1879, January–June 30: (The Liberal Self-Destruction: Yellow Fever, Pistols in the Chamber, and the Burning of Port-au-Prince): Boisrond held elections in Ja…

1879, January–June 30: (The Liberal Self-Destruction: Yellow Fever, Pistols in the Chamber, and the Burning of Port-au-Prince): Boisrond held elections in January 1879 for the National Assembly, winning a hollow coalition victory whose real strength lay in a Nationalist-Salomon majority, yet within less than a month there was a fresh noir revolt at Gonaïves by Montmorency Benjamin, which Boisrond suppressed by arriving aboard the warship 1804 with fresh troops. A conflagration on February 17 all but leveled Miragoâne, burning 400 houses and the cathedral, and more dreaded than fire, yellow fever revisited Port-au-Prince in April, claiming among its uncounted victims French Minister de Rouchechoart and the consul general of Peru. As heat and political tempers soared through the summer, tensions snapped among the deputies on the hot afternoon of June 30 — pocket pistols popped across the aisles between mulâtres and noirs, and soon some 500 liberals including the best families of Haitian society, led by Bazelais, Hannibal Price, and Edmond Paul, were in revolt against a liberal mulâtre regime — the elite, in a word, were committing suicide. For three days the Bazelais neighborhood was battered by desperate street fighting until on July 3, Boisrond brought up artillery to cover sappers who set fire to the Bazelais and Paul homes, and within two hours the heart of Port-au-Prince was again burned out — the Ministries of Foreign Relations, Interior, Finance, and Commerce and all their archives, the town hall, and government printing office were wiped out, over 150 persons killed, and at the height of the uproar the war steamer 1804 blew up in the harbor with a tremendous whoosh. Then the Cap, Gonaïves, and St. Marc sprang to arms in what was race war rather than rebellion, lasting until August 17 when Gonaïves burned to ashes and Bazelais escaped to Kingston.