and other ceremonies. In light of these poems about the Haitian Revolution, the question
remains, however, as to why mulatto poets like Ardouin and Nau would write about a figure like
Dessalines, or why they would articulate the Revolution as one of slaves with no mention so far
of mulatto struggles for equal rights or their own military victories. Why would mulatto poets, at
a time in which they were gaining French recognition but still seeking it internationally (from the
United States, for example), not promote more compromise internally and externally, hail
Toussaint or even Boyer over Dessalines, urge peace with whites, celebrate the sharing of
universal freedoms, portray Haiti as another emerging new world nation, another group of
“Creole Pioneers?”^160 These are fundamental questions, especially considering that the largely
illiterate and non-French speaking majority of Haiti’s population could not read these poems. As
the journal was published in Port-au-Prince, the audience was clearly the Haitian mulatto elite.
A number of possible answers exist in response to these questions. One to which I havealready alluded involves a potential subversive intent that these poems may have had towards
Boyer’s policies or other factions of the mulattos in charge. The calls by various Haitian
statesmen and by Henri Dumesle in particular, as published in L’Union, increasingly highlighted
Boyer’s abuse of power and demanded, in the name of popular interests, that more decision-
making rest in the hand of elected representatives and senators. Boyer, also, eventually forced
the journal to shut down. Another possibility may involve practicality, as a nation cannot
survive long-term by ignoring the contributions of the majority of its people. Poems about black
revolutionary heroes could serve as a useful reminder to the country’s elite as Haiti enters into a
new era of continuing the fight for recognition and establishing its presence in the international
(^160) Benedict Anderson’s chapter of New World nationalisms focuses on the efforts of Creole elites (Creole meaning
those born in the New World) in establishing independence from European colonial centers. As in the example of
the American colonies, these elites, however, are not racially, culturally, or linguistically different from their
European counterparts.