1915, January 13 – March: (Wilson’s Letter, the Fort-Smith Fiasco, and the Fuller Mission): Woodrow Wilson contemplated Théodore with increasing disapproval.

1915, January 13 – March: (Wilson’s Letter, the Fort-Smith Fiasco, and the Fuller Mission): Woodrow Wilson contemplated Théodore with increasing disapproval. On January 13, 1915, he wrote Bryan that the more he thought about the Haitian situation the more he was convinced it was their duty to take immediate action such as they had taken in Santo Domingo — to send a commissioner and say as firmly and definitely as was consistent with courtesy and kindness that the United States could not consent to stand by and permit revolutionary conditions constantly to exist. Wilson’s instruments were John Franklin Fort — his predecessor as governor of New Jersey — and Charles Cogswell Smith, both of whom had conducted comparable negotiations with the Dominicans. Haiti, they quickly learned, was not Santo Domingo. In part because of timing that could hardly have been more maladroit — they arrived in the interregnum between Davilmar Théodore and Guillaume Sam — the mission failed dismally. In no mood to welcome busybodies at such an hour, Foreign Minister Ulrick Duvivier played Firmin’s Refused Opening of 1891 and asked to see Fort’s credentials — incredibly, Bryan had neglected to provide any, whereupon Duvivier showed them the door. Appalled by the heat, the reeking gutters, and insects, Governor Fort, sixty-three years old, fled before the week was out. Wilson next selected a sophisticated New York lawyer, Paul Fuller Jr., taking care this time to appoint him Presidential Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. On arrival in May, Fuller proposed a treaty that would bind the Haitian government to take American advice in internal affairs, not to alienate the Môle to any other power, and to get on with arbitration of outstanding claims — in return, the U.S. would support the regime internally and externally. The Haitian government’s response, wrote Munro, was typical of the methods of Haitian diplomacy: first it stalled, demanding formal U.S. recognition before making a reply — this was the Léger Defense, whereby in 1914 Léger had tricked Bryan into recognizing Oreste Zamor — then it submitted a counterproject omitting Fuller’s proposal that an American minister be appointed for the specific purpose of advising the government, bore down heavily on the regime’s only real interest of U.S. financial support, and accepted American help in maintaining order only on condition that the American troops be withdrawn at the first request of the Haitian government. The final condition, stripping the agreement of any effective American power of intervention, proved to Fuller that the negotiation had no future, and on June 5, 1915, he too left.