“It was absolutely necessary to reply with emphasis,” Bunau-Varilla recalled, “. . . but it could have no weight unless official. How could I obtain such a document? Nicaragua was far away. The authorities had shown their bad faith. It seemed impossible to procure anything what-ever. . . . Only six or seven days remained.”
And it was then that he remembered the postage stamp.
“Young nations [he had written in his pamphlet of the previous year] like to put on their coats of arms what best symbolizes their moral domain or characterizes their native soil. What have the Nicaraguans chosen to characterize their country on their coat of arms, on their postage stamps? Volcanoes!”
He knew the exact one, a pretty little one-centavo Nicaraguan stamp showing a railroad wharf in the foreground and, in the background, Momotombo “in magnificent eruption.” Rushing about to every stamp dealer in Washington he managed to purchase ninety altogether, one for each senator. He pasted the precious stamps on sheets of paper and below each typed out: “An official witness of the volcanic activity on the isthmus of Nicaragua.” The stamp arrived at the office of every member of the Senate with the morning mail on Monday, June 16, three days before the deciding vote. He had, declared Philippe Bunau-Varilla, fired the last shot of the battle.
But that was not so; not quite. The last shot, like the first, was fired by Old Morgan, who, the following day, rose from his seat still one more time, to enter into the debate the name of William Nelson Cromwell, unleashing, as he spoke, years of stored hatred for the lawyer’s “humiliating and repulsive” intrusion into the decisions and policies of the United States government.
No talk of volcanoes, not the cleverest propaganda, could disguise the insidious course of this hired agent, Morgan said. “I trace this man back . . . to the beginning of this whole business.” It was Cromwell who had fed Hanna every supposed fact that Hanna stood behind, Cromwell who had intruded the commercial interests of the nefarious French company into congressional legislation, the hearings, the deliberations of technical commissions. “He has not failed to appear anywhere in this whole affair . . .”It was all a matter of record and the record was as much as Morgan ever wished to know of such an individual. “I would not dare to follow him when he is not on the surface.”
Panama, declared the old Senator at length, was “death’s nursery”; those who wished “to touch that thing” might go ahead and do so.
On June 19, after fourteen days, the debate ended. The majority report–for the Nicaragua canal–had been spoken for by Morgan, Harris, Mitchell, Turner, Perkins, Stewart, and Pettus. Besides Hanna, those for the minority–for the Panama canal–included Kittredge, Cullom, Gallinger, Teller, Allison, and Spooner. There had been a full gallery most all the time; the press and the country had followed the story very closely. Hanna claimed to have forty-five votes, exactly half the Senate. Everybody knew it would be extremely close.
The test came the afternoon of the nineteenth. The vote was 42 to 34. Panama had won by eight votes. So had there been a difference of just five votes, the result would have been a Nicaragua canal.
III
They were all very busy congratulating one another–Hanna, Spooner, Cromwell, Bunau-Varilla. Telegrams went off, effusive letters of gratitude to supporters in Cincinnati and Chicago, editorials were clipped and saved. Bunau-Varilla called it a “conclusive vindication.” Hanna was told that his place in history was fixed forever. Cromwell was happily confiding to almost anyone who would listen that he had written most of Hanna’s speech.
As time went on, as the details of what happened emerged, Cromwell and Bunau-Varilla would both be amply credited (or scorned) for the parts they had played in the astonishing victory, which, as one able historian would write, ranks among the masterpieces of the lobbyist’s art. Hanna’s role would be weighted heavily by his colleagues in the Senate. Senator Orville Piatt would call Hanna’s speech the most effective he had ever heard in all his political career. Senator Frye said Hanna had converted him from a lifelong advocacy of Nicaragua.
Pelée and Momotombo would also figure prominently in all subsequent accounts of the “Battle of the Routes,” as well they should. Had there been no such eruptions that spring, it is quite unlikely that the Senate would have voted as it did.
How much the little postage stamp really mattered, whether it actually changed any votes, is impossible to say. Probably it did not, Bunau-Varilla’s assertions notwithstanding. His diagrammatic pamphlet probably had a more telling effect. Still, the stamp was an inspired bit of propaganda, perhaps even worth ten thousand senatorial words, and it would brighten after-dinner reminiscences in Washington and Paris for years to come.
But a careful study of the record and some reasonable conjecture suggest, in retrospect, that one other figure had been a great deal more influential than had met the eye, a man who deserves our recognition. That was George S. Morison.
If one traces back through the chain of events that led to the Senate vote, keeping count of who was influencing whom and when, and if it is remembered that Morison, unlike Hanna, Bunau-Varilla, or the garrulous Cromwell, made no effort to glorify his contributions, at the time or later, then Morison emerges a bit like the butler at the end of the mystery–as the ever-present, frequently unobtrusive, highly instrumental figure around whom the entire plot turned.
The significant thing about the outcome of the “Battle of the Routes” is that it was decided on technical grounds. It was the technical view, the considered judgment of the engineers, that triumphed in the Senate. The situation was the exact reverse, interestingly, of that at the Paris congress of 1879 and yet Panama was still the end result. The emotional power, the force of personality–Morgan’s–had been on the side for Nicaragua this time. At Paris it had been the engineers– Menocal, Eiffel, and others–who had urged a decision for Nicaragua.
The most articulate and forceful of the engineers and by far the most stubborn Panama proponent was Morison. It was Morison whom Bunau-Varilla singled out as the leader on the commission. It was Morison, in the summer of 1901, before McKinley’s death, who prevailed against the inclination to wind things up with a unanimous decision for Nicaragua because the French company refused to set a price. It was Morison who wrote the minority report in favor of Panama. It was Morison who did the most to convince others on the commission and Walker in particular that the Bohio dam could be built, and who then convinced Mark Hanna.
Indeed Morison seems to have had just about everybody’s ear at one time or other, except Morgan’s, of course, and most important of all he seems to have been the one who worked the conversion of Theodore Roosevelt. Someone did, it is certain. It could not have been Cromwell or Bunau-Varilla. Neither of them had entree to the White House as yet. It was not Hanna.
The most solid evidence we have is a letter Morison wrote to the President dated December 10, 1901. The letter sets forth in the clearest, strongest terms the technical reasons why the canal should be built at Panama and Morison’s own personal unwillingness to accept Nicaragua as the only choice. The date is important. For it means Roosevelt received the letter before–a month before–he called the commissioners in to see him one at a time, to hear each explain things in his own words.
Morison himself seems to have had little doubt of what he accomplished. Years later, his close friend and confidant, Dr. Leonard Waldo, of Peterborough, New Hampshire, the Morison family physician, wrote that Morison “practically alone” had changed official opinion regarding Panama and it is unlikely that the doctor had any other source for the claim than George S. Morison.
Nor is it without significance that Morison was exactly the sort of man Theodore Roosevelt admired, trusted, and listened to. His whole career had been built on intelligence and daring. He was at the very top of his profession because of what he had done and he had done it in spite of his background. He was a preacher’s son, a classics major at Harvard, who had made himself an engineer on his own, through self-study, self-developm
ent, sheer will power. Bright but not distinctive as an undergraduate, he had gone to Harvard Law School and finished in the same class as Justice Holmes. But the law bored him–as it had Ferdinand de Lesseps, as it had Roosevelt–so he had decided to be an engineer, “that I may lead a good and useful life.”
Unlike Roosevelt, Morison was a lifelong bachelor and a prude. The sole failing he ever admitted to was an inability to handle horses. “There is a kind of man,” he once said, “that likes animals and handles them well, particularly horses, and such men are usually the type who are popular with others, and are known as ‘good fellows,’ but–but such men are usually fellows with lax morals.” Morison was never known as a good fellow. He was arrogant, inflexible, most unpopular, a man who was easy to admire from a distance.
Probably it was his total candor, the unshakable air of authority, that appealed most to Roosevelt. The Harvard background, a mutual interest in the West, in books, also gave them common ground. But in the last analysis Morison was brilliant, he did know what he was about, and he knew how to make other intelligent men feel that in their bones. “I hate to eat my lunch with Morison, he always quarrels with the waiter,” one noted engineer once remarked, “but I’d trust his judgment sooner than that of any other engineer I know.”
Originally he had been for Nicaragua, Roosevelt was to say, until the engineers convinced him otherwise. How often he was exposed to Morison is not known, but it is easy to picture them being quite direct with each other. Had Morison lived, it is probable that Roosevelt would have asked him to take a major part in the building of the canal. Very possibly he would have been made chief engineer, but he died in 1903, during his first illness since childhood, at age sixty.
The important fact is that Theodore Roosevelt had been convinced that Panama was the superior choice from the strictly objective technical standpoint. And to have a fair understanding of Roosevelt’s subsequent moves this must be kept in mind. “I took the Isthmus” was to be his arrogant, unfortunate claim, but in a very real and crucial sense, quietly, rationally, without fanfare, well before the Panama revolution, he “took the Isthmus” because the sort of men who would have to build the canal assured him that Panama was the place to put it. A momentous policy decision was determined by technical advisers here at the start of the new century.
And Panama was the superior choice, as George Morison said, and for the reasons he, Hanna, and the others cited. Given the sort of canal that was needed, considering the size of the ships of the day, taking into account all the advantages offered by the two routes, Panama was the place. The choice was never so clear-cut as Bunau-Varilla made it out to be, and while a Nicaragua canal would have taken longer to build and would have cost more, it would not have been a failure. Furthermore, if such nonengineering concerns as health and Central American politics are entered into the discussion, as Morgan had always insisted they must be, then the issue becomes as debatable in hindsight as it was then. On June 26, the House passed the Spooner Bill by an overwhelming vote of 259 to 8, the Nicaragua forces in the House having received word from Senator Morgan that the game was not up quite yet, since failure to obtain a clear title to the French properties was certain and this would force the Administration to revert to Nicaragua. “Make way for the canal!” cried one congressman. “Make way for the canal!”
The President signed the Spooner Act two days later, June 28, 1902, and so it became the law.
* The largest ships being built for the Navy then were of the Virginia class, which had a beam of 76 feet. The largest commercial ship then on the ways was the Kaiser Wilhelm II, with an overall length of 706 feet and a 72-foot beam. As Burr pointed out, the Suez Canal was already insufficient for such ships.
12
Adventure by Trigonometry
The plan seems to me good.
–MANUEL AMADOR
I
Although negotiations for the canal treaty with the Republic of Colombia had begun well before passage of the Spooner Act, it was not until January of the following year that the agreement was at last signed, and for those most directly involved, the negotiations had been the most difficult, tortuous experience of their professional lives. Dr. Carlos Martínez Silva, the first of three successive Colombian diplomats, had been retired in a state of complete exhaustion and would die a year or so after returning home, a victim apparently of the strain in Washington. His replacement, Dr. Jose Vicente Concha, suffered a physical and emotional collapse upon resigning his post and reportedly was put on a ship in New York in a straitjacket. Even the indomitable William Nelson Cromwell succumbed to a siege of “nervous exhaustion” at one point in October. For John Hay it was the most thankless and exasperating episode in a long career.
To begin with, the routine at the State Department had been greatly altered by what Hay’s biographer would describe as “a new impelling force”–the man next door in the White House. The overriding aggravation, however, had been the Colombians, about whom, by 1903, even the temperate and very proper Hay could speak of as disparagingly nearly as did Roosevelt. Accustomed to treating with such adroit, worldly professionals as Julian Pauncefote–men much like himself– Hay had been forced to deal with a succession of edgy, inexperienced Latin Americans who were obliged to consult with Bogotá at every move. Communications with the Colombian capital were dreadful. An official exchange of letters between the minister in Washington and his government could consume three to four months, and Bogotá’s shifting, frequently cryptic positions were an endless source of frustration for the Colombian ministers no less than for anyone else.
Martinez Silva had made his first call on Hay in March of 1901. His instructions from Bogotá were to do all in his power to make possible the adoption of the Panama route by the United States, and with coaching from Cromwell he had been extremely conscientious, working with Hay, checking regularly with Admiral Walker, releasing statements to the American press that his government was ready at any time to deal liberally with the State Department. But then his superiors in Bogotá decided that he had allowed himself to become too closely associated with the French canal company–that is, attorney Cromwell–and so he had been replaced by the nervous, painfully proud Jose Vicente Concha, a former Colombian Minister of War, no diplomat either by training or temperament, who had never been outside his own country before, and who spoke no English.
The primary issue, as stated both by Martinez Silva and Concha, was Colombian sovereignty over the proposed canal zone, and in the fall of 1902, just at the critical point in Hay’s conversations with Concha, Colombia’s seemingly interminable civil war had flared up anew on the Isthmus. To secure the Panama Railroad, Roosevelt sent American Marines ashore without first receiving the expressed consent of Colombian authorities–neither those on the Isthmus nor those in Washington–as had always been done before whenever American forces had been landed. The Marines were withdrawn eventually but the damage done to progress on the treaty seemed irreparable. Of particular aggravation to the Colombians was the decision of an American admiral to prevent any movement of Colombian troops on the Panama Railroad at one crucial stage. To Dr. Concha such use of American force had been not merely a violation of the 1846 treaty, but an inexcusable humiliation and the perfect expression of the underlying imperialistic ambitions of the United States. His hostility to Hay personally became such that he refused to see him for weeks. The fact that Hay cabled Bogotá his regret at the misunderstanding that had arisen, declaring there had been “no intention to infringe sovereignty or wound the dignity of Colombia,” did not improve matters.
Meantime, Senator Morgan and other pro-Nicaragua figures on Capitol Hill, along with several influential newspapers, were saying that the “reasonable time” allowed by the Spooner Act for treaty negotiations was fast expiring.
The strain on Concha was severe. He grew ever more suspicious, ever more obstinate about the sovereignty issue. He also stood fast on Colombia’s right to make its own bargain with the Compagnie Nouv
elle before releasing the company from the provision in the Wyse Concession that explicitly prohibited the sale of the franchise to any foreign power. It was Concha’s position, as it had been Martinez Silva’s before him, that if the French company was to receive $40,000,000 for its Panama properties and the rights granted by the Colombian government, then in all justice Colombia ought to receive an appreciable part of that sum in return for its willingness to permit the sale. It was a question of tremendous financial importance to Colombia.
Describing the Americans he dealt with for his home office, Concha wrote, “The desire to make themselves appear, as a Nation, most respectful of the rights of others forces these gentlemen to toy a little with their prey before devouring it, although when all is said and done, they will do so in one way or other.” For their part, Hay and Cromwell were undecided as to whether Concha was wholly sane, and from the American minister in Bogotá came a report that Concha was known there to be “subject to great nervous excitement.”
Infuriated by what he took to be insults to the honor of his home-land, Concha resigned several times in succession, only to be instructed to stay with his responsibilities. He was certain that his messages to Bogotá were being intercepted and requested his home office to change codes. In November he was at last ordered by Bogotá to sign the treaty, whatever his feelings about it (the final decision would rest with the Colombian Congress, he was reminded), but this his “conscience” would not permit him to do and so he quit. His distaste for dealing with Hay, he wrote, amounted to a “neurosis.”
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