slightest doubt; but that such a man as he was needed at the time, all must admit. Had Dessalines been in the place of Toussaint, he would never have been transferred from Hayti to France. Unlimited power, conferred upon him, together with the opposition of the whites in all countries, made him cruel even to his own race, and they, looked forward with a degree of hope to his removal. The mulattoes, against whom he had never ceased to war, were ever watchful for an opportunity to take his life. A secret conspiracy was accordingly planned by this class, and on the 17th of October, 1806, while Dessalines was on a journey from St. Marks to Port au Prince, a party in ambuscade fired at him, and he fell dead.
Hayti had much improved under his management, especially in agriculture. The towns, many of them, had been rebuilt, commerce extended, and the arts patronized. Military talents have been ascribed to Dessalines even superior to Toussaint. He certainly had great courage, but upon the battle field it seemed to be the headlong fury of the tiger rather than the calm deliberation of L'Ouverture. Of all the heroic men which the boiling caldron of the St. Domingo revolution threw upon its surface, for the purpose of meeting the tyrannical whites, of bringing down upon them terrible retribution for their long and cruel reign, and of vindicating the rights of the oppressed in that unfortunate island, the foremost place belongs to the African, the savage, the soldier, the general, the president, and lastly the emperor Jean Jacques Dessalines.
