Alexandre Sabès Pétion (April 2, 1770 – March 29, 1818) was President of the Republic of Haiti from 1806 until his death. He is considered as one of Haiti's founding fathers, together with Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and his rival Henri Christophe.

Pétion was born in Port-au-Prince to a Haitian mother and a wealthy French white father. Like other gens de couleur libres (free people of color) with wealthy fathers, Pétion was sent to France in 1788 to be educated and study at the Military Academy in Paris.

In Saint-Domingue, as in other French colonies such as La Louisiane, the free gens de couleur constituted a third caste between the whites and enslaved Africans. While restricted in political rights, many received social capital from their fathers and became educated and wealthy landowners, resented by the petits blancs, who were mostly minor tradesmen. Following the French Revolution of 1789, the gens de couleur led a rebellion to gain the voting and political rights which they believed were due them as French citizens; this was before the slave uprising of 1791. At that time, most free people of color did not support freedom or political rights for enslaved Africans and free blacks.