1915, September–November: (Le Maître Blanc: Girard’s Prophecy, the Union Patriotique, and the Irreconcilable Contradiction of Elite Resistance): Watching fro…

1915, September–November: (Le Maître Blanc: Girard’s Prophecy, the Union Patriotique, and the Irreconcilable Contradiction of Elite Resistance): Watching from the sidelines, French Minister Girard had musingly reported to Paris the advent of Le Maître Blanc, whose very shadow could so readily madden these simple hearts — then, peering ahead, he added that in order to realize its programs the United States might well have to undertake a campaign throughout the interior which would exceed anticipations and present difficulties. Even as Girard wrote, reports from the North depicted armed and quite unsubdued Cacos throughout those forbidding mountains Sonthonax had called boulevards of liberty, and at the mouth of the Artibonite from Gonaïves to St. Marc still other bands of irreconcilable noirs were coalescing to oppose the blan and their mulâtre president from the South. Not long before, twelve leading men among the elite were convoked by eminent lawyer Maître Georges Sylvain to hear an eloquent speech against American intervention — they then formed a committee, the Union Patriotique, that was to spearhead the adamant resistance of that class which until this moment had so confidently looked to each incumbent government for sustenance. It was ironic, a contradiction never to be resolved, that the very interests, aspirations, and injuries that sparked the resistance of the elite to U.S. occupation were at the same time wholly adverse to, and bound to estrange them from, the mass of downtrodden noir fellow countrymen.