André Rigaud
| André Rigaud | |
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| Born | c,1761 Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) |
| Died | 18 September 1811 |
| Known for | Revolutionary military leader and General; proclaimed Presidency of the southern state of Haiti in opposition to his protégé, Alexandre Pétion |
Benoit Joseph André Rigaud (1761 – 18 September 1811) was the leading mulatto military leader during the Haitian Revolution. Among his protégés were Alexandre Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer, both future presidents of Haïti.
Rigaud was born on 17 January 1761 in Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue, to André Rigaud, a wealthy French planter, and Rose Bossy Depa, a slave woman. His father acknowledged the mixed-race (mulatto) boy as his at a young age, and sent him to Bordeaux, where he was trained as a goldsmith.
André Rigaud was known to have worn a brown-haired wig with straight hair to resemble a white man as closely as possible.
After returning to Saint-Domingue from France, Rigaud became active in politics; he was a successor to Vincent Ogé and Julien Raimond as a champion of the interests of free people of color in Saint-Domingue (as colonial Haïti was known). Rigaud aligned himself with revolutionary France and with an interpretation of the Rights of Man that ensured the civil equality of all free people.
By the mid-1790s with slave uprisings in the North, Rigaud was leading an army, a force in the West and South departments. He was given athority to govern by Étienne Polverel, one of the three French Civil Commissioners who had abolished slavery in Saint-Domingue in 1793. Rigaud's power came from his influence with the mulatto planters, found mostly in the South. They were fearful of the masses of former slaves; Rigaud's army also contained blacks and whites.
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