Concentration Camps
The midterms were brutal for President Longstreet, seeing both a resurgence in Cleburne's Nationals as well as Tillman's Progressives, costing Longstreet any semblance of a congressional majority. Prohibition had become wildly unpopular once it was actually implemented (both due to actual opposition to Prohibition and a dislike for crime, which distinctly increased after the implementation of Prohibition). Furthermore, the war in Haiti continued to drag on. At home, Longstreet had been an energetic reformer, using the power of the presidency to clear the way for extensive infrastructure developments and education investments. Indeed, Longstreet's civil service reform was viewed as remarkably successfully, helping install an entire generation of young Confederate bureaucrats on the basis of merit. However, neither of those issues was enough to improve his popularity. In response, Longstreet's cabinet settled on two separate solutions to both the crime and war issue.
First, many policymakers quickly came to believe that regardless of what states' rights rhetoric would imply, the national crime wave and the increasing strength of organized crime (such as now world-renowned Confederate Mafia groups) in the Confederate States implied that a national solution was necessary, one that could operate across state borders. After public outcry grew after a gang war shootout in Baton Rouge which killed several bystanders (including children), a tripartisan group ultimately passed an act establishing the Confederate Bureau of Interstate Security (CBIS), the comparatively humble predecessor of the internationally notorious CMIS. At first, the CBIS saw itself vastly underfunded in the fight against organized crime, but the creation of a national policing agency did reassure many Confederates and was largely popular. Tropes of undersupplied police officers fighting against powerful and decadent Confederate organized crime groups quickly became a mainstay in North America and the British Commonwealth.
Second, the Confederates were making some progress in Haiti, but at a pace far slower than they had hoped. Longstreet had inherited a war he thought somewhat foolish, but he was determined to end it. Although the initial conquest of Haiti was successful and largely restored Confederate confidence in the strength of their armed forces and nation (after the Cuban debacle), the resulting guerilla war seemed to continue to drag on. The Confederates were aware of historical precedent - many of those skeptical of the war reminded their countrymen that the French were thrown out of Haiti despite initial victories against the Haitian revolutionaries. The Confederate Army, heavily reliant on British advisors, sought to emulate the strategy of the Anglo-Ottoman forces under General Kitchener in World War I, albeit in a much more radical form. Whereas Kitchener interned what were largely seen as possibly disloyal minorities, the Confederates sought to apply this strategy to an entire nation.
With Haitian guerillas almost impossible to clear out of the Haitian highlands and countryside, the Confederate Army adopted a scorched earth campaign, burning almost any farmland and arable land they could find. Civilians located were forced at gunpoint into "concentration camps" set up to hold them. In theory, the camps would be safe havens for the civilian population while the Confederate Army focused on destroying the rebels. In practice, widespread malfeasance and popular prejudice meant that the camps were almost as squalid as ironically Confederate POW camps in the War for Independence were. The conditions in the camps only became worse as Haitian rebels deliberately targeted supply lines headed towards the camps. Disease and starvation were rampant - although Confederate documents do not evidence a deliberate plan to inflict mass death, many officers were less than entirely attentive to the conditions of the camp based on racial prejudice. Out of a prewar population of roughly 1.6 million, an estimated 260,000 Haitian civilians either died inside or outside of the camps from famine and disease, compared to roughly 60,000 Confederate soldiers and 80,000 Haitian guerillas (both groups mostly from disease).
The mass deaths of the Confederate concentration camps was largely ignored by the international community - unlike the Congo crisis, the Confederates didn't seem to be intentionally killing large swaths of people (even as they embarked on a military strategy that would obviously lead to massive civilian casualties) - and foreign audiences in North America and Europe were generally not moved by the plight of non-European children, besides a famous Mark Twain essay excoriating the camps (interestingly, the pragmatic Longstreet administration actually reached out to Twain to help organize fundraisers to relieve camp inhabitants, which he did). The bulk of horror seemed to mostly come from within the Confederate States itself, especially from radical leftists inclined to criticize the established system. One Confederate Independence war veteran, Albert Parsons, quickly became famous for his regular demonstrations against the war.
The scorched earth policy ultimately did break the back of the Haitian resistance. However, the strategy also ruined the Haitian economy, heavily dependent on the export of agricultural goods. The Confederates were increasingly likely to have won a prize that was essentially economically worthless. Haiti in fact became a bit of conundrum for the Confederacy insofar that they did not actually want it anymore - but it was also widely believed that if the Confederates left, a vehemently anti-Confederate government would eventually take power (humiliating the Confederates in the process). Interestingly, the Confederates found that the most willing collaborators weren't the pre-war mulatto elite (who saw the Confederate invasion destroy everything), but rather ambitious members of the poor black majority. Longstreet was actually incredibly receptive to their ambitions, hoping that they could help create a stable order. Moreover, he felt that black collaborators could probably weaken widespread anti-black prejudice, which he saw as a contributor to the socioeconomic status of Confederate freedman (which he saw an impediment to national strength).
Against furious protests by the Progressives, it was decided to admit Haiti as a territory, which would quickly shift the Haitian economy towards not only being an agricultural exporter, but a convenient location for Confederate business to offshore low-skill manufacturing towards. In addition, although scientific racist thought was increasingly widespread among the Confederate intelligentsia, other Confederates softened their racial attitudes, having been exposed to a war that did not neatly fit into racial categories (with the Haitian mulatto elite being the most fiercely opposed to the Confederate States and largely emigrating to France and several black Confederate soldiers serving well alongside white soldiers). One result of the Haitian War was that white Confederates started becoming more polarized based on race. All of this would come to a head in the upcoming 1903 elections...