From: The Cleveland Leader, Cleveland, Ohio. June 10, 1891. Page 1.
NEW YORK, June 9. -Port-au-Prince correspondence relative to the recent massacre there by Hippolyte is as follows: Never before were seen so strange measures taken for the "maintenance of order." The order of the President, repeated by his subordinates, seems to have been this: "Arrest and shoot everybody that you find in the streets."
Consequently we could see people flying in all direction to their houses, while soldiers of the guard of the line and of the police in utter disorder and withour commanders ran right and left, and in all directions except of course toward the prison and the arsenal pointing their guns at people on the street, firing at random or for the satisfaction of personal revenge, or the rivalries of caste, in all seemingly for the glory of having to say that they had killed somebody. In the space of a few moments we witnessed only a few paces from the residence of Mr. Preston who was for seventeen years the Minister Hayti at Washington, the murder of his nephew, a soldier of the white guard, who was shot down by a Negro policeman. Two men were arrested and shot, one because he had a gun (he was a soldier of the national guard, and was running to the defense of the palace) the other because he had no gun (he was an enemy because he was not armed for the so called defense); and, horrible spectacle, the minister of finance of the former government, reputed to be the most honorable and peaceable man of the country, was arrested as a suspect while he was surrounded by his eight children, was conducted to the palace to give information if he had any, and was shot in the back by the six Negroes who escorted him, at the very moment when he was saluting the chancellor of the French legation. For several hours they continued to shoot down people who were displeasing to the government or disliked by this or that chief including an inoffensive Frenchman whose Haytian nephew had been taken among the rebels and also shot. We see at the close of the nineteenth century a nation which figures upon the map of the world can arrest a peaceable man in his own home and shoot him down without any form of trial. The French fleet called for by the minister will be sent on, they say. But will that bring the murdered man back to life, and must we still permit such people to figure upon the list of nations?
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