Istwa Nou

Tancrède Auguste had been elected inside Port-au-Prince without reference to the Cacos, who by then thought of themselves as kingmakers. In December he paid them in arms and money as Cincinnatus Leconte had done, which held them for a season. Trouble came instead from the Simonists at Les Cayes, where the manbo Célestina had quietly come home and gone back to work. Arrests followed at Les Cayes, Jacmel and Jérémie through February and March 1913. By April the president was bedridden and the country had decided he was being poisoned by degrees, a version most later historians repeated. Henry Furniss cabled Washington that the man was delirious, his heart failing, unable to keep food down. On 29 April Furniss was invited into a consultation with the president's own physician. The cause was severe anaemia brought on by tertiary syphilis. Auguste died at nine in the evening on 3 May. A block of ice dressed with roses was lifted onto his chest, and the capital set about choosing a third president in twenty months.

Haiti buries its dead quickly, so Tancrède Auguste's state funeral began at eight in the morning on 4 May 1913, the day after he died, with the diplomatic corps and most of Port-au-Prince present. The palace musicians played a dirge on drums muffled in black. The coffin went onto the catafalque and the cabinet took their seats ringed by armed officers. Archbishop Conan told the living to honour the dead by choosing the next president peacefully, then came down from the high altar in procession. John Allen, the American manager of the national bank, said they were about halfway across when a low murmur ran through the church, followed by a whistle. Then gunfire came in from both flanks. The captain of the USS Nashville took out his watch, noted half past eight, and recorded fire from three directions. The windows sat high enough that most rounds passed overhead. Nobody could run because there was nowhere to stand. H. P. Davis, who lived in Haiti and later wrote its history, called this the customary opening of a Haitian election.