1859, September 3–12: (The Prophète Conspiracy and the Murder of Mme Blanfort): Conspiracy was not slow to appear after Geffrard took office, for as Marcelin…

1859, September 3–12: (The Prophète Conspiracy and the Murder of Mme Blanfort): Conspiracy was not slow to appear after Geffrard took office, for as Marcelin astutely observed, “political intrigue is our mania, a trait in our national character — every Haitian is born a conspirator.” Guerrier Prophète, Soulouque’s Minister of Interior who had originally betrayed Faustin on behalf of Geffrard and thus retained his portfolio, was within eight months — apparently supported from exile by Delva and Salomon — working to overthrow the new president. Geffrard, realist enough to have immediately organized his own secret police, inevitably sniffed out the plot and on September 3, 1859, packed off Prophète into exile. The very next evening, as she sat reading by lamplight in her home across from the palace, the president’s cherished daughter Mme Cora Manneville-Blanfort, newly married and pregnant, was shot down by an assassin’s blunderbuss fired through the jalousies — the conspirators having laid an ambush outside and murdered Mme Blanfort simply to force her father into the street. (6) The murderer, a young noir named Timoléon Vanon, was caught and quickly betrayed his confederates — out of some 900 principals, over 70 were already in prison. British chargé Ussher wrote Commodore Kellett in Jamaica that Geffrard had “evidently committed a great mistake and shown little knowledge of the character of his Countrymen by attempting to govern them by persuasion and conciliation — these people have so long been accustomed to an iron rule, that they look upon moderation as weakness, if not symptomatic of fear.” Within a month, Ussher had cause to revise his judgment: of 23 plotters convicted, 16 were publicly shot against the cemetery wall near the sinister fig tree “Mèt Simityè,” long consecrated to the sepulchral lwa Bawon Samdi.