1916, February – 1917, June 16: (Dissolution and Dictation: Dartiguenave Dissolves the Senate, the Héraux Constitution, and Sténio Vincent’s Counter-Draft): …

1916, February – 1917, June 16: (Dissolution and Dictation: Dartiguenave Dissolves the Senate, the Héraux Constitution, and Sténio Vincent’s Counter-Draft): The legislature had become the rallying point for a disaffected elite — revolution or coup, the traditional expedients, was out of the question under the occupation, but Dartiguenave no longer enjoyed access to the traditional countermeasures available to a Soulouque, Salomon, or Hyppolite. Going privately to Caperton in February 1916, Dartiguenave and Borno explained that their difficulties were exacerbated by American insistence on eliminating graft, reducing palace patronage, and ending fraud on government contracts — fearful that the Senate might vote to impeach, Dartiguenave asked advance assurance that he would be supported if he dissolved one or both houses and went for a new constitution to supersede that of 1889. For the moment, his interest and the occupation’s exactly coincided: Dartiguenave needed to stifle opposition, and the Americans needed inter alia to end the long-cherished Dessalinian prohibition against foreign ownership of land and property. On April 5, 1916, the president dissolved the Senate and locked the senators out, designated the députés a Constituent Assembly, and convoked a handpicked twenty-one-man Council of State. After a season of impasse and carefully supervised elections in January 1917 — gendarmes had to leave weapons in barracks and appear unarmed at the polls, while some districts in the North tried to elect Marines as their deputies — a new assembly convened on April 21, 1917. The significant emendations in Dr. Héraux’s draft that came back from Washington eliminated bars to foreign property ownership and called for constitutional ratification of all acts taken by U.S. occupation authorities. In characteristically Machiavellian fashion, Dartiguenave, while assuring the Americans he fully supported these changes, deliberately spilled the beans — sending the whole correspondence without comment to the National Assembly, saying in effect: here is not our recommendation but here is what practically amounts to dictation from the United States, now see what you can do with it. The assembly, led by its president Sténio Vincent and backed by Pradel, Sannon, Pouget, and Georges Léger, began writing a constitution of its own. Cole’s rejoinder to Dartiguenave was short: if the president wished to prorogue the assembly he had ample power to do so, but if the Americans were forced to act it would be not only the assembly that was suppressed but with it the Dartiguenave presidency. On June 16, Cole confidentially radioed Washington: unless contrary instructions received, if necessary to prevent passage of the proposed constitution, he intended to dissolve the National Assembly, through the president if possible, otherwise direct.