The Dominican Republic Declares Independence from Haiti

On February 27, 1844, roughly one hundred Dominican insurgents seized the Puerta del Conde fortress in the historic walled capital of Santo Domingo. The following day, the local Haitian military garrison surrendered, ending twenty-two years of unified rule across the island of Hispaniola. A Central Governing Junta was formed on March 1, 1844, with Tomás Bobadilla as its president, to lead the newly proclaimed Dominican Republic. The uprising concluded decades of political instability in the former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, which had experienced neglect during the Napoleonic Wars, gained a brief independence under José Núñez de Cáceres in 1821, and was absorbed by Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer in early 1822.

Boyer's government had initially attracted some Dominican frontier leaders seeking regional stability, but Haitian authority grew deeply unpopular across the eastern portion of the island over the subsequent two decades. The administration imposed heavy taxes and tried to suppress Dominican culture and language. Discontent with political management and severe financial distress fostered clandestine resistance. In 1838, Juan Pablo Duarte founded La Trinitaria alongside Mella and Francisco del Rosario Sánchez. Organized into clandestine three-member cells to elude detection, the secret society expanded its influence and later spread nationalist ideas through cultural groups such as La Filantrópica, a theatrical society. Although Duarte went into exile in 1843 after Boyer's successor Charles Rivière-Hérard targeted the Trinitarios, the conspirators capitalized on internal Haitian factional turmoil to mount their February revolt.