President Woodrow Wilson
Then in 1915 a new Haitian president, pursued by an angry mob, was forced to seek sanctuary in the French legation. The mob dragged him out and killed him. Now the angry French Government threatened intervention. Squirming in an agony of indecision, the anti-imperialist Wilson finally decided to put Haiti under American control to prevent any of the warring European powers from seizing it.
Besides, he told Secretary of State Robert Lansing, an American occupation would give him a chance to bring law, order, democracy, and prosperity to the wretched people of the misruled little country. Wilson's missionary impulse dovetailed neatly with less exalted plans by big-business interests. The National City Bank controlled the National Bank of Haiti and the Haitian railroad system. Dollar diplomacy also Involved the sugar barons who saw Haiti's rich plantations as an inviting target for investment and takeover.
The battleship USS Connecticut
Rioting in the capital of Haiti in August, 1915, gave Wilson the excuse he needed to intervene with warships and Marines under Colonel Littleton Waller, Butler's commanding officer. Haiti was placed under an American commissioner who controlled the republic's affairs through the Haitian President. Cabinet ministers were puppets with only advisory powers. The government was not allowed to incur any "foreign obligations" without American consent, and an American customs official collected all money due Haiti. The Marines "pacified" the population and maintained the President's authority.
When the Haitian National Assembly met in Port-au-Prince, Marines stood in the aisles with bayonets drawn until Philippe Dartiguenave, the Haitian selected by the American minister, was "elected" President by the Assembly. He was the first Haitian President to serve out his full seven-year term, only because of the occupation of the Marines.
Cannon guarding the President's Palace, Haiti from revolutionists.
Under Dartiguenave American control of the island was assured by a treaty signed on September 16, 1915, which entitled the United States to administer Haitian customs and finance for twenty years, or longer if Washington saw fit. The Haitian constitution was revised to remove a prohibition against alien ownership of land, enabling Americans to purchase the most fertile areas in the country, including valuable sugar cane, cacao, banana, cotton, tobacco, and sisal plantations.
Northern Haiti, however, remained in the grip of rebels known as Cacos, whose chiefs Dartiguenave labeled bandits. Posing as nationalists, they were actually precursors of the brutal Tonton Macoutes of the later Duvalier regime, just as cruel to the peasants as the government's soldiers were.
A typical Haitian citizen, a revolutionist, actual or potential.
Butler led a reconnaissance force of twenty-six volunteers in pursuit of a Caco force that had killed ten Marines. Like the Cacos in the mountains, he and his men lived for days off the orange groves. For over a hundred miles they followed a trail of peels, estimating how long before the Cacos had passed by the dryness of the peels. A native guide they picked up helped them locate the Cacos' headquarters, a secret fort called Capois, deep in the mountain range.
Studying the mountaintop fort through field glasses, Butler made out thick stone walls, with enough activity to suggest they were defended by at least a regiment. He decided to return to Cape Haitien for reinforcements and capture it. On the way back they were ambushed by a force of Cacos that outnumbered them twenty to one. Fortunately it was a pitch-black night, and Butler was able to save his men by splitting them up to crawl past the Cacos' lines through high grass.
Capture of Fort Riviere, Haiti, 1915
painted by Colonel D.J. Neary, USMCR
Marines Major Smedley Butler, Sergeant Iams, and Private Gross received The Medal of Honor for this action.
Just before dawn he reorganized them into three squads of nine men each. Charging from three directions as they yelled wildly and fired from the hip, they created such a fearful din that the Cacos panicked and fled, leaving seventy-five killed. The only Marine casualty was one man wounded.
When he was able to return with reinforcements, spies had alerted the Cacos, and Butler took a deserted Fort Capois without firing a shot. Only one last stronghold remained to be cleared -the mountain fortress at Fort Riviere, which the French, who had built it during their occupation of Haiti, considered impregnable. Butler was told it would be difficult to capture, even with a strong artillery battery.
"Give me a hundred picked volunteers," he said, "and I'll have the colors flying over it tomorrow." Butler earnestly assured his volunteers that they could do the job. His pep talks were enormously persuasive because they were sincere-so sincere that after he gave one, he would often feel emotionally spent and limp. He refused to believe that any job was impossible for Marines and frequently hypnotized himself into believing it. His fervor made believers out of his men, who never hesitated to follow him against overwhelming odds.
Marines on patrol in Haiti, 1919 ~~ Marine Corps University Archives
His officers gave him unreasoning loyalty, even though he was a tough taskmaster and never played favorites. One captain, asked to explain his devotion to Butler, said, "Well, damn him, I don't know. I'd give him my shirt, and he would not only not thank me, but he'd probably demand that I give him my other one. I stick because-bell, I don't know why!"
What happened when Butler led his tiny force against Fort Riviere was subsequently described in a memo by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who visited Haiti in January, 1917, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. The Congressional Medal of Honor could not be awarded to an officer unless a high official of the military branch concerned first made a personal investigation and authenticated the citation. When Butler was recommended for the award, Roosevelt went to Haiti to investigate.
He was taken by Butler on an inspection tour of Haiti and the ruins of Fort Riviere, which Butler had demolished with explosives after its capture to deny its reuse to the Cacos. In his memorandum Roosevelt wrote what he had learned from others about Smedley Butler's attack on the four-thousand-foot-high mountain fortress in November, 1915:
Wrecked DH-4 at Port-au-Prince Airfield
This was the famous fortification captured by Butler and his 24 Marines in the Caco rebellion of a few months before. The top is a hog's back ridge a quarter of a mile long. Butler and his Marines left a machine gun at one end of the ridge while he and about 18 Marines crawled through the grass into the fort itself. Crawling down into a comer, they found a tunnel into the courtyard, serving as a drain when it rained.
Butler started to crawl through it (about 2-1/4' high x 2' wide) and the old sergeant [Ross Iams] said, "Sir, I was in the Marines before you and it is my privilege." Butler recognized his right, and the sergeant crawled through first. On coming to the end within the courtyard, he saw the shadows of the legs of 2 Cacos armed with machetes guarding the place. He took off his hat, put it on the end of his revolver, and pushed it through. He felt the two Cacos descend on it and he jumped forward into the daylight.
With a right and left he got both Cacos, stood up and dropped 2 or 3 others while his companions, headed by Smedley Butler, got through the drain hole and stood up. Then ensued a killing, the news of which put down all insurrections, we hope, for all time to come. There were about 300 Cacos within the wall, and Butler and his 18 companions killed [many] . . . others jumping over the wall and falling prisoner to the rest of the force of Marines which circled the mountain.
Second Haitian Campaign Medal (1919-1920), U.S. Marine Corps
I was so much impressed by personal inspection of the scene of the exploit that I awarded the Medal of Honor to the Marine Sergeant and Smedley Butler. Incidentally, Butler had received the Medal of Honor at Tientsin at the time of the Boxer Rebellion.* [* Roosevelt's error; officers at the time of the Boxer Rebellion could not win the Medal of Honor.] He had been awarded a second at the capture of Vera Cruz in 1914 but declined to accept it. The third at Fort Riviere he did accept.
Butler saw pathos as well as bravery in the episode at Riviere. "The futile efforts of the natives to oppose trained white soldiers impressed me as tragic," he declared. "As soon as they lost their heads, they picked up useless, aboriginal weapons. If they had only realized the advantage of their position, they could have shot us like rats as we crawled out one by one, out of the drain."
But the power of the Cacos was broken, and the revolution was over. Surviving Cacos sought to keep the movement alive, but their ancient horse pistols, Spanish cutlasses, Napoleonic sabers, French carbines, and even flintlocks were futile against the superior weaponry and training of the Marines.
