1877: (France Recalled, Spain Returns, and Bassett Departs): One of the legislature’s few constructive actions was to probe the malodorous French loan of 187…

1877: (France Recalled, Spain Returns, and Bassett Departs): One of the legislature’s few constructive actions was to probe the malodorous French loan of 1875, on which Haiti had with considerable justification suspended payment. France recalled minister de Vorges — who flounced out of Port-au-Prince without taking leave of the president — and replaced him with a mere consul, whose arrival coincided with a French warship. With some dignity the legislature unilaterally recomputed the debt to 21 million francs at 6 percent, and a year later France, which had feared total repudiation, sent back a minister and recalled its cruisers. That same year brought trouble with Spain: in December 1877, two Spanish warships steamed into Port-au-Prince — ostensibly to protest Haitian maltreatment of Spanish subjects but actually to present a bullying ultimatum and require Haiti to salute the Spanish flag — and under Spanish guns Boisrond had no choice but to comply, though as J.-N. Léger caustically noted, the Cubans were operating openly from Jamaica yet Spain chose to present its ultimatum to Port-au-Prince rather than London. In August 1877, after eight years in Haiti — the longest tour by any American chief of mission — Ebenezer Bassett resigned, to be succeeded by John Mercer Langston, former acting president of Howard University. As Bassett sadly took leave on November 27, 1877, he spoke movingly to Boisrond of beautiful Haiti, on whose soil he had passed so many happy days — and Boisrond himself, a widower for twenty years, had on February 10 taken an attractive new wife, Wilmina Wilson Phipps.