Soulouque was an enthusiastic vodouisant, maintaining a staff of bokors and manbos, and gave the stigmatized vodou religion semi-official status which was openly practiced in Port-au-Prince.

Soulouque enlisted in the black revolutionary army in 1803 as a free citizen, as his freedom was in serious jeopardy due to attempts of the French government to re-establish slavery.

Soulouque, aged sixty five years-old, was subsequently enticed to accept the role offered him as Haiti's 7th President, taking the Presidential Oath of Office on 2 March 1847.

According to the book A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny by Mark Kurlansky: "He organized a private militia, the Zinglins, and proceeded to arrest, kill, and burn out anyone who opposed him, especially mulattoes, thus consolidating his power over the government".

Soulouque's power consolidation saw an increase in racial discrimination in favor of Haiti's black population, including a massacre of the mulattoes in Port-au-Prince on 16 April 1848.

His open adherence to Vodou, a highly stigmatized syncretic religion, contributed to his violent reputation in the predominantly[dubious – discuss] Roman Catholic country.

Soulouque paid £2,000 for his crown, and spent £30,000 for the rest of the accessories (according to Sir Spenser St John, British charge d'affaires in Haiti during the 1860s in his account: Hayti, or, The Black Republic, pp. 95–96).

Gustave d’Alaux describes this event in his book, Soulouque and his Empire: "His Imperial Majesty had the principal merchant of Port-au-Prince called one morning and commanded him to order immediately from Paris a costume, in every particular like that he admired in representing the ceremonies of the coronation of Napoleon.

Soulouque attempted to create a strong centralized government, which while retaining a profoundly Haitian character, borrowed heavily from European traditions, especially those of the First French Empire.

The Dominican Republic's white and mulatto rulers were considered as his "natural" enemies and the country's independence was, in his view, a direct threat to Haiti's security.

[citation needed] Soulouque also found himself in direct confrontation with the United States over Navassa Island, which had been seized from Haiti on the somewhat dubious grounds that guano had been discovered there.

Soulouque dispatched warships to the island in response to the incursion, but withdrew them after the United States guaranteed Haiti a portion of the revenues from the mining operations.

According to Latin American scholar Murdo J. MacLeod: "We are left with his policies as they are discernible, with an assessment of the men whom he used to govern, and with our evaluation of how correct his appreciation of the situation really was.

The Constitution of 20 September 1849 made the Imperial Dignity hereditary amongst the natural and legitimate direct descendants of Emperor Faustin I, by order of primogeniture and to the perpetual exclusion of females.

On the night of 20 December 1858, Soulouque left Port-au-Prince in a small boat, accompanied only by his son and two trusty followers, Ernest Roumain and Jean-Bart, and two days later arrived at Gonaives, where the insurrection broke out.