Born 4 March 1859 in Ouanminthe, Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam’s presidency was marked by mounting chaos and violence that resulted in the occupation of the country by U.S. Marines.
Sam was proclaimed president when his predecessor, Joseph Davilmar Théodore, was forced to resign on 25 February 1915, when he was unable to pay the militiamen (called “Cacos”) who had helped him overthrow Zamor.
While responding to U.S. pressures to arrange a customs receivership similar to the one the Americans had created for the Dominican Republic, Sam spent most of his time fighting his political enemies, who were led by the virulently anti-American Rosalvo Bobo. Sam ordered the execution of 167 prisoners, many of them Bobo’s supporters.
Sam fled to the French embassy, where he received asylum. The rebels’ mulatto leaders broke into the embassy and found Sam. They dragged him out and beat him senseless then threw his limp body over the embassy’s iron fence to the waiting populace, who then ripped his body to pieces and paraded the parts through the capital’s neighborhoods. For the next two weeks, the country was in chaos.
In retaliation, on 28 July 1915, he was lynched and butchered by a mob in Port-au-Prince.
Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Marines occupied Haiti.
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