Louis Boisrond Tonnerre

Louis Félix Mathurin Boisrond Tonerre (aka Boisrond Tonerre) (June 6, 1776 Torbeck Saint-Domingue – October 20, 1806 Port-au-Prince, Haiti) a mulatto (Nicholls p. 36) served as Jean-Jacques Dessalines secretary. He drafted the final version of the Haitian Act of Independence which was read by Dessalines on the Place d'Armes of Gonaïves on January 1, 1804.

Tonnerre, while being drunk is said to have exclaimed, after reading a first draft of the Act of Independence by the mulatto Charéron: "All that which has been formulated is not in accordance with our true feelings; to draw up the Act of Independence, we need the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for a writing desk [Inkwell?], his blood for ink, and a bayonet for pen." (Nicholls p. 36)

Boisrond Tonnerre was with Dessalines at Pont-Rouge north of Port-au-Prince (then Pont Larnage), on October 17, 1806 when Dessalines was assassinated in an ambush.

See also

• Act of Independence - this document was drafted by Boisrond Tonnerre.
• Jean-Jacques Dessalines - Haitian revolutionary and ruler of Haiti, to whom Tonnerre served as secretary.
• Pont Rouge - The location of Dessalines murder.

Reference

• Nicholls, David (1996). From Dessalines to Duvalier. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-2239-0