Background
Fabre Nicolas Geffrard was born in Anse-à-Veauon 23 September 1806. The son of a mulatto father and a black mother.
government official politician president
Fabre Nicolas Geffrard was born in Anse-à-Veauon 23 September 1806. The son of a mulatto father and a black mother.
Coming from an elite family, he managed to acquire an education before joining the army.
Geffrard served as a general in the campaigns of President Faustin Soulouque to reestablish Haitian dominion over the Dominican Republic. When the Haitian empire was established by Soulouque, Geffrard was given the title Duke of Tabara. He became the emperor's most trusted adviser. As bankruptcy, corruption, graft, and military, political, and administrative incompetence intensified, the idea of Geffrard as a possible successor to Soulouque began to grow. The emperor ordered Geffrard’s arrest, but Geffrard led a successful insurrection and was made president by acclamation of January 20, 1859.
Geffrard inherited a pattern of state decision making that subverted the rule of law and the constitution. He reintroduced, with minor modifications, the relatively progressive constitution of Jean Baptiste Riche, who had preceded Soulouque. Although the government had less dictatorial power, Geffrard was President for Life.
Geffrard was faced with 15 attempted coups during his eight years in power. Because of constant rebellion, he dissolved the elected legislature in 1863, replacing it with one guaranteed to rubber stamp his edicts. In 1865 an insurrection led by a powerful black general, Sylvain Salnave, was put down with British help. In 1867, with Salnave again rebelling and with a mutiny in the ranks of his palace guard, Geffrard left for Jamaica, where he died 11 years later.
Geffrard halved the army from 30,000 to 15,000 men. He was moderately successful in improving roads and the coastal steamboat service, but he failed in his attempts to introduce electric telegraphy and to improve irrigation and the capital city’s water supply. He improved the educational system, starting a number of primary and high schools, reestablishing a medical school, and founding a law school, a school of navigation, and a school of art. However, education still retained its elite character.
Geffrard acted vigorously to curb the influence of voodoo which had gained tremendously under Soulouque. He signed a concordat with the Vatican in 1860 which restored the power of the Catholic Church.
Geffrard’s administration, while somewhat more partial to the mulatto elite, incorporated many powerful blacks from the Soulouque government. The army, the bastion of black elitism, survived intact.
President Geffrard paid considerable attention to international affairs. He reached a detente with the Dominican Republic, but when, two years later, that country returned to being a Spanish colony, Geffrard provided crucial assistance to insurgents there. Spain sent a squadron to Haiti’s capital city and obtained a commitment from Geffrard not to support the rebels, to grant Spain an apology, and to pay a $200,000 indemnity. Five months later, however, Geffrard managed to get diplomatic recognition of Haiti by the United States for the first time.
Problems that plagued previous regimes persisted: use of state funds for personal enrichment, and the fiscal deficit which quadrupled between 1859 and 1865. In 1865 and 1866 devastating crop failures particularly affected the country’s export of cotton.
