Two centuries before Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was slain by political rivals after helping to lead an anti-slavery revolution.

The Republic of Haiti, the second Western Hemisphere nation (after the U.S.) to gain freedom, last week jubilantly marked the 150th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from France. U.S ...

Print Collector/Getty Images. Jean-Jacques Dessalines was Haiti’s first president, serving from 1804 to 1806. A former slave who declared himself emperor, he ordered a massacre and implemented ...

In 1811 a former slave named Henry Christophe anointed himself ‘First Monarch’ of the ‘New World.’ For 10 years, he ruled over a part of modern-day Haiti, becoming a global media sensation.

Yet the story of the king of Haiti’s first defeat of the Bourbon monarch and his attempt to reduce the Haitian people once more to slavery does not begin with the emperor Napoléon’s infamous ...