14 June to 2 July 1915 · Haitianspan
Fuller tells Washington to land marines and dictate a treaty
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Nine days after leaving Port-au-Prince, Paul Fuller told Robert Lansing what he had found. Any concession a Haitian government made to the United States would be read at home as selling the country, and the men who made it would be killed for it. At the same time the government and a large part of every class wanted a convention with the United States, and would accept indirect control of the customs and the transfer of the Mole Saint Nicolas. The president and the foreign minister had told him they were willing to sign on the Mole and to find a legal route by which the Americans could take it. Fear of personal violence was the obstacle. Fuller concluded that negotiation had no future and recommended landing marines and imposing a treaty on the model of the Platt Amendment, which had governed Cuba since 1901. Wilson read the report on 2 July 1915 and noted that action was evidently necessary and that postponing it long would be a mistake. The marines landed twenty six days later.
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