14305: Reid: Haitian Act of Independence (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Ralph Reid <rafreid@yahoo.com>

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1979 -

I was still a boy attending school at Saint-Louis de Gonzague
when I raised my hand to ask a question. The Christian Brother who
was teaching "Histoire d'Haiti"  had just finished his lecture about
January 1, 1804. My classmates and I had memorized the entire text
of the Haitian Act of Independence for the current lesson.
However, my curious young mind still wanted to know more about what
had happened to the original document. And that's when the teacher
told his horrified students the following:

Sometimes after Soulouque's Empire (1859), some unscrupulous
individual sold the original Haitian Act of Independence to a foreign
collector. Many years later, it ended up at the British Museum.

For years, I have wondered about the veracity of this story.
As the 200 years anniversary approaches, I think that a lot
of people will be wondering about such a historical document
with the signatures of Dessalines, Christophe, Pétion, Clerveaux,
Geffrard and many others.

So where is the original Haitian Act of Independence ?

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