Due to Dessalines being illiterate and unable to speak French, his secretary Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre then read out the proclamation, followed by the act of independence, which were both written by the latter.

Dessalines claimed that:"It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; … We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government ….

[6] Moreover, the Haitian declaration was important because it marked the end of a revolution, not the beginning, unlike most revolutionary struggles prior to the mid-twentieth century.

Following independence, Dessalines accorded all power to himself as the "head of state", which was made possible by the support of the 17 senior officials that signed the third section of the declaration.

[7] Moreover, unlike mainland colonies, Haiti was an easily blockaded Caribbean island with a small population, which made independence a less viable option for them.

[1] For the black slaves, a revolution and the subsequent declaration of independence was a route to emancipation and racial equality, following the re-establishment of slavery in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte.

A similar attempt to attain independence was carried out on the night of 21 August 1791, when the slaves of Saint Domingue rose in revolt and plunged the colony into civil war.

However, the Legislative Assembly in France granted rights to the free people of colour, in addition to dispatching 6,000 French soldiers to the island.

This ensured that the social and political power then rested with the blacks and those of mixed-descent, thereby completely changing the status quo post-independence.

Dessalines' secretary Boisrond-Tonnerre stated, "For our declaration of independence, we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!".

[1] His establishing of a de facto dictatorship was, in fact, implied within the declaration text as well:"Remember that I sacrificed everything to rally to your defense; family, children, fortune, and now I am rich only with your liberty; my name has become a horror to all those who want slavery.

[1] This can be traced from the 1791 slave rebellion to the 1801 constitution by Louverture, who created an authoritarian society that transferred absolute control from the French to Dessalines.

[11] In three conciliatory paragraphs that contrast with the strident tone of the rest of the document, Dessalines asks his countrymen to: "Ensure, however, that a missionary spirit does not destroy our work; let us allow our neighbours to breathe in peace; may they live quietly under the laws that they have made for themselves, and let us not, as revolutionary firebrands, declare ourselves the lawgivers of the Caribbean, nor let our glory consist in troubling the peace of the neighbouring islands.

The general post-independence autocratic tradition in Haiti differentiated it from most other Latin American societies that became republics following a revolution, with the exception of a select few that became monarchies.

[1] The Act of Independence was supposed to be held at the National Archives building in Port-au-Prince, and it was there until the government of Fabre Geffrard sold to a German who wanted to exhibit it in the British Museum.

After the 2010 earthquake, in April 2010, a Canadian graduate student at Duke University was studying in London found the only surviving copy of the original printing in The National Archives.