Soulouque (1847-1859) began the “politique de doublure” whereby the power of a black
president was orchestrated behind the scenes by the mulattos in the government. Black and
mulatto relations grew increasingly divisive with the emergence in the late 1860s of two political
parties largely formed along color lines. The predominately black National Party, headed by
figures like Demesvar Delorme, Lysius Salomon, and Louis-Joseph Janvier, claimed populist
interests and believed in a strong head of state and militarism in government. The Liberal Party,
mostly made up of mulattos, believed in a strong legislature and civil government as opposed to
military rule. They had as their slogan “government by the most competent,” understood to be
found in an educated, mulatto elite. The associations between color and political affiliation were
not, however, always clear cut: Frédéric Marcelin was a mulatto who belonged to the National
Party, just as Anténor Firmin, a black, belonged to the Liberal Party. Some politicians and
military generals switched camps based on the leading figure of the time, and divisions surfaced
within both parties with the rise to power of certain leaders.
Not coincidentally, many Haitian historians in the second half of the nineteenth centurybegan detailing black or mulatto versions of the past which would mirror the increasing
polarization of these two groups in Haitian society. Thomas Madiou, Haiti’s first historian, had
published the first of twelve volumes of his Histoire d’Haïti in 1847. Although a mulatto,
Madiou’s work was for numerous reasons considered out of step with the more official mulatto
view of Haitian history. Proponents of the mulatto ideology turned instead to histories written
after Madiou’s, specifically to the works written in the 1850s and 1860s by Beaubrun Ardouin
and Joseph Saint-Rémy. These historians emphasized the mulatto role in Haitian independence.
This version of the past included highlighting the martyrs of mulatto rights in colonial Saint-
Domingue, Ogé and Chavannes, and emphasizing the policies of mulatto Haitian Presidents