Independence Day

Committee of five presenting their work to the Second Continental Congress, August 2, 1776

The Haitian flag was adopted on May 18th 1803, on the last day of the Congress of Arcahaie. The congress was a meeting that had two key outcomes; the establishment of a united command of the revolutionary army under the supreme authority of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and the adoption of a flag by the indigenous army.

Haiti made history by being the first black republic in the world and the first country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. The first two days of the calendar year is dedicated to commemorate the Independence Day and celebrate Ancestors' Day. Toussaint, Christophe, Petion, and Dessalines were the leaders of the Haitian Revolution. Jurant d'abolir l'esclavage.

Liberty Leading the People is considered to be an anti-monarchist symbol. Delacroix painted his work in the autumn of 1830. In a letter to his brother dated 21 October, he wrote: "My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I've embarked on a modern subject—a barricade. And if I haven't fought for my country at least I'll paint for her."

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

While virtually all historians in the 21st century agree that conflicts over slavery caused the war, they disagree sharply regarding which kinds of conflict—ideological, economic, political, or social—were most important.

Frederick Douglass delivered an address at the dedication of the Haitian Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition located in Jackson Park in Chicago. Douglass, a prominent writer, abolitionist, and publisher of the North Star, spent the years 1889 to 1891 in Haiti serving the Benjamin Harrison Administration as United States minister and general consul.

We should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy to-day… is largely due to the brave stand taken by the black sons, of Haiti ninety years ago…striking for their freedom, they struck for the freedom of every black man in the world.