All the Great Prizes

by John Taliaferro

  THE ULTIMATE OBJECTIVE OF all this nation building and nation breaking was, of course, the construction and control of the Panama Canal. But first Hay’s de facto recognition of the new republic needed to become de jure. Shortly after nine o’clock in the morning on Friday the thirteenth, Bunau-Varilla met Hay at the State Department, where they had their photograph taken. Then, accompanied by Bunau-Varilla’s son, they traveled the few short yards to the White House by carriage. In the Blue Room—with its Versailles-inspired mantel and, in deference to the current resident, a bearskin rug on the floor—they were soon joined by Roosevelt. The president and the freshly validated minister exchanged brief but fittingly florid speeches. Bunau-Varilla invoked “the ardent desire to see at last the accomplishment of the heroic enterprise for piercing the mountain barrier of the Andes.” Roosevelt, in turn, expressed his hope that Panama would be “the providential instrument of untold benefit to the civilized world, through the opening of a highway of universal commerce.”

  Afterward, Roosevelt asked Bunau-Varilla what he made of allegations that the two of them had hatched the revolution together. “I think, Mr. President,” Bunau-Varilla answered, “that calumny never loses its opportunity even in the New World.” Calumny aside, Bunau-Varilla was highly flattered to be regarded as a partner of the American president. And for Roosevelt even to allude to this partnership was to acknowledge something extraordinary—namely, that he had allowed and enabled a foreign agent to shape and guide his policy.

  For the time being, however, it wasn’t all that important what their relationship had been, or who had manipulated whom. Nor was it an occasion for defensiveness. That would come soon enough. The Republic of Panama was a legal entity in the eyes of the United States, and it could now, Bunau-Varilla hastened to point out, “enter freely into a contract.”

  Two days later, Hay sent a new treaty to Bunau-Varilla, who was staying around the corner at the New Willard Hotel. Of the twenty-eight articles in the Hay-Herrán Treaty, Hay had significantly altered fifteen. This time around, he was not worried about the approval of Panama, which, after all, was now entirely dependent on the United States for its existence and survival, or of its minister, Bunau-Varilla, who was more closely aligned with American interests than with those of the government to which he was accredited. If there was to be trouble, Hay knew it would likely come from Senator John Tyler Morgan, who still burned a candle for Nicaragua and, despite his lifelong ambition to build a canal somewhere, dearly wished to see Roosevelt and the Republicans stumble. And so Hay, instead of dusting off the treaty that had been signed by Tomás Herrán, reached further back to a draft that Morgan had amended in ways so favorable to the United States that Colombia surely would have rejected it—Morgan’s cynical ploy to throw the canal to Nicaragua. In this draft, the canal zone was expanded from six miles wide to ten, and Panama City, Colón, and several islands were now added to the zone as well. Instead of sharing legal jurisdiction of the zone, the United States would hold complete authority. The most significant revisions involved sovereignty. The United States did not acknowledge the sovereignty of Panama but claimed for itself absolute sovereignty over the rich corridor of continent it had carved from the new republic.

  Hay was satisfied, and he was hopeful that the Senate would be, too. “[Senator Morgan] is as much the author of the present Canal Treaty as I am,” he wrote to Henry Pritchett, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Not only did I embody in it all his amendments to the Herran treaty, but I went further than he has ever done in getting the proper guaranties for jurisdiction over the Canal.”

  Bunau-Varilla spent most of the night and all of the next day tinkering with the document with the help of a New York lawyer, Frank Pavey. In the end, he endorsed nearly all of its articles. The biggest favor he did for Panama was to insist on the exclusion of Colón and Panama City from the canal zone. But on the matter of American sovereignty, he stiffened Hay’s language even more, granting the United States “all the rights, power and authority . . . which [it] would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory . . . to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority” (italics added).

  On the matter of the indemnity—the price to be paid to Panama—Hay was in a quandary and had left a blank to be filled in after further discussion with Bunau-Varilla. To win over those senators who were rankled by the manner in which the United States had jilted Colombia, Hay suggested dividing the $10 million between the old landlord (Colombia) and the new (Panama). Bunau-Varilla objected emphatically, more on principle than as broker for his needy client. “Any man who pays something that he does not owe is immediately thought to be paying under the pressure of blackmail,” he told Hay. “Any man who pays under the pressure of blackmail is immediately thought to be paying on account of a concealed crime.” Hay gave the point to Bunau-Varilla—and all the money to Panama.

  Bunau-Varilla had his own approach to placating the Senate. Beyond offering his blessing to the Morgan bill, he made a show of genuflection. Suppressing his own pride of authorship, as difficult as that was to do, Bunau-Varilla wrote a letter to Morgan that was widely circulated in the press, urging the senator to embrace Panama and “not to throw away the title which the gratitude of humanity owes you, that of Father of the Isthmian Canal.” Morgan’s Alabama hide was not stroked so easily. When it came time to debate the new treaty in the Senate, he would question the legitimacy of a country, and a canal, wrenched by “caesarian operation . . . from the womb of Colombia.”

  For reasons obvious to both, Bunau-Varilla and Hay were anxious to have the treaty over and done with. Manuel Amador and Federico Boyd had sailed from Panama on November 10 to ensure that the canal negotiations would be consummated in a manner satisfactory to Panama. They told Bunau-Varilla that they did not intend to usurp his authority, but their distrust of him was implied and not unwarranted. Meanwhile, neither Bunau-Varilla nor Hay wanted any more fingerprints on the treaty, least of all any that might mar their handiwork. Working without letup, Bunau-Varilla put the finishing touches on his revisions and hurried to Lafayette Square at ten o’clock, just as Amador and Boyd were checking in to their hotel in New York. To his dismay, he discovered that Hay had already gone to bed. He left a note in which he fretted that the arrival of the Panamanian delegation would create “a good deal of intrigues” unhelpful to the consummation of their treaty.

  Hay read the message in the morning and invited Bunau-Varilla to come to his house after he had finished up at the State Department. At lunchtime, Hay went over the treaty line by line with Secretary of War Root, Attorney General Philander Knox, and Treasury Secretary Leslie Shaw; together they combed out any final snarls. When Bunau-Varilla arrived at Hay’s house at six o’clock, they adjusted one more phrase. Hay stipulated that the United States be granted “the use, occupation and control” of the zone in perpetuity. In other words, the treaty was not a lease, as originally proposed; Panama would not be America’s landlord after all.

  At 6:40 pm, Hay and Bunau-Varilla signed the treaty in Hay’s drawing room, using an inkstand that had once been Abraham Lincoln’s and a pen belonging to Hay’s son Clarence. Neither of them had thought to have an official seal on hand. In its place, Bunau-Varilla used Hay’s personal signet ring. Hay chose for himself a memento he had acquired in his travels: a ring worn by the poet Byron at his death in 1824. Hay and Bunau-Varilla were both romantics at heart and worldly enough to know that Lord Byron had died as he was preparing to fight for the independence of Greece from the Ottoman Empire. Hay also recalled that two years before to the very day, he had signed the Hay-Paunceforte Treaty in the same room.

  Bunau-Varilla left immediately and hurried to a telegraph office to notify Panama of the momentous news. Two hours later, he was at the station to meet Amador and Boyd, who had lingered a day in New York to meet with Cromwell. When Bunau-Varilla told them what had transpired earlier in the evening, the
Panamanians were apoplectic. They produced a letter from the Panamanian junta to Bunau-Varilla, requesting that all the clauses of the treaty be approved by the junta beforehand. When they presented these instructions to Bunau-Varilla, he called them up short. “Cherish no illusion,” he pronounced with Gallic seigniory. “[T]he negotiations are closed.”

  WHEN AMADOR AND BOYD were able to review the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, their consternation subsided only slightly. Yet they fully recognized that time was of the essence. Colombia was making noises about invading Panama, and Colombian general Rafael Reyes was on his way to Washington to lodge a formal protest against America’s role in the insurrection. Amador and Boyd knew that rejection or delay of the treaty would end the dream of a prosperous and independent Panama. To accept the treaty as it stood would immediately gird their tender nation in the armor of the United States. Then, too, there was the $10 million to consider.

  On November 24, Amador and Boyd, still chewing on their misgivings, sailed for Panama with the treaty in an envelope, the envelope wrapped in the Panamanian flag, the entire bundle locked inside a strongbox. The next day, Bunau-Varilla met with Hay; immediately afterward, he sent a cable to Panama’s new foreign minister, Francisco Vicente de la Espriella, advising him that the chilliness displayed by Amador and Boyd toward a treaty “which the United States justly considered as generous toward Panama” had prompted “surprise in the high spheres which, as hours are passing, degenerates into indignation.” Bunau-Varilla warned that if the treaty were not signed promptly, then certain “calamities” would ensue. The members of the junta required no further persuasion; the next day, they cabled back that they would ratify the treaty upon receipt. Bunau-Varilla rushed to Hay’s house to share the news, interrupting Thanksgiving dinner. True to their word, the Panamanians ratified the treaty on December 2, 1903, the day after its arrival.

  MOST AMERICANS AND MOST members of the Senate were pleased by the recent sequence of events in Panama and the prospect, at long last, of a Panama canal. Yet the opposition to ratification—by Democrats, anti-imperialists, portions of the press, and also from the stubborn Colombians—was fierce. They charged that from the start Roosevelt and Hay had been in the thick of the conspiracy to overthrow Colombia; that the revolution was the brainchild of an elaborate “gamblers’ syndicate,” led by Bunau-Varilla, to make a killing on Compagnie Nouvelle stock; that America’s role in the revolution violated the 1846 treaty pledging to preserve and protect Colombian sovereignty in Panama; that the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty violated the Spooner Act; that now more than ever the canal ought to be built in Nicaragua; that the government of Panama (which had yet to hold elections or ratify a constitution) was not legal; and, in general, that Roosevelt had overstepped his authority as chief executive.

  Roosevelt did not wait for the blows to land before striking back. On December 7, he devoted a large portion of his annual message to Congress to Panama, providing a thorough tutorial on the history of the canal negotiations and the revolution, stressing the “transcendent importance” to the “whole civilized world” of free and open transit across the isthmus, invoking John Bassett Moore’s interpretation of the 1846 treaty, vouching for America’s good faith and forbearance toward Colombia, and scolding Colombia for its repudiation of the Hay-Herrán Treaty “in such a manner as to make it evident by the time the Colombian Congress adjourned that not the scantiest hope remained of ever getting a satisfactory treaty from them.” Under such circumstances, Roosevelt asserted, “the Government of the United States would have been guilty of folly and weakness, amounting in their sum in a crime against the Nation, had it acted otherwise than it did when the revolution of November 3 took place in Panama.”

  To dispel suspicions of his active collusion in the conspiracy, Roosevelt released all relevant diplomatic correspondence to the Senate, and in a second address to Congress, he ruled out the “reasonable time” argument for going to Nicaragua and issued an even stronger denial of American participation in the revolution. “No one connected with this government had any part in preparing, inciting, or encouraging the late revolution,” he insisted, “[or] any previous knowledge of the revolution except such as was accessible to any person of ordinary intelligence who read the newspapers and kept up a current acquaintance with public affairs.”

  As for the allegation that he, Hay, or anyone in the administration had been in cahoots with Bunau-Varilla, he declared to John Bigelow that “I have no idea what Bunau-Varilla advised the revolutionists, or what he said in any telegrams to them as to either Hay or myself; but I do know, of course, that he had no assurances in any way, either from Hay or myself. . . . He is a very able fellow, and it was his business to find out what he thought our Government would do. I have no doubt he was able to make an accurate guess. . . . In fact, he would have been a very dull man had he been unable to make such a guess.”

  On the other hand, out of self-promotion or self-protection, Roosevelt falsely underestimated the part played by Cromwell. “[H]e was merely a stage conspirator,” the president was to say of the Compagnie Nouvelle’s attorney. “I think that all that Nelson Cromwell did was to walk around New York . . . feeling ecstatic whenever the World accused him of being responsible for the ‘Panama Infamy.’ ”

  HAY WAS CONTENT TO let Roosevelt (and Bunau-Varilla) take the heat and the credit, for on December 6, the day before the president delivered his annual message, he came down with a fever, and all night he was “plumb crazy.” The fever became the grippe, which, he explained to Roosevelt, apologizing for his absence from the State Department, was like “a slatternly house maid . . . leaving more or less rubbish slung in the corners in the shape of neuralgia and other bedevilments.” Soon he had bronchitis, and his gout flared up; the doctor put him to bed and forbade him to leave the house for the rest of the month. “I am a prisoner,” he wrote Henry Adams, who was in Paris. “I could not walk you or talk you even if you were here.” Roosevelt, though, continued to drop by on Sunday mornings after church.

  From home, Hay kept apprised of the affairs of the nation and the world. He watched anxiously as Russia and Japan failed to agree upon a buffer zone between Manchuria and Korea and crept closer to war. His only responsibility in the endgame of the canal treaty was to finesse General Reyes, who arrived in Washington at the first of the month and made a polite but tiresome nuisance of himself.

  Without consulting Tomás Herrán, who was dispirited and disgraced and would soon retire to a brief and bitter senescence in Bogotá, Reyes announced that Colombia was prepared to cede the canal with no indemnity if the United States would endorse the restoration of Panama to Colombian sovereignty. Reyes’s threat that Colombia would soon invade Panama was discounted—especially by Bunau-Varilla, who assured Hay that it was a “mere bugaboo.” Even so, the list of grievances Reyes presented to the White House and shared with anti-Panama senators had the potential to tip the outcome of the ratification vote. It was up to Hay to answer and, if possible, hush the irksome general.

  Throughout December and January 1904, as the Senate investigated the circumstances surrounding the Panama revolution and marshaled its arguments for and against ratification of the treaty, Hay and Reyes waged their own debate, making their respective cases in long, legalistic letters and repeated face-to-face discussions at Hay’s house. Always Hay came back to the same point: the revolution and the recognition of the Republic of Panama were accomplished facts, and though the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty was not yet law, there were already “inchoate rights and duties created by it which place the responsibility of preserving peace and order on the Isthmus in the hands of the Government of the United States.”

  Hay found that he liked Reyes personally, and once he was confident that Colombia would not or could not invade Panama, he felt slightly sorry for “the fine old soldier.” Reyes was widely revered at home, and it was expected that, if he succeeded in gaining at least moderate redress for his grievances, he would become the next president of Col
ombia. But even with the help of the crafty American lawyer and notorious Mugwump Wayne MacVeagh—whom Hay had known since the Lincoln years and had distrusted since at least the Garfield presidency—Reyes made absolutely no headway against the reasoned yet always cordial adamancy of the secretary of state. When Hay was asked to describe his approach to handling Reyes, he made his answer in a vernacular perhaps borrowed from Pike County. “Kill him,” he drawled, “but kill him easy.” Like Herrán, Reyes eventually returned home, empty-handed.

  Roosevelt, in stark comparison, was nowhere near as sensitive in his regard for the dispossessed Colombians. For him, the case for Panama was day and night, right versus wrong, and, if anything, he wished that he had driven a harder bargain with Bogotá from the beginning. “Colombia has . . . a squalid savagery of its own,” Roosevelt wrote Charles Lummis, a western writer who knew a thing or two about America’s wild places, “and it has combined with exquisite nicety the worst forms of despotism and of anarchy, of violence and of fatuous weakness, of dismal ignorance, treachery, greed, and utter vanity. I cannot feel much respect for such a country.”

  A decade later, Roosevelt’s antipathy still festered. “To talk of Colombia as a responsible power . . . is a mere absurdity,” he wrote to his friend William Roscoe Thayer, who by then was at work on the first biography of Hay. “The analogy is with a group of Sicilian or Calabrian bandits. . . . You could no more make an agreement with them than you could nail currant jelly to a wall.”

  Roosevelt had scarcely higher regard for those in his own country who were attempting to stymie ratification of the canal treaty. “In this Panama business,” Roosevelt ranted to his son Ted, “the entire fool mugwump crowd have fairly suffered from hysterics, and a goodly number of Senators, even of my own party, have shown about as much backbone as so many angleworms.”