It was not until the following year, 1902, that these two remarkable figures actually met for the first time. During Bunau-Varilla’s initial campaign they had kept as clear as possible of each other despite the obvious benefits some degree of cooperation might have produced. The Frenchman never asked the attorney for favors; the attorney made no use of the Frenchman’s technical expertise or his skill at persuasion. Most likely Cromwell had been so instructed by his client in Paris, who, with Bunau-Varilla’s Russian episode in mind, probably regarded him as unreliable and a possible embarrassment. And Bunau-Varilla doubtless felt that any overt connection with someone known to be in the employ of the Compagnie Nouvelle, and especially someone whose allegiances were so plainly for hire, could only jeopardize his own stance as the Champion of Truth.
Whatever the explanation, each man would cast himself in the hero’s role when it came time to account for what happened and would pointedly belittle or ignore any constructive part claimed by the other.
Cromwell’s claim that he had inspired the creation of the Walker Commission was, for example, utterly absurd, according to Bunau-Varilla. He was the one who had done that; he had convinced Asher Baker that Panama was the place for the canal and Asher Baker, during the winter of 1898–1899, had “enlightened” Speaker Reed and Congressman Cannon.
As for Cromwell’s boasted influence on Hanna, that, said Bunau-Varilla, was strictly a question of business as usual for “the lawyer Cromwell.” During the Presidential campaign of 1900, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mark Hanna, had received a donation from Cromwell of $60,000, a donation that Cromwell had charged off to the Compagnie Nouvelle. In return for the donation, said Bunau-Varilla, Hanna had seen to it that the Republican platform called for the construction of an “isthmian” canal, rather than specifying one at Nicaragua, as the Democrats had done. And to that extent only would Bunau-Varilla acknowledge a Cromwell role in Hanna’s conversion.
How he learned of the donation Bunau-Varilla never said. But the idea that $60,000 would have caused Hanna to make any such change seems highly remote and suggests that Bunau-Varilla may never really have understood Mark Hanna, who was accustomed, as he himself said, to frying bigger fat and never with strings attached. Neither Hanna’s vote nor his public expressions were ever for sale, whatever his faults and irrespective of his notoriety as “Dollar Mark,” the brutal money-bags of the party.
Later, for the public record, Cromwell would tally up the most amazing list of accomplishments in behalf of his client, but that was mainly to justify his staggering $800,000 fee. He was the professional putting the best shine possible on services rendered. To Bunau-Varilla the client was posterity, the judgment of history, before which he wished only to appear as the unrivaled knight-errant. Neither one ever fully appreciated the contributions made by the other. Neither one was ever quite capable of telling the whole truth.
III
On April 10, 1900, Admiral Walker had addressed a letter to the president of the Compagnie Nouvelle. did the company have a clear title to its franchises and property on the Isthmus, the admiral wished to know, and for what sum, in dollars and in cash, would the company be willing to sell these franchises and property?
On June 25, 1901, still having received no definite answers from Paris, the admiral made a special trip to New York to call on William Nelson Cromwell at his offices at 49 Wall Street. The commission was nearly finished with its studies, the admiral told Cromwell. There was, therefore, an urgent need for a firm price from the French company. Did Mr. Cromwell have an idea what figure his client had in mind?
Cromwell promised to look into the matter. His cable to Paris, sent later in the day, was so blunt about the state of things that the officers of the company not only refused to make a definite offer of sale, but they informed Cromwell by return cable that his services as attorney were no longer desired. Apparently they had had enough of his high-pressure methods and his liberal use of their money.
So that fall, following the death of McKinley, when the report of the Walker Commission was about to be released in Washington and the second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty was about to be signed, the Panama Lobby had been reduced to a party of one, Bunau-Varilla, who now came hurrying back to New York.
The assassination at Buffalo had been a terrible blow to Cromwell and Bunau-Varilla alike, both having spent so much of their time and energies cultivating Mark Hanna, whose relations with the new President were known to be far from smooth. When Roosevelt had been merely Vice President, neither Cromwell nor Bunau-Varilla had bothered to pay him any attention.
Arriving in New York on November 13, Bunau-Varilla found the situation “as bad as it could possibly be.” He rushed about trying to determine which way the wind was blowing. He must meet Roosevelt face to face he told Frank Pavey and others, but nobody seemed to know how to arrange that. Within a week Hay and Pauncefote had signed their treaty and cartoons in the papers showed John Bull swinging wide the gate to Nicaragua as a jaunty Uncle Sam marched through with pick and shovel.
But then Hearst broke the Walker Commission report, and if Hearst and others missed its importance–that the French company’s price tag was all that had kept the commission from naming Panama as the most advantageous route–Bunau-Varilla did not. With little delay he was on his way back to France again.
Exactly what happened in Paris in the next few weeks can only be roughly pieced together. On December 17, he received a telegram from Washington from a man named Walter Wellman, a reporter for the Chicago Times-Herald and another of the contacts he had established. Perhaps he was paying Wellman, perhaps Wellman was doing favors for some of the Chicago industrialists who had been caught up in the Panama campaign.
VARILLA
53 AVENUED’IÉNA, PARIS
CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. COMMISSION SENATE PROBABLY ACCEPT OFFER FORTY MILLIONS. IMPERA TIVE NOT HIGHER. MOVE QUICKLY.
WELLMAN
Bunau-Varilla’s answer read as follows:
WELLMAN
1413 G., WASHINGTON
THANKFUL TELEGRAM AM MAKING MOST ENERGETIC EFFORTS TO MAKE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND SITUATION
VARILL A
He was present at the riotous stockholders’ meeting of December 21, and he held forth immediately afterward in a private session with the New president, Marius Bo, and Henri Germain, of the Credit Lyonnais, who, like Eiffel and Bunau-Varilla, had also been steamrollered into investing in the new company.
A price must be set at once Bunau-Varilla told them. Time had run out. Yesterday they might have done it; yesterday they might have gotten $60,000,000, perhaps $70,000,000. But yesterday was past. The price now must be $40,000,000 and they must accept that figure. Congress would convene again in Two weeks. If by then the price had not been settled, all would be lost and they would have to accept the responsibility.
On New Year’s Day, in a large advertisement in Le Matin that cost him nearly $6,000, he took the company to task for neglecting its own interests as well as the honor of France. On January 3, he sent identical cables to Senators Hann a and Lodge, to Wellman, John Bigelow, Myron T. Herrick, Professor William Burr, and George Morison :
CONSIDER ALMOST CERTAIN DEFINITIVE OFFER SALE PANAMA FORTY MILLIONS WILL BE CABLED TOMORROW AND OFFICIALLY PRESENTED MONDAY.
VARILLA
On January 4, the cable to Admiral Walker offering the sale of the entire Panama property for $40,000,000 was put on the wire at Paris.
And so, wrote Bunau-Varilla, the year 1902 “began with the wind blowing in the sails of Panama.” When the Walker Commission reversed its decision on January 18, he sent off dozens of cables to Cincinnati and Chicago expressing his “heartfelt thanks” to all those who had enabled him to speak out “in the name of the Great Idea.”
On January 27, Cromwell was reinstated as attorney for the company. The officials were in such despair, Cromwell later explained, that they asked him to resume his former connection, and so “leaving aside all our other business
we acceded to this request.” But Bunau-Varilla told a different story. It was he who fixed things for Cromwell as a favor to Senator Hanna. Cromwell meant nothing to Hanna, but Hanna’s banker, Edward Simmons, who was also president of the Panama Railroad, had asked Hanna to ask Bunau-Varilla to have Cromwell reinstated, or at least so Bunau-Varilla would declare in a written statement prepared some years later for a House committee that was looking into the extent of Cromwell’s influence. On January 27, he informed Cromwell that his case had been settled in Paris, but that it had not been easy.
According to the formal written directive from Paris, the company would rely on Cromwell’s cooperation in concluding the sale of the Panama property; however, “. . . it must be clearly understood . . . that the result must be sought only by the most legitimate means; that is to say, that in no case could we recourse to methods as dangerous as they are unlawful which consist principally in gifts or promises . . .”
To Philippe Bunau-Varilla, Cromwell’s return was “but a slight incident in the great struggle . . .” To Cromwell, the Frenchman was someone who served a useful purpose, but whose “pretense of influence is grossly exaggerated.”
CULVER PICTURES, INC.
Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Mark Hanna at Buffalo at the time of McKinley’s death
George Shattuck Morison
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Captain (later Admiral) Alfred Thayer Mahan
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Senator John Tyler
Morgan
CULVER PICTURES, INC.
“The Deliberations of Congress” (from Harper’s Weekly)
Philippe Bunau-Varilla
COURTESY OF SULLIVAN & CROMWELL
William Nelson Cromwell
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
FROM PANAMA: THE CREATION, DESTRUCTION, AND RESURRECTION, PHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA, ROBERT M. MCBRIDE, 1920
The stamp used as “proof” of active volcanoes in Nicaragua
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
U.S.S. Nashville
FROM THE MAKERS OF THE PANAMA CANAL, 1911
founding fathers of the Republic of Panama. Seated (left to right): José Agustín Arango, Dr. Manuel Amador, Federico Boyd. Standing (left to right): Nicanor de Obarrio, Carlos C. Arosemena, Manuel Espinosa, Tomás Arias, Ricardo Arias
UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
General Esteban Huertas among admirers
Roosevelt at work in his study at Sagamore Hill
NEW YORK GLOBE
“Now Watch the Dirt Fly”
“The Man Behind the Egg”
THEODORE ROOSEVELT COLLECTION, HARVARD
Philippe Bunau-Varilla (left) and John Hay in Hay’s office at the State Department, November 13, 1903, just prior to the formal recognition of the Republic of Panama
FROM PANAMA: THE CREATION, DESTRUCTION, AND RESURRECTION, PHILIPPE Bunau-Varilla, ROBERT M. MCBRIDE, 1920
NEW YORK EVENING MAIL
“He’s Good Enough for Me!” Homer Davenport’s famous 1904 cartoon (from the New York Evening Mail) was more representative than any others of the country’s support for Roosevelt’s actions in office, including the steps taken at Panama.
*As late as 1939, when Life magazine ran an article in which he was referred to as a lobbyist and an adventurer, Bunau-Varilla, at age eighty, responded that he had been no such thing: “Unless you call adventurer a man who sacrifices his time, his money and his scientific capacities to the glory of his nation and to the service of her great friend the United States. . . .”
11
Against All Odds
“I do not want to be interrupted, for I am very tired . . .”
–MARK HANN A
I
At age sixty-six Rear Admiral John Grimes Walker was still a majestic figure. Even in his dark civilian suit and string tie he looked like The Old Man of the Sea, as he was sometimes known in Washington. Large and handsome, he carried himself, especially on public occasions, in grand military fashion. The gray hair was smartly parted in the exact center of his head. The complexion was ruddy, the brows heavy and beautifully arched, and from the sides of his face grew magnificent muttonchop whiskers that reached to his lapels and that were several decades out of style.
For more than forty years, Admiral Walker had been a special favorite in the capital, enjoying, it was said, more political influence than any officer in the Navy. He was direct, unaffected in manner, and if a bit self-important, he plainly meant well. His reputation for integrity was second to none.
Since his retirement in 1897, he had been devoting himself solely to his duties as head of the two Presidential canal commissions. And on the face of it he had been the ideal choice for the position. His one shortcoming was a lack of engineering background or experience, which until now nobody had made an issue of. He had never tried to assume the role of a technical authority. Over dinner at the Metropolitan Club, soon after the latest commission had been organized, he told its illustrious members that it was for them, the experts, to get at “the bottom facts,” however long that took, however much it might cost; and not once thereafter had he said or done anything to make them doubt his sincerity or his willingness to trust their professional judgment.
As the commission’s head, Walker was the first member to testify before the Morgan Committee. He appeared the morning of February 7, 1902. There had been several other witnesses to date, but except for Édouard Lampré, spokesman for the Compagnie Nouvelle, they had been Morgan’s witnesses–that is, predictably pro-Nicaragua or anti-Panama. A. G. Menocal had appeared two days earlier, for example. Now in his sixties and also retired from the Navy, Menocal was supposedly Morgan’s strongest technical witness, and prodded by Morgan’s patient questioning, he had documented his whole long commitment to Nicaragua. But there was nothing new in anything he said; nothing for the newspapers.
The only remark thus far that the reporters had pounced on was one made by Morgan during an exchange with the Frenchman Lampré– that he would not give 37 ½ cents for Lampré’s canal–a remark quoted out of context and that had been nowhere near as offensive as the headlines implied. Morgan had been trying to show his contempt for any purchase of the French property whereby the money would go to the new company, rather than to those original small stockholders who had sacrificed so much. Were they to be denied a just share, said Morgan, then he would want no part of the arrangement even if he could get the canal for 37 ½ cents.
Morgan had been enjoying himself enormously the whole while. It had been his show from the first day, when he kept Lampré under fire for three and a half hours, and pointedly reminded the witness several times that he was under oath. When S. W. Plume, the old Panama Railroad man, appeared the day before Walker, Morgan seemed not in the least disturbed that the room was virtually empty. Only one other member of the committee bothered to attend, Senator Kittredge, a Republican, who made a show of looking bored, but Morgan had gone right along in high spirits, questioning the witness as though the entire country were present and as if the hard-bitten old man’s memories of Panama’s horrors far outweighed the views of high-powered engineers.
Walker’s testimony took up the better part of one day and the morning following. In the record book the transcription fills seventy-five pages. The full committee was present this time. And from the moment Walker took his seat it was plain that Morgan and his allies had their knives out for him. To Morgan especially, Walker’s new position on Panama seemed little less than treasonous. It might also prove calamitous to Morgan’s cause, unless Walker could be made to look the fool or led to say, even by inference, that he had no real heart for the Panama plan. One rumor in the Senate corridors was that in return for his Panama support the White House had promised Walker the job of directing construction of the canal, from his office in Washington and with a large salary. It was easy for Walker to recommend Panama, the American minister in Nicaragua had written to Senator Morgan, since Walker would not have to live there. The admiral, it wa
s known, liked his comforts.
The questioning was focused almost entirely on Walker’s grasp of the technical issues involved in the commission’s plan for Panama and it was Senator Harris, the one former civil engineer on the committee and Morgan’s staunchest ally, who monopolized the first hour. Morgan, who had a way of glaring at people even under ordinary circumstances, never took his eye off the witness.
The commission’s Panama scheme, the projected Panama canal upon which all cost estimates were based and against which all virtues or shortcomings in the Nicaragua plan were compared, had been based in large part on a plan devised by the Compagnie Nouvelle. The essential element in the plan, its key, was a giant dam that would check the Chagres River at Bohio and form a large inland lake reaching nearly two-thirds of the way across the Isthmus. The commission’s decision had been to abandon the sea-level concept, as de Lesseps’ engineers had finally done, and to build a lock canal much along the lines of the proposal made by Godin de Lépinay in 1879. The Isthmus was not to be severed by a vast trench, but bridged by an artificial lake, Lake Bohio, as it was called in the plan. Ships would leave one ocean, climb to the level of the lake by a flight of locks, cross the lake, then descend by another flight of locks to the ocean on the opposite side, just as de Lépinay had outlined. The one great task of excavation would be at Culebra, at the Pacific, or southern, end of the lake, where a channel of nine miles would have to be cut through the Cordilleras.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 363