1922, April 10 – May 15: (The Election of Louis Borno: Dartiguenave’s Dead End, Brandt’s Persuasions, and the Second Constitutional Transfer of Power): Darti…

1922, April 10 – May 15: (The Election of Louis Borno: Dartiguenave’s Dead End, Brandt’s Persuasions, and the Second Constitutional Transfer of Power): Dartiguenave, whose term expired in May 1922, wanted to succeed himself but his presidency was at a dead end — never truly popular with the country let alone the elite, he had alienated the Americans by maneuver, untrustworthiness, and obstruction. After vainly seeking public endorsement from Russell, who said he intended to preserve absolute neutrality so long as proceedings were in accordance with the laws and constitution, Dartiguenave declared in early April. Public reaction showed rare unanimity: the press, Union Patriotique, and virtually every other organization in Port-au-Prince leveled its guns on Dartiguenave, even holding a mass in the cathedral for deliverance from his regime. The Conseil d’État, every man a Dartiguenave appointee, lowered its eyes. As Dartiguenave’s support crumbled, there began a period of jockeying and private visits to lobby Russell. Although the leading candidate appeared to be Stephen Archer, Louis Borno — with financial propulsion from the already wealthy Jamaican-German entrepreneur O. J. Brandt — suddenly pulled ahead. On the evening of April 10, after Dartiguenave mustered only 4 out of 21 votes from his own Conseil and withdrew, Joseph Louis Borno was elected president. On May 15, 1922, for the first time since Nissage-Saget and only the second time in the history of Haiti, a constitutional transfer of power took place — Dartiguenave surrendered office and Borno was inaugurated, the outgoing president’s seven-year term equaling the combined terms of his seven immediate predecessors. One-time editor of La Patrie, poet of distinction, keen botanist, fluent in English and Spanish, lawyer and legal scholar, ardent Catholic convert, diplomat and thrice Foreign Minister, Borno at fifty-six was a man of culture — smaller of stature than one would guess from his pictures but with a fine intellectual head, serious arresting eyes behind his pince-nez with its dangling ribbon, a pale mulatto, clean-shaven except for a close-trimmed mustache, with thick iron-gray hair receding from a high forehead. Borno had already demonstrated to the Americans he was his own man, and in the frank collaboration he extended to the occupation he was to demonstrate a pragmatism that would anger the elite and result in what has been called a two-headed dictatorship. As Arthur Millspaugh, who knew him well, observed: his attitude was by no means servile or unquestioning, he had ideas of his own and expressed them forcefully, some of his views were those of a politician rather than a statesman, but he was far from being merely a politician or a puppet — government in Haiti thus took the form of a joint dictatorship.