Sheller looks at how Haitians argued about popular participation in political life, centering on the Liberal Revolution of 1843 and, the year after, the Piquet Rebellion.

The liberal challenge to President Boyer's regime opened room that a peasant movement moved into. The Piquets, who called themselves the Army of Sufferers, demanded civil and political rights for black Haitians.

Tracing the revolutionary situation of 1843 and 1844 through three phases, the article shows political actors inside Haiti weighing rival institutional and constitutional arrangements against one another.