Bellegarde sets out to raise the profile of a figure he considers overshadowed by Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines and Christophe. He traces Petion from an unrecognized childhood in Port-au-Prince and a silversmith's apprenticeship through the militia, the war between Rigaud and Toussaint, service in Leclerc's expeditionary force, and his October 1802 decision to turn his division against the French, a defection that drew mulatto officers and maroon bands behind Dessalines.

Three measures define the presidency. He broke up confiscated colonial estates and handed the parcels to soldiers of the independence army, creating a landowning peasantry; he founded a lycee and a girls' school, following Condorcet in making schooling the base of any democratic programme; and he supplied Bolivar with arms, ships and a printing press on the single condition that slavery end wherever the Liberator's forces prevailed.

Bellegarde closes on Petion's mildness, his popular nickname, and his death in 1818 at forty-eight.