1915, February 25 – March 9: (Guillaume Sam Takes Office: Hilaire, Péralte, and $50,000 in Gold): Three days after Théodore’s departure, Guillaume Sam entere…

1915, February 25 – March 9: (Guillaume Sam Takes Office: Hilaire, Péralte, and $50,000 in Gold): Three days after Théodore’s departure, Guillaume Sam entered the capital. Hilaire and Péralte — who had been surrogate for Charles Zamor until the latter emerged from the French legation — quickly accommodated to Sam’s superior force and $50,000 gold, and joined in proclaiming him chef du pouvoir exécutif. As rapidly as a National Assembly could be got together — March 4 it finally was — the legislature ratified the assize of arms, and on March 9, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam took office to the boom of cannon and peal of a Te Deum and a reception in Casernes Dessalines. The gourde, which had skated to 12.5 cents gold in Théodore’s last hours, promptly revived to 17.5 cents. After looking on for a day or so, Admiral Caperton took the Washington back to Guantánamo Bay, coaled ship, and steamed west for the Yucatan Straits, Veracruz, and Tampico. That the last president Haiti would know before the American occupation purchased his accession with the same $50,000 in gold that had been passing from hand to hand through successive factions — from Simon Sam to Guillaume, from Guillaume to Hilaire and Péralte — revealed the closed circuit that Haitian presidential politics had become: the same money financing the same cycle of revolt and accommodation, the presidency itself functioning as a commodity exchanged among military entrepreneurs whose only capital was violence and whose only product was the temporary right to extract from a treasury that no longer contained anything to extract.