Alexandre Petion (2 April 1770-29 March 1818) was President of South Haiti from 9 March 1806 to 29 March 1818, succeeding Jean-Jacques Dessalines and preceding Jean-Pierre Boyer.
Biography[]
Alexandre Petion was born on 2 April 1770 in Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue to a wealthy French father and a mulatto mother, and in 1788 he studied at a military academy in the Kingdom of France with other free people of color. Petion returned to Haiti in 1791 during the Haitian Revolution to fight for his country's independence from France, and he allied with Andre Rigaud and Jean-Pierre Boyer against Toussaint L'ouverture in the "War of the Knives". He was forced into exile in France in 1799 after the rebellion was defeated, and in February 1802 he assisted Charles Leclerc and his 82,000-strong French army in regaining power. However, after L'ouverture was captured, Petion and Jean-Jacques Dessalines formed an alliance and overthrew the French, and in 1806 Petion assassinated Dessalines with the help of Henri Christophe, dividing Haiti into Christophe's North Haiti and Petion's South Haiti. Petion was a democrat, unlike Dessalines and Christophe, and Petion had a power struggle with the Haitian empire of Christophe. In 1816, Petion declared himself President-for-Life to gain more power, and he died of yellow fever two years later.