When Dessalines died, Pétion who had often been in political disagreement with him but had refrained from any serious interference with development of the infant Republic began to exercise his political strength to seek a more republican form of government. Followers of the other of Toussaint's principal aids, Christophe, began to assert themselves. A temporary compromise was reached with the election of Henri Christophe as president under a constitution drawn up by Pétion. This uneasy truce lasted only a short time, because Christophe began to exercise greater powers than the limited ones authorized by the constitution that restricted personal power of public officials. The old racial animosities between the mulattos, who supported Pétion and the blacks of Christophe, began to flare anew. Pétion's supporters met in Port-au-Prince, impeached Christophe as President and elected Pétion to the office on March 11, 1807. This resulted into two states - one in the north ruled by Christophe as Henry I - the other in the south governed by Pétion as president for life. Alexander Sabes Pétion was by far the best educated of the revolutionary leaders. He was born in Port-au-Prince on April 2, 1770, of a white father and a mulatto mother. His elementary education was modest. At 18 he joined the militia. Later, he fought under the mulatto leader, Rigaud, against Toussaint and Dessalines in the civil war of 1800. After the mulattos were defeated, he went to France where he studied military tactics and munitions. When Napoleon sent armies to Haiti to reduce the power of Toussaint, Pétion joined them, because he then thought Toussaint was attempting to establish an autocratic dictatorship. It was while in this service that he was approached by Dessalines, made common cause with him, and expelled the French from Haiti.
As President of the southern part of Haiti for two terms, until his death from yellow fever on March 29, 1818, Pétion proved an able administrator. He gave financial stability to his administration by dividing the large plantations confiscated from the French among the men who had fought in the army of independence, thus establishing a rural democracy. He established a free school for younger children, a form of high school for boys in Port-au-Prince, and one of the first girls' schools in Latin America. He also gave sanctuary to Simon Bolivar in 1815, assisting him with money, munitions and men when Bolivar returned to the South American continent for his wars of liberation from the Spanish.
