1859–1864: (Geffrard’s Diplomacy: Santo Domingo, Spain, and the American Recognition): Having learned firsthand on the battlefield the fruitlessness of any H…

1859–1864: (Geffrard’s Diplomacy: Santo Domingo, Spain, and the American Recognition): Having learned firsthand on the battlefield the fruitlessness of any Haitian policy of trying to subjugate Santo Domingo, Geffrard wasted no time in reorienting relations with the former Partie de l’Est, proposing in February 1859 a five-year détente with the Dominican regime of Pedro Santana. Within two years he had cause to regret this initiative: on March 18, 1861, in a gesture unique in the annals of colonialism, Santana delivered Santo Domingo back to Isabella II, Queen of Spain, and once again Haiti had to contemplate a European power installed on the other half of Hispaniola. (9) The United States could only protest — Confederate gunners fired on Fort Sumter less than a month later — but Geffrard on April 6 solemnly protested against any occupation by Spain of Dominican territory and declared he would use all means in his power to assure Haiti’s interests, dispatching his own Tirailleurs as “volunteers” to serve with Generals Cabral and Sanchez in the guerrilla struggle to expel the Spanish armies. When on July 10, 1861, a Spanish squadron under Admiral Rubalcava appeared offshore with guns trained on Port-au-Prince, presenting Madrid’s ultimatum — close the frontier, a $200,000 indemnity, an apology, and a 21-gun salute to the Spanish flag — Geffrard, unlike Soulouque who had defied Duquesne in 1853, backed down, and Consul Byron’s intercession whittled the indemnity to $25,000. Haitians could not forgive Geffrard for a surrender they felt Soulouque would never have made. (10) Yet within five months, Geffrard reaped an important diplomatic gain: on December 3, 1861, Abraham Lincoln told Congress that if any good reason existed to persevere in withholding recognition of Haiti and Liberia he was unable to discern it, and on June 5, 1862, the Emancipator — who would ultimately free seven times as many slaves as Toussaint — signed legislation providing for U.S. missions in both countries, and on September 27, Benjamin F. Whidden, a New Hampshire abolitionist, presented his credentials as the first full-scale American envoy to Haiti. (11) The irony of the timing — that the slave republic had to wait for the slaveholders’ republic to tear itself apart before receiving the diplomatic recognition it had earned sixty years earlier — embodies precisely the structural violence of the international order that James anatomized: Black sovereignty is recognized not when it is achieved but when white power finds it convenient.