A TRIPARTITE INTERVENTION IN HAYTI, 1851 327 



Begging a protectorate and offering a lease or even a cession of 

 Samana Bay in return for it, San Domingo was able to arouse at once 

 the cupidity of the European Powers and the jealousy of the United 

 States. 



Pedro Santana became Dictator of the eastern republic in 1841), 

 having risen to that position through the incapacity of his predeces- 

 sor Jimines. His diplomacy aimed at recognition and a European 

 protectorate, to which end an agent had already been sent to Europe. 

 Baez, the agent, was not received in Spain at all; in France he nego- 

 tiated a treaty that the Chambers would not allow even to be read; 

 while Great Britian decided to deal directly with his government 

 through a consul-general whom she commissioned to San Domingo 

 in August, 1848.^'^ The presence of a Haytian army within the ter- 

 ritory of San Domingo in the spring of 1849 inspired Santana, and 

 Baez, who had returned home to become President of Congress, to 

 new efforts for a protectorate. But neither Schomburgk, the British 

 consul-general, nor Rayband, the French consul-general at Hayti, 

 was ready to take the necessary action, while the arrival of an Ameri- 

 can agent on the scene lent color to the belief that the United States 

 was prepared to take a hand in the matter. 



Benjamin F. Green, the son of Duff Green, and a southern man, 

 was sent to San Domingo by Clayton in the administration of Presi- 

 dent Taylor, with power to conclude a treaty of amity and commerce 

 with that republic.^*^ The condition of the treaty was that he should 

 find existing there a government of assured stability; meaning a gov- 

 ernment not under the protection of any foreign power. Fearing 

 that the knowledge of his mission might arouse false hopes, he trav- 

 elled in a private capacity for a time, and took into his confidence 

 only the leading politicians. 



The conditions that Green found prevailing in the island in the 

 summer of 1849 were not such as his instructions contemplated. 

 Santana, victor over the Haytiens and Dictator was striving for 



(1) Brittanicus, 24. 



(2") The correspondence relative to his mission is found in Senate Executive Documents, No. 

 12, Thirty-third Congress, First Session. Referred to hereafter as Green . 



