1934, July 5 – August 15: (The Marines Depart: Roosevelt at the Cap, Five-Star Barbancourt, the Dessalinienne at Sunset, and Maître Georges’s Farewell): Like…

1934, July 5 – August 15: (The Marines Depart: Roosevelt at the Cap, Five-Star Barbancourt, the Dessalinienne at Sunset, and Maître Georges’s Farewell): Like Borno before him, Vincent visited the United States in the spring of 1934, feted at the White House and at a brilliant diplomatic dinner given by Sumner Welles. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who put in at the Cap aboard U.S.S. Houston en route to Panama, returned the visit on July 5, 1934. The President, clad in white pongee, debarked over the wharf in a temperature close to 100 degrees — after what FDR later said was the longest walk he had made since being stricken with polio, the two presidents drove through dense crowds to the Union Club, where amid toasts drunk at Roosevelt’s request in that greatest of rums, five-star Barbancourt, the memorandum of understanding was agreed to. The main result was that U.S. Marines would be out of Haiti by mid-August. Orders had already been issued dispersing the American officers of the Garde to such far corners of the world as San Diego, Bremerton, Quantico, Shanghai, and Peking — and like Rochambeau leaving his horse for Capoix-la-Mort, the Marines left behind the American weapons, ammunition, and military equipment with which the Garde had been equipped. On July 7, the Chief of Naval Operations radioed Colonel Little that the President had directed complete Haitianization of the Garde be completed August 1 and that withdrawal of Marine forces shall take place during the fortnight following. Nineteen years to the moment since American troops set about taking over Haiti, on August 1 as ordered, while President Vincent, the cabinet, Norman Armour, and 10,000 Haitians watched, a smart battalion of the Garde d’Haïti swung onto the Champ de Mars to the lilt of Angélico from drums and bugles and Colonel Démosthènes Calixte proudly accepted command from Colonel Vogel. On August 14 before sunset, with a company of the Garde facing a company of Marines on opposite sides of the flagpole, the American colors came down for the last time at brigade headquarters while the band played The Star-Spangled Banner and Fort National boomed out twenty-one guns — then to the inexpressible joy of Haiti, twenty-one more guns and the Dessalinienne rang out, the cherished scarlet and blue flag rose to the peak and billowed grandly in the evening breeze. Next morning the Marines paraded for the last time and, behind a Garde band that in nineteen years had well learned Semper Fidelis and The Halls of Montezuma, marched down to the waiting transports. Charles Moravia, who from initially welcoming the occupation amid the chaos of 1915 had become its most unyielding opponent, wrote a verdict measured and generous: no sentiment of enmity was manifested on the occasion of the departure of the Marines, the military occupation had so tempered itself that it became unnoticed, there was no longer more than a suffering of patriotic pride, and there remains nothing for which we can reproach the Marines. At the very end, a Marine officer who had been a tenant of Georges Léger came to tell him the Americans were leaving — you’ll be glad to see us go and the occupation end, said the Marine. Yes, replied Maître Georges, who had done so much to bring this about — I will be absolutely honest, we know how you have helped us in many ways and we appreciate that, but after all this is our country and we would rather run it ourselves.