View of the renovated White House, ca. 1903 (photo credit 16.1)
A younger, slimmer, oil-painted Roosevelt greeted him in the vestibule. Edith had hung Fedor Encke’s portrait there, rather than the more recent rendering by John Singer Sargent, knowing that her husband loved to see himself in Rough Rider uniform. “I cannot say that I think it looks particularly like me,” he commented, but admitted that it was the image he wanted his children to have of him.
Roosevelt’s vanity was oddly leavened with modesty. He never failed to take the bait when Root drawled, “Mr. President, I would like so much to have you give us an account of the fight at San Juan Hill,” yet he deferred to all Civil War veterans. He lectured some of the finest minds in America on their own specialties, while protesting his own intellectual ordinariness: “I am but the average man.” Living in a White House more formal than any in history, he nevertheless entertained cowboys and backwoodsmen there, on equal terms with Cabinet officers and diplomats.
Although political analysts were beginning to use the word genius to describe his political sleight of hand, he scoffed at such hyperbole. Genius was what drove Frank Jarvis in the hundred meters, or John Keats in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “power to do what no one else has the power to do.” His own power, idiosyncratic as it seemed, was the same given to all Presidents. Democratically won, it could be democratically lost, as soon as he failed to please.
Yet his wife, watching him swig Apollinaris from his Golden State loving cup “as if he were a King of Thule,” noticed a new, almost placid confidence in his attitude toward affairs of state. Less intimate observers, such as former Senator David B. Hill, feared the development of “demagogical and dangerous tendencies.” There was little anyone could do to restrain Roosevelt for the next half year, until the new Congress was sworn in. Three current issues offered him much opportunity for executive rashness: Jewish demands to protest the Kishinev pogrom; allegations of spoilsmanship, forgery, bribery, and fraud in the Post Office Department; and reports that resistance to the Panama Canal Treaty had developed in Colombia.
To all of these challenges the King of Thule felt equal. He would receive the Jews and make the Post Office’s own internal investigation (relating, fortunately, to matters predating his presidency) an essay on open government. But the third matter required urgent attention.
ONE OF HIS FIRST acts on returning to his desk was to ask the State Department for a copy of the 1902 Canal Bill, which spelled out his powers in the event of nonratification. John Hay cautioned him that there was no immediate crisis. The Colombian Congress had not yet assembled to debate the treaty. And President José Manuel Marroquín was constitutionally authorized to override any negative vote.
There was no guarantee, though, that Marroquín would so override. Roosevelt discovered that Hay had been keeping quiet about a sharp deterioration in Colombian-American relations. Cables from the American Minister in Bogotá, Arthur M. Beaupré, quoted angry local protests against any “surrender of sovereignty” in the canal zone, and described a general feeling that the treaty prescribed a “loss of the national honor.” (Apparently this feeling related to the ten-million-dollar fee negotiated by Hay and Herrán. Beaupré said he had received “private” assurances that Colombia’s honor would be restored if the United States agreed to pay “a much greater sum of money.”)
Hay, a poet’s soul in a diplomat’s body, reacted with sulky distress to any criticism of his treaties. An instrument like this—the painstakingly worded distillation of months of gentlemanly conversation, of late-night pourparlers and next-morning “memorials,” calligraphed at last on crisp parchment—was as dear to him as any sonnet. Wholesale rejection was apt to aggravate his chronic depression.
“A POET’S SOUL IN A DIPLOMAT’S BODY.”
Secretary of State John Hay, 1904 (photo credit 16.2)
Roosevelt moved quickly to restore the diplomatic offensive, and Hay’s wilting morale. One of the most important conventions in the history of the Americas demanded a resolute State Department. He saw the Secretary briefly, behind closed doors, on the afternoon of 8 June. Whatever transpired, Hay returned to work as if galvanized. The next morning, new instructions went out to Beaupré, couched in language of unusual force:
THE COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT APPARENTLY DOES NOT APPRECIATE THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION. THE CANAL NEGOTIATIONS WERE INITIATED BY COLOMBIA, AND WERE ENERGETICALLY PRESSED UPON THIS GOVERNMENT FOR SEVERAL YEARS. THE PROPOSITIONS PRESENTED BY COLOMBIA, WITH SLIGHT MODIFICATIONS, WERE FINALLY ACCEPTED BY US. IN VIRTUE OF THIS AGREEMENT OUR CONGRESS REVERSED ITS PREVIOUS JUDGMENT AND DECIDED UPON THE PANAMA ROUTE. IF COLOMBIA SHOULD NOW REJECT THE TREATY OR UNDULY DELAY ITS RATIFICATION, THE FRIENDLY UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES WOULD BE SO SERIOUSLY COMPROMISED THAT ACTION MIGHT BE TAKEN BY THE CONGRESS NEXT WINTER WHICH EVERY FRIEND OF COLOMBIA MIGHT REGRET.
Hay acted like a new man in the days that followed. Town gossip had it that twenty-one months of “strenuous Teddy” had enfeebled him—that he was being kept on only as a venerable symbol, Washington’s last link with the administration of President Lincoln. There was some truth to both rumors, although Hay was still capable of inspired diplomacy. And his relationship with Roosevelt was genuinely affectionate, rooted in a mutual memory of Theodore Senior introducing them nearly thirty-three years before—reedy boy and young diplomat shaking hands to the roar of the Hudson Valley thunderstorm.
At sixty-four, Hay was still as elegant as he had been then. The severe cut of his Savile Row clothes gave line to his five-foot-two-inch figure, while a slight fullness of silk under the winged collar focused attention on his unforgettable face. In youth, when merely mustached, Hay had looked almost mandarin, with his high cheekbones and Ming-smooth brow. Now the mustache floated over a magnificent whitened Vandyke, while the skin above was slashed with creases, two of the deepest plummeting in a frown so anguished that photographers felt obliged to retouch them.
The Secretary was, by common consent, one of the great talkers of his time, holding forth in a quiet, beautiful voice. Like a well-resined viola, it poured forth suave melodies, lapsing instantly into accompaniment whenever the presidential trumpet sounded. Even more than Root, Hay was a master of the sly mot juste that inspired Roosevelt to go too far. His inert pose and hazel stare gave no hint of the hilarity suppressed beneath his waistcoat.
Although Hay found the President amusing, he never savaged him as Adams did. He recognized that Roosevelt had “plenty of brains, and a heart of gold,” not to mention a gift for storytelling that rivaled his own. Curious to hear about the great cross-country trip, he invited Roosevelt to dinner on 12 June, along with Ambassador and Madame Jusserand.
With very little encouragement, the President launched beaming into an account of his adventures. Big sticks and badgers and midnight fusillades, rose-petaled streets and redwoods, golden gifts and glistening Beardsleyesque faces held the table entranced. As he talked on and on, Roosevelt began to free-associate earlier western memories: of sharing a bed with the judge who jailed Calamity Joe, of Hell-Roaring Bill Jones chasing a lunatic across the prairie, of bandy-legged Frank Brito “shooting at his wife the time he killed his sister-in-law.” To Jusserand, such stories sounded as remote and strange as any in Piers Plowman. Roosevelt’s extraordinary frankness, his high-pitched mirth (punctuated with table thumps and chortles of “Hoo! Hoo!”), and perpetual discharge of energy were such that the Ambassador could conclude only that France was being vouchsafed some sort of privileged audience.
After dinner, Hay displayed some of the rarities in his library. Roosevelt took up an autographed page proof of the Gettysburg Address, then, his mind leaping to other subjects, began to talk and gesticulate. The precious sheet flapped in the air, to Hay’s silent agony. Rescuing it, he begged Roosevelt to endow him with a typed transcript of his western monologue, to preserve for posterity.
Roosevelt, flattered, promised to oblige.
THE COLOMBIAN MINISTER for Forei
gn Affairs was mystified by Hay’s cable. What was this threatened “action” by the United States—something directly aggressive, or just reversion to a Nicaragua Canal? Beaupré did not know, and the State Department sent no clarification. Thirty years of foreign-policy experience had taught Hay to keep his opponents guessing. “There are three species of creature,” he liked to quip, “who when they seem coming, are going: diplomats, women, and crabs.”
That same day, 13 June, Roosevelt sat in private conference with William Nelson Cromwell. It was not his habit to receive lobbyists. But Mark Hanna had strongly urged the meeting, and after Walla Walla he wanted to be accommodating. The glossy little lawyer had made himself indispensable in all canal matters, darting with bright-eyed, bumblebee quickness among every possible source of pollen. Cromwell had spies in Bogotá, paid agents in Colón and Panama City, political supporters in Washington, and financial backers in Paris and New York. Every infusion of news, every fresh pledge of funds was more honey in his hive. Roosevelt’s stiff petals yielded to his fervor.
For a half hour before lunch, and two hours that afternoon, they went over every aspect of the canal situation. Cromwell thought that President Marroquín favored the treaty, but did not have enough political strength to oppose the will of the Colombian Congress. If Marroquín recommended ratification, there might be a coup by antitreaty forces; if he advised against, he risked the secession of Panama.
Roosevelt told Cromwell that he was “determined” to build a Panama Canal, and would tolerate no trickery by Colombia; if the treaty was rejected, and Panama seceded, he would “strongly favor” dealing with the new republic.
This was all the lobbyist needed to hear. He walked out into the fresh June evening. White sails crept down the Potomac; somewhere a baseball crowd was roaring. Washington had shut for the summer. Only its insatiable press corps lingered. Cromwell felt that pleasant loosening of the lips known to all Executive Office visitors, particularly those who think they have prevailed on the President. Full as he was of news, he did not dare to leak it directly. Instead, he briefed an aide who had close connections to the New York World. Overnight, an uncannily prophetic article ground out of the Pulitzer press:
NEW REPUBLIC MAY ARISE TO GRANT CANAL
The State of Panama Ready to Secede
if the Treaty is Rejected by the Colombian Congress
ROOSEVELT IS SAID TO ENCOURAGE THE IDEA
Washington, June 13—President Roosevelt is determined to have the Panama Canal route. He has no intention of beginning negotiations for the Nicaragua route.
The view of the President is known to be that as the United States has spent millions of dollars in ascertaining which route is most feasible; as three different Ministers from Colombia have declared their Government willing to grant every concession for the construction of a canal, and as two treaties have been signed granting rights of way across the Isthmus of Panama, it would be unfair to the United States if the best route be not obtained.
Advices received here daily indicate great opposition to the canal treaty at Bogotá. Its defeat seems probable.… Information has also reached this city that the State of Panama, which embraces all the proposed canal zone, stands ready to secede from Colombia and enter into a canal treaty with the United States … giving this Government the equivalent of absolute sovereignty over the canal zone. The city of Panama alone will be exempted.… In return the President of the United States should promptly recognize the new Government, when established, and at once appoint a Minister to negotiate and sign a canal treaty.
The article went on to report that Roosevelt’s Cabinet fully supported his plan, as did congressional leaders. Apparently the President was prepared to wait “a reasonable time” for ratification of the treaty, but if there was any hint of deliberate delay, he would quickly “make the above plan operable.”
One detail missing from the article was Cromwell’s private prediction that the Panamanian revolution would occur on the third day of November.
Roosevelt issued no denial of the World article, nor of similar scenarios in the Washington Evening Star and New York Sun. He was known to be a quick repudiator of his own faux pas, so evidently he was sending Bogotá a message. Herrán sent one, too, also predicting that Panama might secede.
Cromwell, for his part, smoothly assured reporters that he “still expected ratification.”
ON 15 JUNE, six solemn gentlemen waited on the President: Leo N. Levi, Jacob Furth, Solomon Sulzberger, Joseph D. Coons, Adolf Moses, and Simon Wolf. They were escorted by John Hay, courteously veiling his usual jocular anti-Semitism. (“The Hebrews—poor dears!”) One could not mock their present distress. All over America, Christians as well as Jews were collecting funds to help the surviving victims of the Kishinev pogrom. Ten thousand refugees were still homeless, and an equal number dependent on relief.
Roosevelt wanted to contribute one hundred dollars. “Would it do any good for me to say a word in behalf of the Jews?” he asked Hay and Root before receiving the delegation. “Or would it do harm?” He knew the answer in advance. They objected even to his sending money, on grounds of diplomatic propriety. “I suppose,” Roosevelt conceded, “it would be very much like the Tsar spreading his horror of our lynching Negroes.”
Hay tried to explain to the delegation, representing the executive committee of B’nai B’rith, that there were only two “motives” that might justify Administration criticism of Russia’s domestic policy. The first was national self-interest, and the second (hardly imaginable) an expressed willingness in St. Petersburg to listen. “What possible advantage would it be to the United States, and what possible advantage to the Jews of Russia, if we should make a protest against these fiendish cruelties and be told that it was none of our business?”
Leo Levi, the group’s spokesman, awkwardly addressed himself to the first consideration. He said that it was indeed in the national interest to prevent a diaspora of persecuted Russian Jews to America. The anti-Tsarist “propaganda” such immigrants would bring with them was sure to under-mine “amity between Russia and the United States.” Something must be done “to allay the fears of the Jews in Russia, and thus stem their rush to this country.”
Having thus expressed the traditional disdain of Western for Eastern Jews, Levi went on to read a petition to Nicholas II, the language of which was enough to make Hay blanch. It spoke of “horror and reprobation around the world” at the carnage in Kishinev, accused Russian authorities of tolerating “ignorance, superstition, and bigotry,” and concluded: “Religious persecution is more sinful and more fatuous even than war.”
Hay responded first, in unctuous but negative tones. He said that the United States deplored all “acts of cruelty and injustice” but had to “carefully consider” whether she had any right to question the internal affairs of another sovereign power. The Tsar in any case was an “enlightened sovereign” who would surely never permit another Kishinev.
Roosevelt spoke much more sympathetically. “I have never in my experience in this country known of a more immediate or a deeper expression of sympathy,” he said. It was natural that the United States, with her large Jewish population, should have “the most intense and widespread” reaction against the pogrom. He recited some lines from Longfellow’s “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,” and paid tribute to the American Jews who had fought in the Revolution and Civil War.
Inevitably, mention of the word war reminded him of his charge up San Juan Heights. “When I was myself in the army, one of the best colonels among the regular regiments who did so well on that day, who fought beside me, was a Jew!” As regimental commander, he had personally promoted five men: “two Protestants, two Catholics, and one Jew.”
Ingenuous protests like this, half boyish, half calculating, always made Hay’s whiskers twitch, but the committee listened with respect. Soon Roosevelt was well away:
You may possibly recall—I am certain some of my New York friends will recall—that during the time I wa
s Police Commissioner, a man came from abroad—I am sorry to say, a clergyman—to start an anti-Jewish agitation in New York, and announced his intention of holding meetings to assail the Jews. The matter was brought to my attention. Of course I had no power to prevent these meetings. After a good deal of thought I detailed a Jewish sergeant and forty Jew policemen to protect the agitator while he held his meetings. So he made his speeches denouncing the Jews, protected exclusively by Jews!
It was a story he loved to tell. “Now let me give you another little example.…”
After an hour of such confidences, the committee trooped out glowing with satisfaction. Questioned by reporters, they had to admit that they had failed in their mission. However, the President had promised to read the petition “most carefully.”
HIS EXCELLENCY Arturo Paul Nicolas, Count de Cassini and Marquis de Capizzucchi de Bologna, Russian Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States, told Roosevelt that some four hundred anti-Semitic rioters had been arrested in Kishinev, and the local governor dismissed for failing to prevent the pogrom.
Hay cautioned that Cassini could not be trusted. For all his Italian nomenclature, he was as Russian as borscht, and lied with fabled virtuosity. The Ambassador, who mysteriously depended on his teenage daughter, Marguerite, for social purposes, introduced her around town as “Princess Cassini,” when she was neither a princess nor, according to rumor, a Cassini. His numberless jeweled decorations may not all have been earned in the Tsar’s service, but they were the glittering envy of Embassy Row. When he stood under a chandelier at receptions, he looked like a section of the Milky Way.
Cassini’s assurances regarding Kishinev were nothing compared to his obfuscations about when, if ever, Russia intended to withdraw from Manchuria. He would say only that the ports there were now open to United States trade. This came as news to American observers in China, who reported that the Russian Bear had also begun to prowl Korea.
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