Lysius Salomon

Louis Étienne Félicité Lysius Salomon (June 30, 1815 – October 19, 1888) was the

His daughter Ida Faubert was a French poet.

He was also noted for being 6′6″ tall, and referred to having "physical proportions of a gladiator".^[2]

Early life

Salomon was born in 1815 in Les Cayes. His family was influential in the tiny black elite of the south. Prominent and educated, his family often clashed with the relatively more powerful mulatto elite of south Haiti. The Salomon family played an early role in the unrest that ultimately led to the overthrow of President Charles Rivière-Hérard, leading a brief uprising that was a precursor to the larger and more successful Piquet revolt. It was triggered by a disputed electoral assembly in the run-up to the adoption of the 1843 constitution. Salomon said that the local mulatto elites refused to accept that blacks had equal rights in the assemblies, that they "were revolted to see men with black skins.. come to vote concurrently with them." The Salomons raised a force of 800 rebels from local cultivators, but the rebellion was put down and the family went into exile in Jamaica.^[3]

As

Within four months of Salomon's presidency, Haitian refugees from Kingston were in contact with the elite community in Port-au-Prince in order to stage a coup. When Salomon went to tour the south, general Nicolas headed to St. Marc to plan another coup, but was met with government soldiers. In 1883, exiled Haitian rebels from Jamaica and Cuba, including Jean-Pierre Boyer-Bazelais and Desormes, reached Haitian shores to start another coup against Salomon.

While Salomon fixed some of Haiti's problems, he also drained resources to pay Haiti's debt to France. During 1881–1882, an outbreak of smallpox spread throughout the country and consumed most of the finances in those years. In April 1883, the infamous Cacos from the north rebelled against Salomon and his administration, but were crushed by government troops mixed with former piquets.

From 1884 to the end of his presidency, Salomon faced numerous rebellions from the Cacos. By May, Cacos from the south rebelled in Jérémie, and in July Jacmel rebelled. In October, a huge outburst emerged between Salomon's government forces, the exiled rebels from Cuba and Jamaica, and Cacos from different cities from the south and north. Flames engulfed government records and buildings, and mass murder was being dealt to the elite class, foreigners, and merchants. This conflict was known as the "Bloody Week".

Following the rebellion, inflation grew, and a scandal called the "Affaire des Mandats" became known involving the national bank, a French director, a British chief accountant and the Haitian government.^{[citation needed]}

Resignation and death

In 1886, Salomon was "re-elected" for a seven-year term because of his re-writing of the constitution. In 1887,

• Haiti

References