Dessalines was born on February 2, 1758 in Grande-Rivière du Nord, a tiny village located in the Northern part of Haiti.

According to Haitian Researcher Réginal Souffrant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was the bravest character of his kind during the war of Haiti's Independence. But, at first he was not called Dessalines, he was called Duclos - the name of a French Settler in Grande-Rivière du Nord - who was the master of Dessalines. Later Jean-Jacques Dessalines was sold to another slave owner who was a black man called Dessalines. This is why his name switched from being Duclos to Dessalines. However the soldiers who knew Dessalines when he was very young as a teenager kept calling him Duclos.

When Toussaint was captured before the war of Haiti's Independence, it was Dessalines who united all the conflicting forces, mulatoes, negroes together who fought against the troup of Napoléon Bonaparte and created the First Independent Black Republic in the World in 1804 which is today Haiti.

Governor for life on January 1, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines was crowned Emperor as "Jacques the First" on September 22, 1804 until he died assassinated on October 17, 1806 after a plot in Port-au-Prince near an area called Pont-Rouge.