1920–1921: (Cacos de la Plume: The Union Patriotique, Seligman’s Exposé, and the Pen as Weapon): A central paradox of the occupation was that the specter of …

1920–1921: (Cacos de la Plume: The Union Patriotique, Seligman’s Exposé, and the Pen as Weapon): A central paradox of the occupation was that the specter of the maître blanc frightened Haitian peasants less than it scared and angered the elite. As early as 1917, de la Batie, reporting to the Quai d’Orsay on the racial question which in Haiti took precedence over all others, said that the oligarchy that had so long gutted the country now desperately feared possible reestablishment of a white society — fears natural in the descendants of affranchis and all the more understandable in light of racial conditions then prevailing in the United States. In supporting the Caco Resistance, the elite had been playing with fire: Dartiguenave’s enemies hoped to upset him, but the president and his faction also perceived the danger posed for the elite order of things by a movement with so many noir generals. Until the revolt was snuffed out Dartiguenave seemed happy enough to collaborate, but in mid-1920 — buoyed by a progress through the Upper Artibonite and Plateau Central where neither he nor any predecessor ever dared travel before — he again took on the Americans, virtually throwing off the mask and fighting fiercely as the so-called champion of the Haitian people, so that the scene of trouble shifted from Central Haiti to Port-au-Prince, which became the one sore spot in all Haiti. In early 1920, Herbert J. Seligman, an American socialist journalist and associate of the NAACP, briefly visited Haiti and on return wrote for The Nation a purported exposé charging that five years of American occupation had served as commentary upon a white civilization that still burned Black men and women at the stake, that Haitian men, women, and children to a number estimated at 3,000 had been shot down by American machine-gun and rifle bullets, and that theft, arson, and murder had been committed almost with impunity by white men wearing the uniforms of the United States. Seligman had not imagined his article — his source was the Union Patriotique, formed in August 1915 by Georges Sylvain, which by 1920 had expanded to include virtually every elite politician or intellectual who opposed Dartiguenave or the occupation and claimed total membership of 30,000, its leaders now including ex-Foreign Minister Sannon, Sténio Vincent, A.-N. Léger, Price-Mars, Seymour Pradel, Perceval Thoby, Pierre Hudicourt, Antoine Pierre-Paul, and the erratic editor Jolibois fils. The British minister R. F. S. Edwards more realistically described the Union as a set of disgruntled politicians who would do anything to obtain a government position. The Union also contained high-minded men — to name only one, Maître Georges Léger — but in the sardonic phrase of a fellow countryman, these were les Cacos de la Plume, Cacos of the Pen, who in 1920 took up the cause. The American connection that gave the Union voice and support came through an interlocking relationship between the NAACP, The Nation, and the Haiti-Santo Domingo Independence Society, which Gruening admitted the magazine had organized — Amis des Noirs reborn, the society recruited prestigious Americans for its letterhead, including Eugene O’Neill, Walter Lippmann, Felix Frankfurter, and even H. L. Mencken.