The Dominican Independence War gives the Dominican Republic independence from Haiti.

Prior to the war, the whole island of Hispaniola has been Haitian for 22 years with Haiti occupying the newly independent state of Spanish Haiti.

Juan Pablo Duarte—twenty years old, educated, a genuine nationalist—helps lead and inspire the Dominican Independence War of 1844.

Duarte, along with Matías Ramón Mella and Francisco del Rosario Sánchez had founded a group in 1838: their movement is called La Trinitaria (The Trinity), because its original nine members had organized themselves into cells of three; the cells had gone on to recruit as separate organizations, maintaining strict secrecy, with little or no direct contact among themselves in order to minimize the possibility of detection by the Haitian authorities.

Many recruits quickly had quickly come to the group, but it had been discovered and forced to change its name to La Filantrópica, where it has continued agitating the Haitians.