- Lysius Salomon
Infobox Officeholder
name =Lysius Salomon
imagesize =125px
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order =13th
office =President of Haiti
term_start =October 2 ,1879
term_end =August 10 ,1888
primeminister =
predecessor =Joseph Lamothe (provisional)
successor =François Denys Légitime
birth_date =1815
birth_place =Les Cayes ,Haiti
death_date =October 19 ,1888
death_place =Paris ,France
nationality =
party =
spouse =
relations =
children =
residence =
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website =
footnotes =Lysius Salomon (1815–1888) was the President of Haiti from (1879-1888). Salomon is best remembered for instituting Haiti's first
postal system , and his lively enthusiasm to modernize the country. [Haiti, Her History and Her Detractors By Jacques Nicolas Léger, U. Mich, 2006, , 235-236]Early life
Salomon was born in 1815 in
Les Cayes . His family was influential and well-known throughout the south ofHaiti and mostly clashed with the elite mulattoes of south. DuringCharles Riviere-Hérard regime, the Salomons were wanted for arrests after a heated battle with the mulattoes and exiled toNeyba . AsFaustin Soulouque came into power, Louis returned along with other powerful black leaders to serve the new government. Louis became theminister of finance under Faustin and began to monopolize export transactions incoffee andcotton , run foreign imports through state monopolies, and levies oncapital . As a result, smuggling and piracy exploded during Soulouqure reign. After the fall of Soulouque, Louis was exiled toParis andLondon where he read widely and traveled the world.Becoming President
On August 18, 1879, Louis returned to
Haiti and becamepresident with huge support from the people. His plan as president was to restart public education, fix Haiti's financial woes, restore agriculture productivity, improve the army, and to fix the public administration. Within 4 months, he established theNational Bank , and by 1880 he resumed payments toFrance . The 1880s saw a huge amount of effort by the Salomon administration to bringmodernization to Haiti. He adhered to theInternational Postal Union and issued its firstpostage stamp . In October, he granted a British cable company the right to connectPort-au-Prince and Kingston, and by 1887 he negotiated to linkMôle Saint-Nicolas toCuba . He restructured the medical school, imported teachers fromFrance for the Lycees, and more. The armed forces were reorganized to 16,000 and assigned to 34infantry regiments and 4artillery regiments. Also, Salomon reorganized the ranking distribution in the Haitian army, which only carried private and general.Diplomatic Relations
In May 1883, Salomon offered the
United States the island ofTortuga , in return for U.S. protection. In November, Salomon offeredMôle Saint-Nicolas or Tortuga to the U.S., but both offers were not accepted.Conspiracies and Rebellion
Within the 4 months of Salomon’s presidency,
Haiti an refugees from Kingston were in contact with the elite community inPort-au-Prince in order for a coup. When Salomon went to tour the south, general Nicholas headed to St. Marc to plan another coup but was met with government soldiers. In 1883, exiled Haitian rebels fromJamaica andCuba , includingJean-Pierre Boyer-Bazlais and Desormes, reached Haitian shores to start another coup against Salomon.While Salomon fixed some of
Haiti 's problems, he also was draining resources to pay Haiti's debt toFrance . During 1881-1882, an outbreak ofsmallpox spread throughout the country and consumed most of the finances in those years. In April 1883, the infamousCacos 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 JulyJacmel 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 were 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 "Affaire des Mandays" became known involving the national bank, a French director, a British chief accountant and the Haitian government.
Resignation and death
In 1886, Salomon was "re-elected" for a 7-year term because of his rewriting of the constitution. In 1887,
Port-au-Prince rebelled because of lack of individual freedom and the tyrannical system of the republic. Government officials withdrew support from Salomon ,and by 1888Le Cap rebelled in the north. With so much stress and too much to handle, Salomon leftHaiti and returned toParis , where he died on October 19, 1888.ee also
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Haiti References
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