1915, August 4–12: (Dr.

1915, August 4–12: (Dr. Bobo Is Crazy: The Jason Commission, the Archbishop in a Top Hat, and Seventeen Nuns): With the capital stabilized if hardly tranquil, the next step was to quiet the North and get Dr. Bobo, detached from his Cacos, down to Port-au-Prince. To accomplish this, Beach — on the advice of J.-N. Léger — recruited a prestigious commission including Archbishop Conan, Légitime, and Charles Zamor. Shepherded by Lieutenant Coffey, Caperton’s French-speaking flag lieutenant, the commission, attired in black silk hats and topcoats, steamed for the Cap aboard the Jason. After a day of high confusion, with assistance from landing forces of U.S.S. Nashville and Eagle, the commission sorted out contenders and candidates, embarked homesick demobilized government soldiers aboard Nord Alexis, and Jason — with government figures quartered forward and Bobo supporters aft — returned south. She had, wrote Caperton, a notable gathering of Haitians all bound for the capital to witness the election: General Bobo was on board with a staff of twenty-six generals, besides Generals Laroche and Bourand; seventeen nuns also took passage. The doctor talked incessantly about his plans for the regeneration of Haiti but had no specific cures — Coffey considered him unbalanced, and to Coffey, Zamor and Chevallier confided that Bobo was crazy. Caperton’s brief from Washington was to hold an election, make sure that a suitable candidate won with a respectable mandate, start government processes again, support the new regime by ending disorder, and conclude treaty arrangements whereby the United States assumed certain supervisory responsibilities over Haiti — the word “suitable” performing the same function in the vocabulary of occupation that “civilized” had performed in the vocabulary of the Monroe Doctrine: the designation of acceptable sovereignty by the occupying power, a category whose content was determined not by Haitian political culture but by American strategic interest.