1915-08-12: (Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave Selected as President by U.S.

1915-08-12: (Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave Selected as President by U.S. Marines Armed With Bayonets in the National Assembly, a Figurehead Installation That Made Haiti a De Facto American Colony): On August 12, 1915, U.S. Marines armed with bayonets occupied the Haitian National Assembly until its members ratified Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave as president. Dartiguenave, born on April 6, 1863, into a wealthy mulatto family, had been president of the Senate when Sam was dismembered. The Americans found the leading contender for the presidency, pro-German Rosalvo Bobo, unacceptable, and selected Dartiguenave as a compliant figurehead. He became the first light-skinned mulatto from southern Haiti to rule since 1879, but he was merely a proxy for the American officials who controlled Haiti’s finances, military, and foreign policy. U.S. officials convinced Dartiguenave to sign a treaty legitimizing the occupation and placing Haitian finances under American control. The Haitian army was disbanded and replaced with a U.S.-armed, U.S.-trained, and U.S.-led National Guard. The National Guard oversaw the corvée, a system of conscripted labor that required peasants to work on national roads, a compulsory labor regime imposed on the descendants of people who had fought a revolution to end compulsory labor.