Haiti

  Sympathetic and knowledgeable about Haitian history, Douglass was well aware that Haitians had good reason to be sensitive about the threat of external forces. He warned Secretary of State Blaine that it did not help the American cause when a U.S. Navy ship arrived to inspect the harbor of Môle Saint-Nicolas without permission from the Haitian government. It was too easy for opponents of the new regime in Haiti to seize on such actions as proof that the government was ready to “sell the country to the Americans.” In fact, the U.S. Navy regarded the Môle as very nearly theirs already; a report by Admiral Gherardi had concluded that if they approached the Haitians with the right mixture of firmness and strategy, the port could be acquired with little difficulty.56

  Douglass left Haiti for much of 1890, returning at the end of the year with official instructions to begin negotiations for the Môle. On New Year’s Day 1891, he called on Firmin. It was a remarkable meeting of minds: the two men, though of different generations, were major intellectual figures who had worked throughout their lives to defeat racism. There was no time for learned discussion, however. Firmin focused on expressing his worries about the intentions of the United States; Douglass, in return, tried to reassure his Haitian colleague that while his government was indeed interested in acquiring a coaling station, they would do so only through “proper means” that were “consistent with the peace and welfare of Haiti.”57

  Such reassurances probably pleased Firmin, but back in the United States, Douglass was getting a reputation for being a bit too sensitive to the Haitian perspective. One of his strongest critics was U.S. entrepreneur William Clyde, the owner of the West India Line. In 1889, having helped Hyppolite get into power with arms sales, he negotiated a contract with the Haitian president that would give his company a monopoly concession to run steamships between the United States and seven Haitian ports. Clyde also offered Hyppolite the right to transform these steamships into warships if needed, as well as to use them to carry troops, weapons, and ammunition within Haiti itself. In return, the Haitian government was to subsidize the steamship operations, paying Clyde $480,000 over the course of five years (the equivalent of $11.3 million in today’s currency). According to Clyde, Firmin originally signed the deal but then temporized, deciding not to submit it for final approval to the Haitian legislature. Firmin clearly realized that, given the ongoing criticism of Hyppolite’s close relationship with the United States, the opposition would seize on news of this contract to attack him. A frustrated Clyde asked Douglass to pressure the Haitian government to finalize the deal. When it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen, Clyde insisted that the Haitians should pay him for the “time and money” he had expended trying to set up his concession in their country. Douglass, with a dose of incisive humor, responded disbelievingly to Clyde: “Then, sir, as they will not allow you to put a hot poker down their backs, you mean to make them pay you for heating it!” Clyde was not amused. “In his eyes,” Douglass wrote, “I was more a Haïtien than an American.”58

  In March 1891, an article in the New York Herald attacked Douglass for, among other things, being black. If it was to gain the respect of Haitians, the article argued, the United States needed a white diplomatic representative, “for the people [in Haiti] look upon a colored man as one of themselves, whereas they unwittingly recognize the superiority of the white race, although they will never admit it.” They needed, the author suggested, a strong white hand to guide them: “To let Haiti alone is to allow her to follow her own path back to barbarism.” Douglass responded that Haitians would see right through a white diplomat who tried to “play the hypocrite and pretend to love negroes in Haïti when he is known to hate negroes in the United States.” Furthermore, he insisted, strong-arm tactics were not necessary. “The American people are too great to be small,” Douglass wrote hopefully, and it was their duty to treat Haiti with respect and justice. If, instead, the United States planned on preying on Haiti’s weaknesses and fears, on acquiring concessions through the “dread of our power,” then Douglass admitted he was not the right person to represent the United States. “I am charged with sympathy for Haiti,” Douglass declared. “I am not ashamed of that charge.”59

  The attacks against Douglass worked. Though Secretary of State Blaine realized that he couldn’t get rid of Douglass entirely without inciting an outcry in both Haiti and the United States, he also concluded that he couldn’t trust him to get the Môle. So Blaine sent Admiral Gherardi to Haiti, where he essentially took over the negotiations with the Haitian government that should have been under Douglass’s control. Looking back bitterly on the negotiations later on, Douglass wrote that the overweening attitude of Gherardi had the opposite of the intended effect, undermining his government’s chances of getting what they wanted. In his first meeting with Firmin and President Hyppolite, Gherardi aggressively claimed that a promise had already been made to lease the Môle to the United States years before by an agent of Hyppolite who had traveled to the U.S. during the insurrection. When Firmin disagreed, the admiral responded with a set of veiled threats, declaring ominously that if his request were refused, the United States would have to force Haiti into assuming its “moral obligation.” He also told Firmin that “it was the destiny of the Môle to belong to the United States.” Douglass, meanwhile, attempted to be more conciliatory, as well as more vague, arguing that the concession would be “consistent with the autonomy of Haïti” and a “source of strength rather than weakness.” He proposed that providing the United States with a coaling station would help Haiti to end its national isolation and “touch the world at all points that make for civilization and commerce.”60

  In many ways, Firmin likely agreed with Douglass; his later writings about Haiti’s relationship to the United States present similar arguments about the need for open trade. He also understood that given the strategic importance of the Môle in the Caribbean, both the United States and European powers would continue to covet the site. Firmin saw that the United States was clearly the rising power in the region and probably saw the Môle negotiations as a remarkable opportunity. If a deal went through, Haiti could gain income from leasing the port to the Americans, and could also press them for better trade policies and other concessions. In its relations with foreign powers, Haiti had few bargaining chips, but the port was one of them.

  The problem was that, given popular fears about the implications of U.S. control—rooted both in long-standing worries about a loss of autonomy and in knowledge of the racism of their neighbor to the north—it was extremely difficult for the Hyppolite regime to negotiate without opening itself up to the dangerous charge of selling out the population to foreign interests. Firmin knew Haitian politics, and the particular situation that his government was in, well enough to realize that it would be extremely difficult to accept the U.S. request. Indeed, Firmin told Gherardi and Douglass as much in their first discussion. He admitted that “if someone must have” the Môle, it should be the United States, but he explained that such a concession would be the end of Hyppolite’s government. So he stalled for time, asking for further documentation from the U.S. officials.61

  In April 1891, an increasingly impatient Gherardi, along with Douglass, went to see Firmin and press him on the Môle issue. This time, they had backup, of a sort: the U.S. Navy sent four warships into the harbor of Port-au-Prince, adding to the three American warships already anchored there. The population of the town was, of course, alarmed by the display of force, and Firmin, under pressure, promised a final response on the request. But to the surprise of the U.S. envoys, it was a polite but firm no.62

  Firmin agreed that, in principle, the cession of Môle Saint-Nicolas could have been arranged to the benefit of both countries. The problem, however, was in the details. In addition to asking for a long-term lease of the Môle, the United States had insisted that Haiti must also promise not to rent any part of its territory to any other government, nor grant any “special privilege or usage rights” to another foreign power
. This was more than an articulation of the Monroe Doctrine—it sought to set up a privileged deal in which territorial control would be given to the United States and no one else. For Firmin, it was too much. To accept such a condition, he wrote, would constitute an “outrage against the national sovereignty of Haiti and a flagrant violation of Article 1 of our Constitution for, in renouncing our right to dispose of our territory, we will have tacitly accepted its alienation.”63

  The other problem, Firmin explained, was that the United States was being a bully. The fact that they had sent warships to Port-au-Prince—a clear attempt to threaten Haiti—made it impossible for Haiti’s government to accept the U.S. request, for if they did so, the Haitians would “seem to cede to foreign pressure and therefore, ipso facto, to compromise our existence as an independent people.” This was especially true, Firmin added, because U.S. newspapers had been spreading “lies” and declaring that an agreement to grant Môle Saint-Nicolas to the United States as a naval station had already been made. Firmin wrapped up his refusal by insisting that it was not an act of “ill will” on Haiti’s part and that his country remained committed to maintaining its relations with “the most glorious and the most generous Republic of the New World and perhaps of the modern World.”64

  Firmin was clearly proud of his message to the United States: he reprinted it in his 1905 book as a reminder of what he had accomplished. And he was celebrated in Haiti for having stood up to its overbearing neighbor the United States. “Firmin’s pen,” notes one historian, “managed to displace the seven beautiful, brand-new warships, planted in the harbor of Port-au-Prince during the negotiations.” The action gave him enormous political legitimacy—he became “a hero, a legend,” even “a messiah” in the eyes of many Haitians, who had watched the U.S. warships nervously for days. When the last of the warships left, there was a “great sigh of relief” in the town, and Firmin emerged bearing the mantle of a new national hero.65

  In fact, though, Firmin’s success was owed largely to his contact with an astute observer of U.S. policy in Washington itself. The Haitian minister to the United States, Hannibal Price—the son of an Englishman and a Haitian woman—was a skilled politician who had cultivated many connections in the capital. He reported that U.S. public opinion would not support aggression against Haiti, and that the Republican Party would likely lose seats in the next election, leaving Harrison and Blaine in a weak position to press the matter. Price concluded that the show of force the U.S. Navy had staged in Port-au-Prince was, in fact, just theater. When Firmin wrote his response to Douglass and Gherardi, he had in hand a telegram from Price that read simply: “The fleet for the purpose of intimidating. Do not yield. Nothing will happen.”66

  * * *

  Firmin was not alone in trying to figure out how to deal with, and contain, the United States. Throughout the Caribbean, particularly in Puerto Rico and Cuba, insurgents and intellectuals were wondering about the same thing. In 1893, Firmin met with the legendary Cuban leader José Martí in Le Cap. The two discussed the struggle for Cuban independence and shared ideas about uniting independent nations in the region into a Caribbean Confederation that could more easily resist incursions from outside. Firmin also traveled widely during the 1890s, posted by the Haitian government as a diplomat in France, England, and Cuba. He was in Paris in 1898 when the United States occupied Cuba and Puerto Rico. Though many nationalists in those countries, struggling for independence from Spain, at first welcomed U.S. support, they were soon dismayed to find that the occupying power had more than simple assistance in mind, and intended to exert control over the political process. Firmin recalled later how Ramón Betances, who had for years fought for Puerto Rican independence, was devastated when he realized that his island had merely traded one empire for another, going from a Spanish colony to an American one. He grew ill and died, with Firmin among those at his bedside. His memory probably haunted Firmin when, years later, he reflected on the dangers that U.S. hegemony might pose to Haiti.67

  Though he was often abroad, Firmin kept in close contact with his home country and was invested with the hopes of young thinkers and activists in Haiti. For decades, all of Haiti’s presidents had been officers or generals, usually with their own loyal armies who could be mobilized to fight for them when necessary. Firmin, by contrast, was not a military man—his greatest victory on Haiti’s behalf had been won with his pen, not with guns—and he was admired for his intellectual challenges to European racism. Over the course of the 1890s, he garnered an increasingly vocal following: students, youthful militants, and educated members of the middle class came to constitute what was known as Firminisme, a movement pushing for liberal reform, progress, and democratization.68

  In March 1896, Hyppolite—setting out to confront an insurrection in the south of the country—fell from his horse, was struck by a heart attack, and died. Briefly, Firmin became part of the government of his successor, Tiresius Antoine Sam. He resigned from Sam’s staff in 1897, however, apparently because he despaired of being able to root out the corruption that tied government officials to the merchant houses. In addition, the Haitian government seemed increasingly unable to assert its authority when dealing with foreign powers. In 1897, for instance, a German merchant named Emil Lüders was sentenced to a one-year prison term in Haiti after he fought with police who had come to arrest one of his employees. The German kaiser personally intervened in the case, making a series of dramatic demands against the Haitian state. He wanted Haiti not only to release the prisoner but also to remove the judges who had sentenced him, fire the police who arrested him, and pay an indemnity of $5,000 (more than $125,000 in today’s currency) for each day Lüders spent in jail. Haitian President Sam quickly set Lüders free and appealed to U.S. diplomats to help mediate with the Germans regarding their other demands. The United States wasn’t much help, however, and the Germans soon sent two cruisers into the harbor of Port-au-Prince with a simple message: Sam must pay an indemnity of $20,000 or they would bombard the town. Seeing no alternative, Sam acquiesced. The U.S. minister to Haiti, William F. Powell, was disgusted by the affair and by the fact that the United States had not defended Haiti. “This is the first time in my life I have ever had cause to be ashamed of being American,” he wrote. It was, effectively, an international holdup carried out by Germany against Haiti, but no one outside the country publicly complained.69

  Sam’s acquiescence, which contrasted sharply with Firmin’s resolute stand against U.S. expansionism, seriously undermined his legitimacy in Haiti. Under pressure, he agreed to step down in May 1902, creating an opening for the activists who wanted to see a change in Haiti’s political structure. Like earlier constitutions, the 1889 constitution stipulated that the elected National Assembly would name the president—a process many saw as a recipe for cronyism and corruption. An uprising in Port-au-Prince calling for direct presidential election led the National Assembly to disperse, and the country burst into political activity, with commissions gathering in the major towns to select organizers for nationwide balloting. It was an echo of 1843, when a new generation had thrown themselves into politics hoping to reform a broken system. Decades earlier, Firmin had belonged to the elitist Liberal Party; but after a few decades of public life, he had come to support a broad expansion of political rights, seeing it as a necessary foundation for reform. On his arrival in Port-au-Prince a few weeks after the end of Sam’s term, he was greeted by several thousand supporters shouting “Long live Firmin!” He was, in fact, probably in a position where he could have easily gathered an army to establish himself as the new president. Some suggested he should, and some later regretted that he hadn’t. But he was committed to gaining power without the use of force.70

  Delegates from throughout the country converged on Port-au-Prince to decide how, exactly, the presidential election should be held. The debates were quite intense, and, it seems, haunted: at one point, a framed photograph of the departed President Sam suddenly detached itself from the wall an
d fell on the head of one of the delegates, Michel Oreste—who would himself serve a brief and ill-fated few months as president a decade later. The delegates settled on an American-style system in which voters throughout the country would select electors who pledged to vote for a certain candidate. All the citizens of Haiti who fulfilled the requirements set out in the constitution—who owned or rented land, practiced a profession, or could prove some kind of employment—were invited to sign up for the elections. Large numbers of people rushed to do so: some twelve thousand soon registered in Port-au-Prince alone. Firmin rapidly emerged as a favorite candidate, especially among young reformers. They even created an impromptu armed guard for him: each night, one of them later recalled, up to fifty “young enthusiasts” of Firmin camped out in the house where he was staying, ready to defend him if necessary. They were enthralled with the “magnetism” of their leader. In Le Cap, one young supporter went so far as to marry Firmin, in a sense: he changed his last name from Paret to Paret-Firmin.71

  There were still some notable barriers to political participation, both legal (even the relatively broad suffrage rules excluded some men and all women) and cultural (the Kreyòl-speaking rural population remained on the margins of the political process). Nevertheless, the political mobilization inspired by Firmin represented a significant expansion of democratic participation. Firmin found broad support both in his native Le Cap and in towns throughout the country. Lawyers and teachers were firmly behind him; so was an association of artisans—masons, boat builders, tailors, shoemakers—calling itself the Société des Coeurs Unis. The voter registration offices were flooded with partisans of Firmin eager to take part in the election. It was clear that he had a significant lead over the other candidates.72