In particular, the declaration demands vengeance against the French White Creoles, who committed atrocities against the African-Haitian population. Dessalines claimed that:"It is not enough to have expelled the barbarians who have bloodied our land for two centuries; … We must, with one last act of national authority, forever assure the empire of liberty in the country of our birth; we must take any hope of re-enslaving us away from the inhuman government …. In the end we must live independent or die." These words presaged the 1804 Haiti massacre, which was supervised by Dessalines.