Background
Louis Étienne Félicité Lysius Salomon was born to a wealthy black landowning family in the South on 30 June 1815 in Les Cayes.
Louis Étienne Félicité Lysius Salomon was born to a wealthy black landowning family in the South on 30 June 1815 in Les Cayes.
Well educated, he very early became committed to preventing political domination of Haiti by mulattoes.
When Faustin Soulouque reestablished black dominance, Salomon served as his minister of finance for 11 years. He was made duke of Saint Louis de Sud after Soulouque declared himself emperor in 1849.
After the overthrow of Soulouque in 1858, Salomon lived in exile. In 1867 He was named Haiti’s diplomatic representative in Europe. He used his exile to broaden his knowledge , to travel, and to become acquainted with world affairs.
While abroad, Salomon acquired the reputation as the leading defender of black interests in Haiti. This reputation, which elevated him in the twentieth century to the status of a patron saint of Haitian black nationalism, prolonged his exile.
Salomon’s regime was characterized by a certain degree of subservience to French interests and ideas. He brought together a group of French bankers to capitalize and administer a national bank. He resumed payment on outstanding debts to France which were entirely liquidated. He recruited French teachers and established an expanded French-style system of education which still prevails. His military was reorganized with French assistance.
Salomon faced mulatto rebellions early in his regime. In 1883 a major rebellion resulted in the pillaging and burning of mulatto properties and murdering of mulattoes by black soldiers and mobs, which ended only when U.S. and European powers threatened intervention. The rebellion forced the expenditure of enormous amounts on the military, did irreparable damage to commerce and industry, further intensified racial animosities, and precipitated a spiral of inflation and state bankruptcy from which the regime never recovered.
Salomon secured the admission of Haiti to the Universal Postal Union and granted a British company the concession to lay a cable between Haiti and Jamaica. An agrarian law of 1883 facilitated foreign ownership of land, previously proscribed. Despite the best intentions, these policies have been blamed for undermining Haitian independence and have been seen by many as beginning a pattern of foreign intervention which culminated in U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1915.
Salomon had the constitution rewritten in 1886 to allow his reelection after a seven-year term. From the beginning of his second term, there was internal turmoil and discontent, stemming partly from fears that he might become president for life. By August 1888, the embittered Salomon, facing a rebellion from the predominantly black North, left for France, where he died a few months later.
During Salomon’s period abroad, the Haitian elite coalesced into factions of mulattoes, “Liberals,” and blacks, “Nationalists.” Salomon became the acknowledged leader of the Nationalists. When President Boisrond Canal stepped down after a turbulent period in office, Salomon returned an overwhelming number of Nationalists to the National Assembly, which in October, by a vote of 74-13, elected Salomon president.
He married a French woman, Louise Magnus.
