The Haitian Flag -- Birth of a Symbol
May 18, 2003
Fleurimond W. Kernstranslated by Greg Dunkel
This chapter describes an historic event in the Haitian revolution -- the Congress of Arcahaie where the leaders from the South, almost all drawn from the freedmen, known as anciens libres or affranchis,who owned plantations and slaves before the revolution started, put themselves under the command and leadership of the most oppressed. The unity that this Congress achieved was an essential step in completing the Haitian revolution. -- editors
At the beginning of the 1800s Toussaint Louverture, then at the peak of his glory and his political-military power, expected to rule Saint Domingue, the richest French colony in the Americas. He would govern with the precepts -- liberty, equality and fraternity -- guiding France itself. Yet for upholding the ideals of the French revolution, the former slave, who had become Governor General in Chief, would be beaten, arrested and then expelled from Saint Domingue to end his days as a common criminal in a French prison, where he died April 7, 1803.
The commemorations unfolding in 2003 on the occasion of the bicentennial should call what happened to Louverture by its name: a political assassination. The history of Haiti, which is still the most vivid and extraordinary of any colonized or enslaved people, has some aspects which make it unique. ... [T]he events that unfolded in Saint Domingue during this period were neither improvisations or chance -- they were calculated, planned and carried out by men whose objective was to free themselves from slavery. When Toussaint Louverture was arrested by Napoleon's men in 1802, a shock wave passed through the whole colony. The former lieutenants of the man who had become First Among Blacks took this arrest as a knife in the back, plunged in by France; it was a blow which meant that, however free a Black person was, they never would be considered a human being.
The Haitian people finally decided to have no further confidence in this France whose only language was total war. In this moment of history, some officers who had fought in the ranks of the colonial army were about to play an important and fundamental role in the war for Haitian independence. They also were about to go over to the insurgent camp, that of the abolitionists and those struggling for independence. The idea of definitively splitting from France had only become popular inside the indigenous army in the days after Toussaint's arrest; he had always been politically ambiguous as to the purpose of the whole struggle, which is certainly why he ended up condemned to prison in Fort-de-Joux. [Fort-de-Joux is the French military outpost in the Jura mountains where Louverture died. trans.] Even before Toussaint's deportation, the war restarted in the whole colony on the orders of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose strategy for confronting the colonial army sharply differed from that of his former commander.
Like in any struggle for power, however, the authority of Toussaint's successor was contested by some officers, both the formerly freed [freedmen] and those recently freed [the ex-slaves]. Dessalines used two methods to win over these officers: meet the most flexible and propose a warriors' peace; threaten the recalcitrants with harsh punishment. The latter quickly understood the dangers in remaining outside Dessalines' plan and for the most part rallied to him. Once his forces were united, the big battles for the liberation of Saint Domingue could begin.
But, curiously enough, during the long military and political conflict these men had led, from Toussaint up to the assumption of overall command by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, no one had ever thought to give the indigenous army a standard different from that of the colonial army. Toussaint had led his whole war with the French tricolor -- blue, white, red. Dessalines himself had taken up the torch in 1802 with the same colors but a slight difference: the general had simply removed the coq gallois [the French rooster, trans.] and the initials RF [République de France, trans.], which at that time were found on the white band of the flag of the French Republic.
But the generals who had fought in the French army, one of whom was Alexandre Pétion, knew the symbolic value of a standard and knew that a national flag would represent a sign of independence. From the time they rallied to the war for liberation, Pétion nourished the idea of giving the indigenous army its own flag. The happenstance of war gave him the opportunity to submit the idea to Dessalines. During the famous battle in the Cul-du-Sac, a plain not far from Port-au-Prince, on December 1, 1802, Pétion confronted the colonial troops of Gilbert Gérard. Things were not going well and he had to conduct a fighting retreat. In the course of this retreat, he lost his tricolor flag which was quickly seized by the enemy as a prize of war.
Either through a misunderstanding or a ruse of war this piece of fabric was to become the origin of the Haitian flag. The fact that the rebel army was carrying a French flag was presented by the press of the time under the title of "Proclamation." The headquarters of the French army in Saint Domingue pretended that this tricolor flag, carried as a rallying sign by the indigenous army, was proof that the insurgents were not fighting for the independence of Saint Domingue but only to keep their liberty, just like the French of the home land, a liberty that the First Consul, the dictator Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to take from them. Was this bizarre article a fabrication, a sort of intoxication spread by the French army with the aim of sowing confusion, even discouragement among the independence fighters? In any case, trap or not, this affair served to reinforce the determination of Pétion about the necessity for the rebels to have their own standard.
In February 1803, when Pétion happened upon this newspaper which contained the story of his flag lost during the battle of December 1, he raced to get the newspaper in question to the headquarters of Dessalines, the commander in chief, in Petite-Rivière in the Artibonite; he carefully explained the affair in detail and took the opportunity to advise the commander-in-chief that the revolutionary army urgently needed to adopt a different flag.
Dessalines, faithful to his reputation of not neglecting any detail and leaving nothing without a response, reacted with his characteristic spirit when he got Pétion's package. He grabbed a red, white and blue flag, and with a sharp jerk, ripped the white stripe to pieces and joined the blue and red together, making the first Haitian flag, symbolizing the union against the colonialist, pro-slavery France. That is how the famous national bicolor was born between the end of February and the beginning of March 1803. Dessalines ordered all his commanders to make their troops carry it.
But if this emblem was used to continue the war in the North and the West, the South, principally the cities of Cayes and Jérémie, were still in the hands of the French. At this time, it was impossible to get all the troops to carry this new flag, especially since certain generals in the South obstinately refused to recognize Dessalines' authority. Pétion, yet again, offered his services to Dessalines to bring these holdouts to their senses, perhaps even to save their lives.
As a former officer of the French army, he was well known among his compatriots, who like himself had been free before the revolution. He wanted to hold a big meeting with all the high ranking officers where this new flag would be adopted after debate. This would consolidate this symbol of symbols for which the people had been ready to die. Pétion finished by convincing Dessalines and his principal lieutenants, in particular his private secretary and confidant Boisrond Tonnerre, to hold a major meeting during May in Arcahaie.
This meeting, known as the Congress of Arcahaie, was set for May 14 to 18, 1803; the agenda had two essential points: the establishment of a united command of the revolutionary army under the supreme authority of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and the adoption of a flag by the indigenous army. The two principal leaders at this time, Dessalines and Pétion, jointly drew up this agenda. On May 14, 1803, military delegations flocked to Arcahaie; only a few of them were from the South. The principal heads of the insurgency did answer the call.
The Congress was opened by Dessalines and Pétion May 15, 1803, on the Mérotte plantation. The two men focused on the military situation, insisting on the need for all forces rebelling against the enemy to unite so that victory would be more rapid and decisive. Curiously, there was not a word about the flag; priority was put on new strategies and tactics to thwart the colonial army and also to confirm Dessalines as Commander General of the army and Saint Domingue. The question of the new emblem came up on the last day, May 18. The new Commander General suggested the old slogan "Live Free or Die" be replaced by "Liberty or Death." The debate over the proclamation of the creation of a new flag lasted a whole day. It was only in the evening that the Congress of Arcahaie definitively adopted the blue and red bicolor, which is the flag of the Republic of Haiti.
Catherine Flon, a national hero, sewed the national standard at the Congress. Under these circumstances, the generals solemnly swore an oath of fealty to "Liberty or Death" on this flag which was to lead the slaves to victory and freedom. This oath, which history has named the Oath of the Ancestors, is the equivalent of the one that the deputies of the Third Estate swore at Versailles June 20, 1789, whose aim was to give a constitution to France.
Since May 18, 1803, the Haitian flag has known many changes in position or of color. These two pieces of fabric have not stopped marking the legendary side of Haitian history all the same. Obviously, the controversies between historians on the origin of this flag are far from being settled, but all agree on two points: the date and the place of its birth.
Insults to the Flag
On three particular dates the Haitian flag was subjected to grave insults. There was the case of two German nationals who lived in Haiti (at Miragône and Cap-Haïtien). After going bankrupt during the period of instability between the governments of Sylvain Salnave and Fabre Geffrard, these two Germans called on the German government to demand an immediate indemnity of US $15,000 from the government of Nissage Saget. The Haitian government had to give in because of the presence of two German warships, the Vineta and the Gazella, under the command of Captain Batsch. After their departure, the Haitians found their warships damaged, with the national bicolor soiled with excrement. The date was June 11, 1872.The Luders Affair was similar and also involved a German national. This German business man was charged with assault and battery on a policeman. Upset about his fate, the Berlin government intervened once more with two warships, the Charlotte and the Stein, and demanded Tirésis Simon Sam's government pay $20,000 to Mr. Luders and free him immediately. This time the supreme humiliation for the Haitian people was when the president agreed to hoist the German flag on the flagpole of the National Palace December 6, 1897.
Finally, profiting from the political and administrative instability of the country, the United States of America sent an expeditionary force to Port-au-Prince July 28, 1915, with the intention of transforming Haiti into a protectorate. Very quickly, all Haitian institutions came under American administration; in 1919, four years later, the collaborationist president Sudre Dartignuenave signed what was officially called the Haitian-American Convention, placing the Republic of Haiti under the tutelage of Washington until 1934. For 19 years, the Haitian flag disappeared from view, except when it was raised by resisters like Charlemagne Péralte in the Central Plateau, whose struggle was taken up by Benoît Batraville after he fell. Despite these humiliations, the Haitian people maintained their patriotism and showed they are not unworthy of their history.
Moreover, if many misfortunes and tragedies have touched the Haitian bicolor through the years, many heroic acts connected with it have also taken place from its glorious creation to May 18, 2003, when Haitians, wherever they were, celebrated the bicentennial of their national flag. On May 19, the day after the Congress of Arcahaie, Captain Laporte was heading towards Léogane to bring new instructions to the South along with two other boats. While crossing the bay of Port-au-Prince, these Congress boats crossed paths with an enemy patrol commanded by Admiral Laoutch-Tréville. Two boats had time to escape. Laporte's boat did not, so in an act of brave patriotism, he ordered his crew to scuttle the boat so it would not fall into the hands of the French, wrapped himself in the new flag from Arcahaie, and put a bullet into his head. This gesture proved to the colonial sailors that the Blacks of Saint Domingue would never accept a return to slavery.
Another piece of evidence is the celebrated battle of Vertières Nov. 18, 1803, which highlighted the indigenous army. Considered as the mother of all battles, it was with the blue-and-red flag of Haiti that the infantry of the revolutionary army conquered their right to glory confronting the troops of Gen. Donatien Rochambeau.
The most celebrated and well known of these gestures of Haitian patriotism and grandeur was the armed struggle of Admiral Hamilton Killick, September 6 1902. There was a major political struggle going on at the time between Nord Alexis and Anténor Firmin about who would come to power in Port-au-Prince after the precipitous departure of President Tirésis Simon Sam. Admiral Killick who commanded the patrol ship La Crête-à-Pierrot supported Firmin and consequently had confiscated a German ship transporting arms and munitions to the provisional Haitian government of Alexis.
Not sharing the position of Hamilton Killick, the government ordered another German warship, the Panther, to seize the Crête-à-Pierrot. But it didn't realize the determination and courage of Admiral Killick. At Gonaïves, the Germans had the surprise of their life. When the German ship appeared off the roadsted of the city, Admiral Killick, who was then ashore, hurried on board and ordered his whole crew to abandon the ship. The Germans did not understand this maneuver. Once the sailors were out of danger, Admiral Killick together with Dr. Coles, who also did not want to leave, wrapped himself in the Haitian flag, like Captain Laporte in 1803, and blew the Crête-à-Pierrot up by firing at the munitions. The German sailors did not even dream of an act so heroic.
Haïti-Progrès, May 18, 2003===============
Go to: Haiti: A Slave Revolution 200 years after 1804 Table of Contents
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