Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  87 “The fathers at” H. A. Gudger to Francis B. Loomis, 8 Aug. 1903 (FBL), and Alvey A. Adee to John Hay, 20 Aug. 1903 (JH).

  88 “The fact that” John Hay to TR, 22 Aug. 1903 (TD). Faire valoir means fully exercise.

  89 Gradually, a partial Luis C. Rico to Tomás Herrán, 13 Aug. 1903, and J. Bidlake to Tomas Herrán, 8 Sept. 1903 (TH); Alban G. Snyder qu. in Mary X. Ferguson, “John Barrett,” chap. 4, 12–13 (JB).

  90 “The President will” John Hay to Arthur Beaupré, 20 Aug. 1903 (TD).

  91 “For the first” Tomás Herrán to William Nelson Cromwell, 17 Aug. 1903 (TH).

  92 AUGUST DROWSED The New York Times, 1 Sept. 1903; TR, Autobiography, 329, 339; P. James Roosevelt to author, 24 Nov. 1984 (AC); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 540. By 8 Sept., three members of TR’s security detail were laid up with fever. New York World, 9 Sept. 1903.

  93 Toward the end The following account is taken from the New York World and New York Herald, 3 Sept. 1903, plus unidentified news clips in TRB.

  94 “I came to kill” TR’s would-be assassin was Henry Weilbrenner, a “paranoiac” from Syosset, New York. He said that he wanted to marry Alice Roosevelt, which, TR joked, proved that Weilbrenner was insane. Unidentified news clip (TRB).

  95 The security detail New York World, 4 Sept. 1904; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 587; TR to George Cortelyou, 25 July 1903 (TRP); Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 238–39.

  96 A providential invitation Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 237–38.

  97 His speech there TR, Works, vol. 18, 57–70; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 7 and 20 Sept. 1903 (JJ). A portrait of More hangs in TR’s study at Sagamore Hill.

  98 “Again and again” TR, Works, vol. 18, 61.

  99 “The line of cleavage” Ibid., 63.

  100 A civilized commonwealth Ibid., 64–65.

  101 BY MID-SEPTEMBER Tomás Herrán to German Villa, 2 Sept. 1903 (TH); Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 22 Sept. 1903 (JJ); TR, Works, vol. 20, 497–98; Foreign Relations 1903, 264–65; Robert A. Friedlander, “A Reassessment of Roosevelt’s Role in the Panamanian Revolution,” Western Political Quarterly 14 (June 1961). As early as 1 Aug. 1903, the Panamanian newspaper El Istmeno had published a prosecession editorial, and been disciplined by Colombian authorities. H. A. Gudger to Francis B. Loomis, 1 Aug. 1903 (JH).

  102 Isthmian delegates John Hay to TR, 7 Sept. 1903 (TD); Alban G. Snyder qu. in Ferguson, “John Barrett,” chap. 4, 12–13.

  103 Desperate to keep Foreign Relations 1903, 190, 362; Story of Panama, 354–55; Tomás Herrán to Luis Rico, 15 Sept. 1903 (TH).

  104 Proposals for a DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 249; E. Taylor Parks, Colombia and the United States, 1765–1934 (New York, 1968), 366. The forty-million-dollar argument was advanced by a special committee of the Colombian Senate, which argued that the Compagnie Nouvelle’s last extension of its concession had been granted by executive decree in 1900, and was thus unratified. If so, the concession would be renegotiable, without any further consideration of the Compagnie, at the end of 1904. The United States need pay no more than she had already agreed to pay for canal rights, while Colombia would quadruple her expectations from the Hay-Herrán Treaty. See TR, Autobiography, 538.

  105 Hay ignored this John Hay to TR, 13 Sept. 1903 (TRP). Another reason for Hay’s anger toward Bogotá was that he had heard from Arthur Beaupré that Colombian negotiants had asked Germany and Britain to bid for canal rights in competition with the United States. Beaupré to Hay, 21 July 1903 (JH); TR, Works, vol. 20, 496.

  106 Roosevelt had already TR, Letters, vol. 3, 599. See also TR, Autobiography, 536.

  107 so did summer The treaty expired at midnight on 22 Sept. 1903.

  108 A harvest of tart TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, 3 and 15 Sept. 1903, and to William Sewall, 22 Sept. 1903 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 604. TR told a visitor that if people believed what was currently being written about him in the press, they would think him “the most despicable cur possible.” Parsons, Perchance Some Day, 149.

  109 His Syracuse speech Wayne MacVeagh to TR, 23 Sept. 1903, Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 26 Sept. 1903, and TR to William Sewall, 22 Sept. 1903 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 591; Presidential scrapbook and TR to Charles J. Bonaparte, 15 Sept. 1903 (TRP).

  110 Alaska Boundary Tribunal The boundary negotiations had begun on 15 Sept.

  111 Roosevelt had long Elihu Root to TR, 11 Aug. 1903 (PCJ); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 425.

  112 Roosevelt took TR, Letters, vol. 3, 605.

  113 “I suppose few” Ibid.

  CHAPTER 18: THE MOST JUST AND PROPER REVOLUTION

  1 An autocrat’s a Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy (New York, 1900), 260.

  2 THE PRESIDENT’S FIRST New York Herald, 30 Sept. 1903; Paul T. Heffron, “Secretary Moody and Naval Administrative Reform, 1902–1903,” American Neptune 29.1 (1969); Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 95–97; William H. Moody to the Michigan Club of Detroit, 3 May 1902 (WHM). For a modern assessment, see Judith R. McDonough, “William Henry Moody” (Ph.D. diss., Auburn University, 1983).

  3 Since joining the Washington Evening Star, 10 Mar. 1902; Fleming, Around the Capitol, 36, 256; Paul T. Heffron, “Profile of a Public Man,” Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society, 1980; Dictionary of National Biography. See also Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 95–97.

  4 Emerging from the New York Herald, 30 Sept. 1903.

  5 “a good jolt” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 514–15.

  6 “In this particular” TR to L. Clarke Davis, 21 Sept. 1903 (TRP).

  7 William A. Miller See note above, p. 659 (an open shop); also Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 160.

  8 This apparent sanction J. W. Basra to TR, 18 Sept. 1903, and Lynn (Mass.) Central Labor Union to William Loeb, 25 Sept. 1903 (TRP); Washington Times, 18 and 20 Sept. 1903; James Garfield diary, 29 Sept. 1903 (JRG); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 607; The Washington Post, 15 Sept. 1903.

  9 One of them Portrait in The American Federationist, Nov. 1903; New York Herald, 4 Sept. 1903; Glück, John Mitchell, 92. Mitchell, suffering from chronic alcoholism and insomnia, was heading toward a nervous breakdown. Madison, American Labor Leaders, 171–72.

  10 Roosevelt sized Gompers TR, Letters, vol. 3, 607; New York Sun, 30 Sept. 1903. This was not the first time TR and Gompers had met. Their acquaintance was slight, but extended back to 1884. Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (New York, 1925), vol. 1, 526.

  11 “I thank you” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 607.

  12 “I ask you” Ibid.

  13 Miller’s habits Ibid.; The Washington Post, 30 Sept. 1903.

  14 The delegation trooped The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York Sun, 30 Sept. 1903.

  15 Editorial opinion Literary Digest, 10 Oct. 1903; The Washington Post, 30 Sept. 1903. The New York Times, same date, complained only that Roosevelt had not been tough enough with labor.

  16 Radical unions New York Sun, 30 Sept. 1903; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 164, 174; Ray Stannard Baker to TR, 15 Oct. 1903 (TRP). Baker had just begun a serialized exposé of union bossism in McClure’s.

  17 “YOU MAY HAVE noticed” TR to Mark Hanna, 5 Oct. 1903 (TRP). Senate tinkerings with the treaty, before ratifying it in the spring, had necessitated reratification by Cuba and full consent of the new Congress. Healy, United States in Cuba, 205.

  18 With no paved highways Federico Boyd, Exposición histórica acerca de los motivos que causaron la separación de Panamá de la Rep. de Colombia [Panama, 1911?], 37; Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 336.

  19 The President could Boyd, Exposición, 37; John Barrett to Caroline S. Barrett, 20 Nov. 1905 (JB); Marks, Velvet on Iron, 97–98. According to the New York Sun, 5 Nov. 1903, Panamanians paid higher per-capita taxes than any other Colombian citizens, yet received nothing of Bogotá’s annual levy on the railroad.

  20 Panama’s political Philander Knox, “Sovereignty over the Isthmus, as Affecting the Canal,” 1903 memorandum (PCK); Marks, Velvet on Iron, 97–9
8; Richard H. Collin, “The Big Stick as Weltpolitik: Europe and Latin America in Theodore Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 296–316; TR, Works, vol. 17, 241–43; Parks, Colombia and the United States, 219–34, 397; Friedlander, “Reassessment.” For a revolutionary precedent in 1885, almost identical with that of 1903, see DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 124–30.

  21 “This does not” TR to Mark Hanna, 5 Oct. 1903 (TRP). The words therefore and must do not appear in the published version of this letter. TR, Letters, vol. 3, 625.

  22 It did not amuse At the time TR sought to discuss Panama policy with him, Hanna was desperately trying to raise campaign money on Wall Street. Mark Hanna to John Hay, 15 Sept. 1903 (JH), and to George Perkins, ca. early Oct. 1903 (GWP); Mark Hanna to TR, 4 Oct. 1903 (TRP).

  23 This advice contrasted Review of Reviews, Oct. 1903. See also Lloyd J. Graybar, Albert Shaw of the Review of Reviews: An Intellectual Biography (Louisville, 1974), 124–25.

  24 Roosevelt tried TR, Letters, vol. 3, 625–26.

  25 “It is out of” TR, Autobiography, appendix to chap. 14. Weeks later, TR quoted these words to show how considerate he had been of Congress, if not Colombia, in October 1903. Friedlander, “Reassessment.”

  26 “misconduct” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 626; Washington Evening Star, 7 Oct. 1903; William Nelson Cromwell to TR, 14 Oct. 1903 (TRP); TR qu. in Thomas Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum on the U.S. Role in the Panamanian Revolution of 1903,” Diplomatic History, fall 1988.

  27 Philippe Bunau-Varilla White House appointment book, 10 Oct. 1903, and Francis B. Loomis to TR, 5 Jan. 1904 (TRP). Loomis is often described as an old and close friend (and hence, wily collaborationist) of Bunau-Varilla. They had met a few times previously, but their correspondence in FBL makes plain that they did not strike up any intimacy until after 1904. Till then, their relations were stiffly formal. Note that Loomis’s above-cited letter is a “posterity document,” clearly demanded after the fact by TR.

  28 a shrewd and aggressive personality TR to William R. Thayer, 1 Mar. 1917 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 691; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 162.

  29 He knew that Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”; Francis B. Loomis to TR, 5 Jan. 1904 (TRP); Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 311. TR remarked years later, “There might have been a dictograph in the room.” Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum.”

  30 “Mr. President” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 310–12. Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB), rephrased TR’s question as, “What will this do to our preparations?” See also Bunau-Varilla to John Hay, 15 Oct. 1903, qu. in Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 318: “I [told him] the whole thing would end in a revolution” (JH).

  31 Loomis remained Philippe Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun: My Fight for France (Philadelphia, 1940), 332. Bunau-Varilla (probably tipped off by Loomis) seems to have known about the professor’s advisory role.

  32 “General and special” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 311.

  Historiographical Note: David McCullough’s inference from a thirdhand source (the diary of John Bigelow) that Bunau-Varilla fully informed TR of his revolutionary plans at this meeting contradicts the testimony, on repeated occasions, of all three primary participants. It seems much more probable that Bunau-Varilla, a model of Gallic scrupulosity, gave the specifics to Loomis, to pass on to the President in executive session. This is what TR himself recalled ten years later, and does not conflict with Bigelow’s contemporary diary entry, “Bunau-Varilla … has seen the President and the Ass’t Secretary of State; unfolded to them his scheme [etc.].” Bigelow could quite well be describing separate meetings with each man. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 352; Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”; Margaret Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow (Boston, 1947), 313.

  33 All that the President Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum.” Collin, “Big Stick,” 302–3, argues that by seeking a part of the Compagnie Nouvelle’s forty million dollars, Colombia—a police state corruptly ill-disposed toward both the United States and Panama—sought to reinvolve France in Latin American affairs, whereas TR wanted to take Europe out of Latin America once and for all.

  34 tremendous little foreigner “That man would instruct Cosmos,” TR told Mark Hanna. The Senator became nervous. “Never mind Cosmos. Cromwell’s the man for you to listen to.” John J. Leary, Talks with TR (Boston, 1920), 256.

  35 Bunau-Varilla, in Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 310–12. See also Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 131–33. TR joked afterward, “He would have been a very dull man had he been unable to make such a guess.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 689.

  Historiographical Note: Bunau-Varilla’s interview with TR on 10 Oct. 1903 has become one of the most widely debated episodes in the Roosevelt presidency. Anglo-Saxon historians tend to dismiss Bunau-Varilla as an unreliable chronicler, given to exaggerations. However, William Glover Fletcher interviewed and corresponded with Bunau-Varilla at length in the course of researching his exhaustive dissertation, and came to the conclusion that he was an honest man (Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 176–78).

  On the day of the interview, TR wrote another letter to Albert Shaw confirming in every detail the impression that Bunau-Varilla took away (See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628). TR’s own accounts of the meeting (to John Bigelow in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 689; and to Archibald C. Coolidge in Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”) are supplemented by details provided by two mutual acquaintances. Elihu Root recalled years later: “Bunau-Varilla told me about [it]. He said that he … got from Roosevelt such violent expressions of opinion unfriendly to the Colombians that … he told his people in Panama to go ahead.… Roosevelt did not say a single word to him about what he intended to do, but B-V found out just what he thought from his explosive comments” (Root to Philip Jessup, 16 July 1931 [ES]).

  The other item is an entry dated 16 Oct. 1903 in the journal of Bunau-Varilla’s close friend John Bigelow: “Bunau-Varilla was up over Sunday [11 Oct.], has seen the President and the Ass’t Secretary of State; unfolded to them his scheme for proceeding with the Isthmian Canal without much more delay.… It is in brief to have the Isthmians revolt from the Colombian govt. declare their independence … have the U.S. send vessels to protect the Railway as it did during the uprising four years ago and forbid any fighting on the Canal territory which would protect the new state from any hostility that could do it any harm, etc. &c.” (qu. in Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen, 313).

  This would appear to be damaging evidence that TR was dissembling when he stated in his Special Message of 4 Jan. 1904, “No one connected with this Government had any previous knowledge of the revolution [in Panama] except such as was accessible to any person of ordinary intelligence who read the newspapers and kept up a current acquaintance with public affairs” (TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 743). But Bunau-Varilla, when shown the diary entry in 1913, remarked that “a few points … seem to have been confused in Mr. Bigelow’s memory.” He specifically disputed the allegation that Loomis and TR were fully informed of his revolutionary plans, and said that he had “strictly abstained” from giving any details that might implicate either himself or his listeners (Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen, 312).

  As with the Venezuela episode, there seems to have been a concerted effort after the fact to create archival lacunae. Loomis’s normally copious correspondence with John Hay is purged between 17 Aug. 1903 and 31 Jan. 1904 in FBL. The papers of TR, Hay, and Moody are mysteriously quiet on all matters to do with the revolution. Amador’s unpublished memoir is remarkable for its deletions of what the author described as “political secrets” about the role played by the Roosevelt Administration (Story of Panama, 643). Fletcher saw many more documents than Bunau-Varilla was willing to deposit in his Library of Congress collection. Cromwell’s papers have vanished entirely; a small collection of his letters, once filed in the Miles P. DuVal papers at Georgetown University, have also disappeared.

  TR’s ow
n comments on the meeting suggest more self-control than Bunau-Varilla remembered, but confirm that a tacit message was sent and received.

  36 “under proper circumstances” TR on 15 Sept. 1903, qu. in Moore, “Autobiography.”

  37 In the same spirit TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628. TR also told Shaw that he had rejected as “underhand” a proposal in early September “to foment the secession of Panama.” He did not elaborate.

  38 John D. Long could Quoted in Literary Digest, 24 Oct. 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628–29, 631–32.

  39 Another article Literary Digest, 3 Oct. 1903. See also Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 298–301.

  40 demolished Watterson’s Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 299–301.

  41 Watterson was reduced New York Sun, 28 Sept. 1903; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 301.

  42 MANUEL AMADOR GUERRERO Story of Panama, 29–30; Parks, Colombia and the United States, 135; Philippe Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB).

  43 A more realistic Bunau-Varilla had been warned by Herbert G. Squire, an intimate of Mark Hanna, not to count on the President unless there was a revolution in Panama. “TR cannot go to the electorate with a record of having broken the law.” Philippe Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB). See also Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 312.

  44 Amador said that Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 313.

  45 “I can provide” Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 357; Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 135.

  46 Downtown, as the Story of Panama, 282; Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 158.

  47 YOUR VIRILE William Nelson Cromwell to TR, 14 Oct. 1903 (TRP).

  48 BUNAU-VARILLA, having This section is based on Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 318–22. See also McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 354–55, and DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 310–11.