are used to substantiate racist claims about Haiti’s inability to self-govern. The stakes are high,
as the future of an entire race is represented in Haiti’s plight. Speaking to his country in the
midst of civil war, the speaker laments in “Réflexions:”
Ces spectacles sanglants, ces luttes criminelles,
Et te faire endurer, de l’Etranger moqueur
Ces sarcasmes, ces coups de poignard dans le cœur
Oui, demain, loin d’entendre une race te dire
Que tu causas sa honte, et de te voir maudire:[...]Pour ne faillir jamais, ô mon doux Pays, meurs. (24-28, 34)Two points are worth emphasizing at this juncture. The first involves what Coicou’spoems do not mention. Although a poet’s deep distress over Haiti’s internal strife is present in
other periods of the nineteenth century, it is interesting to note that Coicou’s poems rarely
mention the black/mulatto animosities as central to domestic tensions. As related in the
previous chapter, Haitian politics had been polarized along party lines in the 1860s and 1870s
which coincided largely with color difference. Historian David Nicholls specifies, however, that
by the late 1880s, the relationship between color and politics became increasingly
complicated.^284 With the example of Salomon as with other Haitian leaders, politics became
more closely associated with the thoughts and plans of specific political candidates regardless of
color, sometimes linked to class alliances, economic interests, or military associations. The rise
of the black elite in the last decades of the nineteenth century coincided with this dissent and
rivalries among black leaders themselves. It was in 1888 that President Salomon, a black
president associated with the National Party, was brought down by a black, northern alliance of
the General Nord Alexis and Anténor Firmin. In the aftermath of the revolt which ousted
Salomon, fighting amongst various black generals began a turbulent period of what historians
(^284) Nicholls 111.