1. Jean-Jacques Dessalines spearheaded the resistance against French rule of Saint-Domingue, and eventually became the architect of the 1804 massacre of the remaining French residents of newly independent Haiti, including some supporters of the revolution.
Under the rule of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti became the first country in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines served as an officer in the French army when Saint-Domingue was fending off Spanish and British incursions.
Thereafter, Jean-Jacques Dessalines became the leader of the revolution and General-Chef de l'Armee Indigene on 18 May 1803.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines's forces defeated the French army at the Battle of Vertieres on 18 November 1803.
Saint-Domingue was declared independent on 29 November and then as the independent Republic of Haiti on 1 January 1804, under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines ordered the 1804 Haitian massacre of the remaining French population in Haiti, killing between 3,000 and 5,000 people, including women and children, and an exodus of thousands.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French, as well as Germans who did not take part in the slave trade.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines granted them full citizenship and classified them as black.
For much of the 19th century, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was generally reviled by Haitians for his autocratic ways.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines's enslaved father had adopted the surname from his owner Henri Duclos.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines later took the surname Dessalines, after a free man of color who had purchased him.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines worked on Duclos's plantation until he was about 30 years old.
Still enslaved, Jean-Jacques was bought by a man with the last name of Dessalines, an affranchi or free man of color, who assigned his own surname to Jean-Jacques.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines worked for that master for about three years.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines received his early military training from a woman whose name was either Victoria Montou or Akbaraya Toya.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines became increasingly embittered toward both the whites and gens de couleur libres in the years of conflict during the revolution.
Yet, after declaring himself Governor-for-Life in 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines took his old master Dessalines into his house and gave him a job.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was married to Marie-Claire Heureuse Felicite Bonheur from the city of Leogane.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was older than her husband and died when she was 100 years old.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was referred to as the adopted wife of the Nation in a letter by Petion after the Emperor's assassination.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines offered one of his daughters to Petion in an attempt to relieve racial tensions, as Petion was the most prominent mulatto figure, but Petion refused under the pretext that she was in a relationship with Chancy, one of Toussaint's nephews.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines had two brothers, Louis and Joseph Duclos, who later took the surname Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
In 1791, along with thousands of other enslaved persons, Jean-Jacques Dessalines joined the slave rebellion of the northern plains led by Jean Francois Papillon and Georges Biassou.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines became a lieutenant in Papillon's army and followed him to Santo Domingo, occupying the eastern half of the island, where he enlisted to serve Spain's military forces against the French colony of Saint-Domingue.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines fought for the French Republic against both the Spanish and British, who were trying to get control of the lucrative colony of Saint-Domingue.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines followed, becoming a chief lieutenant to Toussaint Louverture and rising to the rank of brigadier general by 1799.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines commanded many successful engagements, including the captures of Jacmel, Petit-Goave, Miragoane and Anse-a-Veau.
In 1801, Jean-Jacques Dessalines quickly ended an insurrection in the north led by Louverture's nephew, General Moyse.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines gained a reputation for his "take no prisoners" policy, and for burning homes and entire villages to the ground.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines directed the creation of a new constitution to establish that, as well as rules for how the colony would operate under freedom.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines named himself governor-for-life, while still swearing his loyalty to France.
Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines fought against the invading French forces, with Jean-Jacques Dessalines fighting them at the battle for which he is most famous, Crete-a-Pierrot.
Several historians attribute Jean-Jacques Dessalines with being at least partially responsible for Louverture's arrest, as did Louverture's son Isaac.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines promulgated the Declaration of Independence in 1804, and declared himself emperor.
On 1 January 1804, from the city of Gonaives, Jean-Jacques Dessalines officially declared the former colony's independence and renamed it "Ayiti" after the indigenous Taino name.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines had served as Governor-General of Saint-Domingue since 30 November 1803.
In 1805, after crowning himself Emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines invaded in the eastern part of the island, reaching Santo Domingo before retreating in the face of a French naval squadron.
In declaring Haiti an independent country, Jean-Jacques Dessalines confirmed the abolition of slavery in the new country.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines tried to keep the sugar industry and plantations running and producing without slavery.
Between February and April 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines ordered a massacre of the remaining colonists in Haiti, an event that came to be called the 1804 Haiti massacre.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines enforced a harsh regimen of plantation labor, described by the historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot as caporalisme agraire.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines's forces were strict in enforcing this, to the extent that some blacks felt as if they were again enslaved.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines believed in the tight regulation of foreign trade, which was essential for Haiti's sugar and coffee-based export economy.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines placed in these positions well-educated Haitians, who were disproportionately from the light-skinned elite, as gens de couleur were most likely to have been educated.
Disaffected members of Jean-Jacques Dessalines's administration, including Alexandre Petion and Henri Christophe, began a conspiracy to overthrow the Emperor, and Haitians began an insurrection in the south in August 1806, which culminated in Jean-Jacques Dessalines being assassinated north of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, at Larnage, on 17 October 1806, on his way to fight the rebels.
One report say that Jean-Jacques Dessalines was shot, stabbed, stripped, and had his fingers cut off, before his corpse was brought to Port-au-Prince, where it was stoned by crowds and said to resemble "scraps" and "shapeless remains".
Jean-Jacques Dessalines' body was later moved to the Autel de la Patrie in the Champs-de-Mars alongside Petion's body.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines's murder left a power vacuum and civil war ensued.
For much of the 19th century, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was generally reviled by Haitians for his autocratic ways.