The landing of marines in Haiti on July 28, 1915, was the climax to more than a century of political, financial, and diplomatic problems on that unhappy island. The Haitians had not been prepared for the hard-fought independence proclaimed on January 1, 1804. In the intervening years, they had been theoretically governed under fourteen constitutions. Only two of their twenty-six chief executives had managed to serve a regular constitutional term of office and then retire alive. Indeed, the occuption forces landed when an enraged mob was cutting President J. V. Guillaume Sam into pieces.