25 January to 5 February 1915 · Haitianspan
An American admiral escorts a Caco army down the coast
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Admiral Caperton got a promise out of Vilbrun Guillaume that his men would not loot the towns they entered, would not burn them and would not fire in the streets. For the leader of a Caco army marching on the capital that was a large undertaking, and Guillaume largely kept it. He told Caperton later, laughing, that every city he entered had Americans waiting outside it to ask him to behave himself. The Washington and her sister ship Montana, carrying 650 marines the State Department had thought it useful to move into Haitian waters, were too big for any harbour but Port-au-Prince. Caperton therefore put the gunboat Wheeling and the cruiser Des Moines on the coast to shadow the march south and hold Guillaume to his word. On 5 February 1915 Guillaume entered Gonaives and the local warlord Mizael Codio saluted him with twenty one guns. In the capital, Rosalvo Bobo lost his place in the cabinet, left for the north, and began talking about a revolution of his own.
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