49 THAT NIGHT, two White House appointment book, 16 Oct. 1903 (TRP). Story of Panama, 367–68. See TR to Elihu Root, 14 Mar. 1903, and Samuel M. B. Young to Elihu Root, 24 Dec. 1903 (ER). The following account is based on Chauncey B. Humphrey, “History of the Revolution of Panama,” unpublished ms., 5 Jan. 1923, copy in the files of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, Oyster Bay, N.Y. Supplementary details from Story of Panama, 367–68, and Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 353–54. According to Humphrey, TR read an early draft of his ms. while still in the White House, and praised his vital role in the revolution.
50 They confirmed TR, Works, vol. 18, 428ff.; this crossing occurred on 16 Sept. 1903; Obaldía’s party felt that the United States would “undoubtedly adopt the Nicaragua route.” Humphrey, “History of the Revolution.”
51 He and Murphy Humphrey, “History of the Revolution.”
52 Casting aside his Ibid.
53 Humphrey had declined Ibid.
54 “There goes our” Grayson M.-P. Murphy, interviewed by Henry Pringle, 2 Apr. 1930 (HP).
55 ROOSEVELT SPENT White House appointment book, 17 Oct. 1903 (TRP); Putnam, Memories of a Publisher, 145–47.
56 On Monday, crisp cables TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 726; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 312–13; John Nikol and Francis Holbrook, “Naval Operations in the Panama Revolution of 1903,” American Neptune 38 (Oct. 1977); Story of Panama, 429.
57 In coincidental, yet Story of Panama, 664; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 629–31.
58 On 23 October TR, Letters to Kermit, 45.
59 On 26 October Story of Panama, 380; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 279; Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 360–61.
60 On 27 October Story of Panama, 328–29; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 361–62; Documents, 22 Oct. 1903, in PBV.
61 “The only dangerous” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 324.
62 Judging from his Ibid., 323, 327.
63 FATE NEWS BAD Manuel Amador to Philippe Bunau-Varilla, 29 Oct. 1903, original in PBV.
64 Some of it Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 328.
65 He was being asked Ibid., 329.
66 Francis B. Loomis Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB); Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 165; Story of Panama, 331.
67 Riding back to New York Story of Panama, 381.
68 Newspapers aboard The New York Times, 29 Oct. 1903; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 313–14. Although he does not say so, Bunau-Varilla might have been told by Loomis that the Nashville had just been given (or was about to be given) its secret order to proceed at full speed to Colón. The gunboat left Kingston the following morning, Saturday, 31 Oct. Chauncey B. Humphrey states that “about Oct. 31,” he heard that two Colombian battalions were on their way to relieve the garrison guard in Panama City. “I … informed President Roosevelt what would happen [a revolution]. He sent immediately the gunboat Nashville with 450 marines to Colon to prevent the landing of these two battalions.” In the event, only one battalion arrived. The New York Times, 1 Nov. 1903; Humphrey, “History of the Revolution.” See also McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 360.
69 ALL RIGHT Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 332; Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 165–66.
70 Ton and a half On this day, Hay cabled Beaupré suggesting that he take “a leave of absence” from Bogotá. Foreign Relations 1903, 218.
71 ROOSEVELT SWATTED James Garfield diary, 29 Oct. 1903 (JRG).
72 It was his habit Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 60–61; Review of Reviews, Dec. 1903.
73 In New York Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 339–40; Leupp, The Man Roosevelt, 147–55; Mark Hanna to George Perkins, ca. early Oct. 1903 (GWP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 640. There is much criticism in the correspondence of Charles Francis Adams and James Wilson of TR’s factional fence-straddling. Wilson, showing remarkable disloyalty for a Cabinet officer, complained on 14 Oct., “In New York he is a [Thomas] Platt man, in Pennsylvania a Quay man, and in Delaware [a John] Addicks man, and that is all there is of it” (JHW).
74 At least there was The Washington Post, 16 Oct. 1903; Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 46–48. Ambrose Bierce’s The Cynic’s Word Book (New York, 1906), carried this definition of boundary: “In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.”
75 “I think you are” Lodge, Selections, vol. 2, 60–61. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote to congratulate him on scoring “a personal triumph.” Holmes to TR, 21 Oct. 1903 (TRP).
76 Master of human A Collection of the Writings of John James Ingalls (Kansas City, Mo., 1902), 97. See also Hale, Week in the White House, 10.
77 Whatever happened TR, Autobiography, 526. TR told Jules Jusserand around this time that he would force canal construction “even if war resulted.” Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 17 Nov. 1903 (JJ). See also Friedlander, “Reassessment.”
78 ALL DAY LONG Amador had been warned of the troopship’s probable arrival by Governor Obaldía. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 362.
79 In a series Story of Panama, 382.
80 The coordinated grace Nikol and Holbrook, “Naval Operations”; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 334.
81 the junta had postponed Story of Panama, 382.
82 Now the plot was The Governor’s acquiescence was taken for granted, since he lived in Amador’s house. Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen, 314; Story of Panama, 385; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 369.
83 General Esteban Huertas Huertas has been disparaged by historians because he accepted a bribe of sixty-five thousand dollars, wore a large number of feathers, and stood not much taller than his own sword. But he was strong-willed and principled enough to give the junta many anxious moments. See DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 321–22, 331.
84 Huertas’s battalion Ibid., 337, 327, 307–8, 277–79; Story of Panama, 382–84.
85 PREVENT LANDING Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 361–62. The Dixie received an identical cable.
86 A similar order Story of Panama, 383; Foreign Relations 1903, 236; McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 364.
87 He was awakened The following timings of TR’s day are taken from news items covering his trip in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
88 Commander Hubbard sent John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 380, 387, 430
89 agreed that at all Story of Panama, 388; Shaler had already transferred most of his available passenger cars to the other end of the line. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 363.
90 Hubbard’s problem was John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 430. The number of tiradores was underestimated in some official communications during the day.
91 Simultaneously, Roosevelt Washington Evening Star, 3 Nov. 1903.
92 Another, very short Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 166; Story of Panama, 340–41. The author assumes that the Panamanian jungle was as luxuriant in Nov. 1903 as it was when he crossed the Isthmus on this same railroad in 1980.
Note: Señora Amador, wife of the revolutionary leader, has been credited with the idea of separating Tovar from his troops. But Humphrey, “History of the Revolution,” states that he suggested it to Ricardo Arango when plotting the revolution in early October.
93 THE PRESIDENT VOTED New York Sun, 4 Nov. 1903; Kerr, Bully Father, 134.
94 After about a half Kerr, Bully Father, 135. The “desolate emotions” referred to are conveyed not just between the lines of the letters TR wrote about this visit, but in his idiosyncratic use of the word homesickness. Since childhood, when a photograph of Edith Carow possessed him with “homesickness and longing for the past,” he tended to conflate both emotions into a general sense of temps perdu. Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 54.
95 AS ROOSEVELT DID SO Hubbard received his orders (misdirected to another boat in Colón harbor) at 10:30 A.M. TR came down from Sagamore Hill around that time, and left Oyster Bay at 11:15 A.M. John Hubbard to William
H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
96 The tiradores did The Washington Post, 4 Nov. 1903; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP). Hubbard’s cable, described as “mutilated” in Story of Panama, 289, appears to have been garbled in transmission. See Nikol and Holbrook, “Naval Operations.”
97 A certain lack Story of Panama, 390; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP). The junta had decided to advance the time of revolution to five o’clock that afternoon. Washington Evening Star, 4 Nov. 1903; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 325.
98 He cast his mind TR, Letters, vol. 3, 642. The catalog of TR’s reading in the following pages is taken from his letter to Butler, reproduced in Letters, vol. 3, 641–44.
99 Sophocles’ Seven Against Actually Aeschylus.
100 REVOLUTION IMMINENT Foreign Relations 1903, 235. This telegram arrived at 2:35 P.M.
101 Washington was ill Ibid., 231; Story of Panama, 393.
102 Governor Obaldía had Story of Panama, 392–93.
103 Lady Gregory’s and TR slightly misspelled some of his Irish citations (e.g., Turin for Tuirean). The Gregory and Hull titles are separate books, respectively Cuchulain of Muirthemne and The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature.
104 WHEN ELISEO TORRES Story of Panama, 440–41.
105 Torres waxed more Ibid.
106 “I would be willing” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 643.
107 FIVE O’CLOCK CAME Story of Panama, 395. Prescott had indeed been involved in revolutionary plotting since the birth of the junta. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 342.
108 Subsequent calls Story of Panama, 394–95; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
109 One of their first Story of Panama, 396.
110 “Of course I have” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 643–44.
111 He dozed off The Washington Post, 4 Nov. 1903; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
112 Refusing comment Washington Evening Star, 3 Nov. 1903; The Washington Post, 4 Nov. 1903.
113 UPRISING OCCURRED Foreign Relations 1903, 231. The word Barranquilla refers to the troopship’s port of origin.
114 Roosevelt sent at once Washington Evening Star and New York Sun, 4 Nov. 1903, clips in John Hay scrapbook (JH). There is hour-by-hour newspaper coverage of the revolution in this archive. The Panama dispatches to the New York Herald (written by the brother of a junta member) seem to have been especially valued by Hay, who annotated many of them.
115 All the more Foreign Relations 1903, 236.
116 But “reason” of Washington Evening Star, 4 Nov. 1903.
117 For NASHVILLE White House telegraph copy (unsigned), 3 Nov. 1903 (TRP). News of the instructions was leaked to the New York Sun.
118 By 10:30 P.M. Story of Panama, 440. A similar cable, almost directly quoting the White House draft, was sent out at 11:18 by Darling (399).
119 The Atlanta had Nikol and Holbrook, “Naval Operations.”
120 Up Pennsylvania Avenue The Washington Post and Washington Evening Star, 4 Nov. 1903. Myron T. Herrick had been elected Governor of Ohio in a convincing victory for Hanna Republicans. The result was an immediate resurgence of the Hanna for President movement among GOP conservatives. The Washington Post, 5 Nov. 1903.
121 The White House DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 330; Story of Panama, 397. At 12:10 P.M., Loomis ordered Ehrman to inform the captain of the gunboat Bogotá “plainly” that the United States, mindful of her responsibility to maintain peace and free transit across the Isthmus, requested him to hold any future fire. Foreign Relations 1903, 232.
122 Commander Hubbard, by Story of Panama, 441, 656; John Hubbard to James Shaler, and copy to Eliseo Torres, 4 Nov. 1903 (TRP). The two-way effect of Hubbard’s order has been downplayed by historians seeking to blame the Roosevelt Administration for fomenting the separation of Panama (see Friedlander, “Reassessment”). While the ban on military movement undoubtedly strengthened the junta’s hold on Panama City, it worked to Colombia’s advantage in Colón. Rebel forces, which outnumbered Colonel Torres’s battalion three to one, were prevented from crossing and bloodily completing the work of revolution.
123 Torres reacted with Story of Panama, 441.
124 The mid-morning train John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 439, 441.
125 Torres went in John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
126 “war against the” Ibid., and 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
127 Undeterred, Torres’s John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
128 IN WASHINGTON, the TR, Letters, vol. 3, 437; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., to TR, 24 Oct. 1903, and White House appointment book, 4 Nov. 1903 (TRP). Privately, as an old soldier, Holmes admitted that he came “devilishly near to believing that might makes right.” For a revisionist view of the great Justice, see Albert W. Alschuler, Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes (Chicago, 2000), importantly countered by Jeffrey Rosen in The New York Times Book Review, 17 Dec. 2000.
129 In New York Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 324.
130 “With all the” Story of Panama, 446–47; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 344–46. As things turned out, the rest of Bunau-Varilla’s money was neither sent nor needed. See Charles D. Ameringer, “Philippe Bunau-Varilla: New Light on the Panama Canal Treaty,” Hispanic-American Historical Review 46.1 (1966).
131 COLONEL TORRES, closeted Story of Panama, 443–44; John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 5 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
132 Colonel Shaler undertook Story of Panama, 444.
133 A state of unnatural DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 342; Foreign Relations 1903, 237.
134 And in New York Grenville and Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy, 311. There is some evidence that TR, or at least Moody, had contemplated a punitive strike against Colombia nine days earlier. On 26 Oct. 1903, the Navy Department sent TR draft instructions for an attack on Cartagena by the Caribbean Squadron. Ibid., 310.
135 COLONEL HUBBARD WENT John Hubbard to William H. Moody, 8 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
136 To popular relief Story of Panama, 452–57; DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 335.
137 Just then, at 7:05 Captain Delano (Officer Commanding, Dixie) to William H. Moody, 6 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Story of Panama, 458. The next morning, the Atlanta arrived, bringing United States strength in Colón to one thousand men. General Tovar and his staff were, under escort, sent back to Colombia on 12 Nov. Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 2, 286.
138 ROOSEVELT’S CABINET MEETING Washington Times, 6 Nov. 1903; Story of Panama, 463, 467; Foreign Relations 1903, 239. The Frenchman’s appointment was officially upgraded to “minister plenipotentiary” that evening. Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 348–49.
139 There was no doubt Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 349.
140 Roosevelt and Hay Friedlander, “Reassessment,” rejects suggestions by John Hay’s biographers that the Secretary was less than happy with TR’s Panama policy in 1903. He quotes, e.g., Hay to John Ford Rhodes, 8 Dec. 1903: “It is hard for me to understand how anyone can criticize our action in Panama.… I had no hesitation as to the proper course to take, and have had no doubt of the propriety of it since.” Elihu Root was likewise supportive, insisting as late as 1931, “I have always felt that [Roosevelt’s] action was right.” Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 403.
141 Questions were being The Times (London), 5 Nov. 1903.
142 Roosevelt did not feel TR, “How the United States Acquired the Right to Dig the Panama Canal,” Outlook, 7 Oct. 1911; TR, Autobiography, 538. In 1887, the historian George Bancroft, revered by TR, had predicted that either an international consortium, or the United States alone, “as the power most interested” in safeguarding Panama as a neutral transit zone, would elbow Colombia aside and assume “whole control for the benefit of all nations.” DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 130.
143 Colombia was clearly Parks, Colombia and the United States, 406. While TR pondered his recognition decision, he very likely heard from Senator Morgan the comment of a Colombian general, just before the treaty was rejected:
“It is ridiculous for the Americans to be treating with Colombia now, when we have to wait only a few years, until the French concession expires, [to] make you pay seventy, eighty, or one hundred millions.” Qu. in F. F. Whitteken to John T. Morgan, 2 Nov. 1903 (JTM).
144 “most just and proper” TR, Works, vol. 20, 485.
145 THE PEOPLE OF PANAMA Story of Panama, 463–64.
146 ROOSEVELT ADJOURNED Straus, Under Four Administrations, 174–75. The question of American moral obligations had long plagued policymakers. As far back as 1864, Attorney General Edward Bates deplored the 1846 treaty, with its guarantee of Isthmian rights and sovereignty to “New Granada,” as a mockery of “the wise and cautious policy of the fathers of this Republic.” But since the treaty was a fait accompli, Bates felt that “honesty and good faith require us to fulfill it.” He hoped that the United States would never again commit herself to “such dangerous intermeddling in the affairs of foreign nations.” Qu. in Philander Knox, “Sovereignty over the Isthmus, as Affecting the Canal,” 1903 memorandum (PCK).
147 Straus suggested TR, Letters, vol. 3, 648–49.
148 Roosevelt seized Ibid. “Your ‘covenant running with the land’ idea worked admirably,” TR wrote Moore on 12 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
149 That evening Story of Panama, 469; copy of Hay statement, 7 Nov. 1903, in TRP.
150 Professor John Bassett John Bassett Moore to Oscar Straus, 11 Nov. 1903; Straus, Under Four Administrations, 175. Notwithstanding accusations of unseemly haste, TR did not formally recognize Panama until 13 Nov. 1903. As Moore explained to the public, he at first “merely recognized de facto authorities on the spot.… It is not an uncommon thing to recognize and hold intercourse with such authorities, pending the determination of the question of formal recognition.” New York Evening Post, 11 Nov. 1903.
CHAPTER 19: THE IMAGINATION OF THE WICKED
1 A man can be Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, 179.
2 “This mad plunge” New York Evening Post, 7 Nov. 1903.
3 “It is the most” Ibid. It was probably around this time that TR, hearing that Villard was circulating a story about Kaiser Wilhelm’s ability to dismantle and reconstruct a complex Edison phonograph, ejaculated in his highest falsetto, “I wish that somebody would take Oswald Villard to pieces and forget to put him together again!” Villard, Fighting Years, 153.
Theodore Rex Page 93
