1896–1902: (Drift and Humiliation: Tirésias Simon Sam, the Lüders Affair, and the Consolidations Scandal): General Tirésias Augustin Simon Sam, another noir …

1896–1902: (Drift and Humiliation: Tirésias Simon Sam, the Lüders Affair, and the Consolidations Scandal): General Tirésias Augustin Simon Sam, another noir of the North — Salomon’s nephew by marriage and Séïde Télémaque’s brother-in-law — was elected president on March 31, 1896. The French minister conceded he was universally liked but added that aside from military matters he was an absolute incompetent. Simon Sam took office without a program but with some momentum from Hyppolite’s, continuing public works — steam-powered tram cars on the Rue des Miracles, the railroad from the Cap to Grande Rivière du Nord. In this time of drift, punctuated by yellow fever epidemics, Haiti was again brutalized by the Hohenzollerns: on September 20, 1897, Émile Lüders, a half-Haitian German national and Port-au-Prince livery stable-keeper, became involved in an affray with police. At dawn on December 6, two German warships anchored off Port-au-Prince and their commodore Kapitän-zur-See Thiele sent word that commencing at 1:00 PM he would sink all Haitian warships, destroy the Palais National, and bombard Port-au-Prince unless Haiti paid a $20,000 indemnity, apologized formally, fired a 21-gun salute to the imperial colors, and received Count von Schwerin at the palace. Simon Sam clutched at the Monroe Doctrine and asked the American minister whether any U.S. naval vessels were at hand — a negative reply left Haiti no alternative. Down came the colors, up went the white flag, and by four o’clock the indemnity had been scraped up. Two weeks after the Germans departed, the government laid the foundations of the Consolidations scandal — a complex operation involving kickbacks and double payments to the president, his family, ministers, and French and German accomplices consummated during 1899–1900, with peculation developed in evidence amounting to $1,257,993. The Banque’s French director Louis Hartmann, reviewing government expenditures of 82 million gourdes from 1890 to 1902, asked what Haiti had to show: 15 million for war with no better army, 8 million for a navy that no longer existed militarily, 14 million for interior and police with no noticeable improvement in public safety, 7 million for public works with buildings falling down and highways deplorable, and 3 million for agriculture with national production at a standstill and the misery of the people worse than ever. On May 12, 1902, three days before his term expired, Simon Sam abdicated — and escorted to the wharf, departed for France where he had $2.5 million consolidated in private accounts at 39 Avenue des Champs-Élysées.