the conspirators.

The story Jean-Jacques Dessalines: Words from beyond the Grave, beyond a work of imagination, has a historical background in which the words take the meaning of a discourse of awareness and hope. The founder of the Haitian nation, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, speaks to the Haitian people. In his speech, the emperor addresses several topics, including the Dessalinian ideal, national