Môle Saint-Nicolas affair

The Môle Saint-Nicolas affair was a diplomatic incident between Haiti and the United States that began in 1889.

Môle Saint-Nicolas affair

Shortly after Florvil Hyppolite assumed the presidency in October 1889, US president Benjamin Harrison, acting under the advice of his Secretary of State James G. Blaine, commissioned Rear-Admiral Bancroft Gherardi to negotiate for the acquisition of Môle Saint-Nicolas. The US had the aim of establishing a naval station there. In an example of gunboat diplomacy and with the apparent intention to intimidate the Haitians, a formidable fleet was despatched to Port-au-Prince; over 100 guns and 2,000 men were sent to support the parleys. This array of force produced an effect very contrary to that which had been expected; it provoked instead the loud protest of the whole country, thereby compelling President Hyppolite to assume an attitude all the more firm through the fact of his having been suspected of being in sympathy with the Americans. From his flag-ship, the Philadelphia, Rear-Admiral Gherardi addressed his demand to the Haitian Government; his letter contained the additional demand that "[s]o long as the United States may be the lessee of the Môle Saint-Nicolas, the Government of Haiti will not lease or otherwise dispose of any port or harbor or other territory in its dominions, or grant any special privileges or rights of use therein to any other Power, State, or Government."

Gherardi was in so great a hurry to win that which he imagined would be an easy success, that he did not think it necessary to secure the cooperation of Frederick Douglass, who was at that time United States Minister at Port-au-Prince; he alone signed the letter. Anténor Firmin, then Haitian Secretary of State for Exterior Relations, availed himself at once of this blunder to request the credentials of the Rear-Admiral, who, not being provided with any, was obliged to write to Washington D.C. for them. When President Harrison's letter appointing Gherardi his special Commissioner reached Port-au-Prince, public opinion was in such a state of excitement by the protracted sojourn of the powerful white squadron in Haitian waters, that it would have been impossible for President Hyppolite even so much as to attempt to grant the slightest advantage to the United States. The Secretary for Exterior Relations clung tenaciously to the Constitution, which forbids the alienation of any portion of the territory. This ended the matter.

Aftermath

But Harrison and Blaine were not discouraged by this failure. Still bent upon acquiring a naval station in the West Indies, they applied in 1892 to the Dominican Republic. John S. Durham, who had replaced Douglass as Minister at Port-au-Prince and Charge d'Affaires at Santo Domingo, was instructed to lease Samana Bay for a term of ninety-nine years, for which the sum of $250,000 was to be paid. General Ignacio Gonzales, who was at that time Secretary of State for Exterior Relations in President Ulises Heureaux's Cabinet, hesitated at taking upon himself the responsibility of signing such a lease, consequently, having disclosed the request made by the United States, he was obliged to fly from Santo Domingo into a self-imposed exile. These events caused both Presidents, Harrison and Heureaux, to give up the negotiations.