1860 · Haitianyear only

A Breton archbishop arrives with a set of painted hearts

The Concordat put Brittany in charge of Haitian schooling, and Breton devotional images went with it.

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1860 · Haitianyear only

Haiti signs with the Vatican and the teaching orders land

Popular tradition was assigned a rank underneath the French model.

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1860 · Haitianyear only

A concordat with Rome makes Catholicism the official religion of every Haitian

After Soulouque fell, the state signed an agreement it then used against the temples.

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28 March 1860 · Haitian

Haiti wins the right to name its own bishops and Rome accepts them

The concordat with Pius IX creates an archbishopric and binds the clergy by oath.

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1860 · Haitianyear only

Geffrard brings the Vatican back and calls it a second evangelisation

Sixty years of open Vodou practice worry a president who fears the country's image.

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1860 · Haitianyear only

Geffrard's concordat ranks the Church above Haiti's own religion

Half a century after independence, Rome gains privileged status and Vodou is classed as superstition.

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1860 · Haitianyear only

Haiti buys recognition from Rome with a campaign against Vodou

The Concordat traded international respectability for an inquisitorial Church at home.

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14 August 1860 · Haitian

A Haitian decree opens a Boston office with twenty thousand dollars

Settlers were to be steered into the Artibonite valley and given land they could not sell for seven years.

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September 1860 · Haitianmonth known

The army that made presidents is cut almost in half

Geffrard reports the reduction to the chamber and doubles the pay of the soldiers who remain.

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25 December 1860 · Diaspora

Sixty-two people sail from Boston for Haiti on Christmas Day

By the first of May 275 had gone, and by the end of October the paper counted over a thousand.

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1861 · Caribbeanyear only

A Dominican president hands his country back to Spain

Geffrard in Port au Prince read the annexation as the end of Haitian freedom.

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18 March 1861 · Caribbean

Santana hands the Dominican Republic back to Spain

The annexation proclamation uses hatred of Boyer's occupation to sell a return to colonial rule.

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6 April 1861 · Caribbean

Haiti declares a Spanish landing next door would be naked aggression

Geffrard and his whole cabinet sign a proclamation asserting a Haitian right to keep the island free.

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18 May 1861 · Diaspora

A Boston paper argues that cotton grown in Haiti will kill slavery

The Pine and Palm ran fourteen months, selling emigration as abolition by other means.

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June 1861 · Caribbeanmonth known

A Spanish squadron off the capital costs Geffrard his standing

Rubalcava demands an indemnity and a salute, and the president pays a reduced sum and salutes.

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15 July 1861 · Diaspora

Redpath offers Haiti twenty thousand contrabands as landlords' labour

He proposed shipping slaves freed by the war at federal expense and choosing them himself.

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October 1861 · Diasporamonth known

Settlers walk seven miles to fields they cannot drink beside

Reports from the Artibonite describe a thatched shed, unfinished canals, stolen bedding and dead families.

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1862 to 1863 · Africanspan

A British commodore explains the women soldiers by counting men

Constant war drained the male population and the supply never met the demand.

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1 May 1862 · Haitian

A pamphlet from Paris helps raise the piquets at Les Cayes

The elder Salomon recruits armed peasants while his son argues the anti mulatto case in print.

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1862 · Haitianyear only

Washington recognises Haiti and Lincoln explains the delay

Two generations of independence, recognised by every important government but one.

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1862 · Haitianyear only

Washington finally sends a diplomat to Port-au-Prince2 sources

With the South out of Congress, Lincoln asks why recognition is still withheld and Whidden is dispatched.

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30 July 1862 · Diaspora

Free black Washingtonians meet to deal with Redpath, and he quits

After the black press turned on him he abandoned colonisation and went to the war as a correspondent.

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1863 to 1865 · Caribbeanspan

Dominican rebels drive out Spain with quiet Haitian backing

Geffrard professed neutrality and supplied the insurgents anyway.

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1863 · Diasporayear only

Five hundred freed people are landed on Ile a Vache

Bernard Kock supplied handcuffs, chains and stocks, and no rations at all.

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1863 · Caribbeanyear only

The Dutch colonies and the United States abolish slavery

The last two acts of a sequence that had run for thirty years across the Atlantic.

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8 June 1863 · Haitian

The reformer dissolves the legislature that asked for a budget

Presidential order ends the assembly, and the elections that follow draw scarcely five thousand voters.

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1859 to 1865 · Haitianspan

American war prices turn Haitian cotton into a boom and then kill it

Cotton went from eight cents a pound to about thirty five, and collapsed when the Union won.

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27 July 1863 · Haitian

The Pelletier affair, one month after Washington finally recognizes Haiti

A seized ship, a Haitian legal defense, and the first test of a fifty-nine-year-old snub.

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1864 · Diasporayear only

A New Orleans daily run by refugee descendants demands the vote

L'Union became La Tribune, and the campaigns began with schools and streetcars.

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1864 · Haitianyear only

Jeanne and Congo Pelle are condemned to death for murder

Two foreign ministers turn one criminal trial into a general theory of Haitian religion.

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1864 to 1941 · Haitianspan

Five campaigns to burn the temples, the last one demanding an oath

Church and state together broke the drums, and in 1941 asked Catholics to renounce in public.

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early 1864 · Diasporaseason

Lincoln's investigator can find only two hundred colonists left alive

The rest had died or scattered, and a lien on their labour kept them from leaving.

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3 November 1864 · Haitian

Haiti and the United States sign a treaty that lasts forty years

Signed at Port-au-Prince and ratified at Washington the next May, it also covers extradition.

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5 May 1865 · Haitian

Salnave crosses from Dominican soil and takes the north

Ouanaminthe falls, then the Cap garrison surrenders, and a rival government sits in the north.

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August to 8 November 1865 · Caribbeanspan

HMS Bulldog runs aground at Cap-Haïtien and the Royal Navy burns the town

A siege, a shoal that fishermen call Agwé's, and a British warship lost taking sides.

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October 1865 · Haitianmonth known

A British warship shells Cap-Haitien and wins Geffrard's war

The Bulldog intervenes over a seized vessel, the arsenal explodes, and half the town burns.

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19 March 1866 · Haitian

A thirty hour fire destroys a third of Port-au-Prince

About a thousand buildings burn in a town with no fire engines, a year after a similar blaze.

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1866 · Haitianyear only

Delorme tells Americans their civil war did not touch the colour line

A Haitian novelist reads United States democracy from outside and calls its central fiction by name.

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1867 · Haitianyear only

Geffrard is toppled and the opening between the two states closes

Price Mars dated a lost chance at reconciliation to the year the Haitian president fell.

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1867 · Diasporayear only

Louisiana writes a constitution a century ahead of its neighbours

Equal treatment on public transport and in public accommodation, written into law in 1867.

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23 February 1867 · Haitian

The presidential guard turns on its president at midnight

A hundred of Geffrard's own elite troops declare for Salnave and storm the palace.

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12 March 1867 · Haitian

Geffrard resigns and slips aboard a French sloop in disguise

He hands power to a ministry and a conciliation committee and sails for Kingston at night.

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1867 · Haitianyear only

Haiti sends specimens of its produce to the Paris exposition

The display goes out under Nissage Saget and Sylvain Salnave, decades before the state took fairs seriously.

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6 August 1867 · Haitian

Haiti's only emperor after Christophe dies unnoticed at Petit-Goave

Soulouque returns from Jamaican exile after Geffrard's fall and dies almost forgotten.

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1868 to 1877 · Diasporaspan

Men of Haitian descent take seats in southern legislatures

Reconstruction put the grandsons of refugees into statehouses and into Congress.

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1868 · Haitianyear only

A hostage gets out of prison and comes back for the other hostage

Both women were held because their men had joined the insurrection.

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