Early Life
Haitian tradition holds that Dessalines was transported to Saint-Domingue as a slave, but most historians believe that he was born in Saint-Domingue to enslaved African parents. Dessalines was a slave on a plantation in the Plaine-du-Nord in Cormiers (now known as Cormier), near the town of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, where he was born as Jean-Jacques Duclos, the name of his father, who adopted it from his owner. The identity of his parents, as well as his region of origin in Africa, are not known, but most slaves imported to Haiti came from West and Central West Africa.
Dessalines had two brothers, Louis and Joseph Duclos, who also took the name Dessalines. The first was the father of Maréchal de Camp Monsieur Raymond Dessalines, created 1st Baron de Louis Dessalines on 8 April 1811, aide-de-camp to King Henry I, Privy Councilor, Secretary-General of the Ministry of War between 1811 and 1820 and Member of the Royal Chamber of Public Instruction between 1818 and 1820, who received the degree of Knight of the Order of St. Henry on 1 May 1811 and was killed by the revolutionaries at Cap-Henri on 10 October 1820. The second was the father of Maréchal de Camp Monsieur Dessalines, created 1st Baron de Joseph Dessalines in 1816, Chamberlain to Prince Jacques-Victor Henry, the Prince Royal of Haiti, and Major of the Grenadiers de la Garde, who received the degree of Knight of the Order of St. Henry on 28 October 1815.
Working in the sugar cane fields as a laborer, Dessalines rose to the rank of commandeur or foreman. He worked on the plantation of a Frenchman named Henry Duclos until he was about 30 years old. During this time, Dessalines was known as Jacques Duclos; his last name was assigned by his master, as was customary among slave holders. Duclos was then bought by a free black man named Dessalines, from whom he received the surname which he kept in freedom. From then on he was called Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Jean-Jacques Dessalines worked for him for about three years until the slave uprising of 1791, which spread across the Plaine du Nord.
Dessalines was embittered towards both whites and gens de couleur (the mixed-race inhabitants of Saint-Domingue). After the defeat of French royalists during the Haitian Revolution, he ordered the killing of all royalists to ensure that Saint-Domingue would be a nation. Nonetheless, after declaring himself Governor-for-Life in 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines took his old master Dessalines into his house and gave him a job.
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