His replacement was a sixty-year-old career diplomat, the Colombian chargé d’affaires, Dr. Tomás Herrán, a naturally tactful, intelligent, and rather sad-looking man, who was the son of General Pedro Alcántara Herrán, who in 1848 had campaigned so effectively in Washington for ratification of the Bidlack Treaty. It had been then, traveling with his father as a small boy, that Herrán had first come to the United States. He was a graduate of Georgetown University, the master of four languages; his English was perfect; he had innumerable friends in Washington. By Hay’s standards he was a vast improvement and so it had been presumed at the State Department that the final details of the treaty would now be dispensed with smoothly and swiftly. But Herrán proved extremely cautious and burdened with apprehension. In private, in his correspondence with Bogotá, he expressed his fear that Roosevelt’s “impetuous and violent disposition” might lead him to seize Panama by eminent domain, on the ground of universal public utility. It was only when Hay issued a sharp ultimatum–by command of the President, as Hay stated–that the impasse was broken. If Colombia refused any longer to agree to the treaty as it stood, then Hay would commence negotiations for a Nicaragua canal.
The ultimatum was issued on January 21. The Hay-Herrán Treaty was signed at Hay’s home the afternoon of the following day. “I feel,” Herrán wrote to a friend, “as if I am waking from a horrible nightmare. Gladly shall I gather up all the documents relating to that dreadful canal and put them out of sight.” Among those documents, one he quietly buried in the legation archives, was a cable from Bogotá, received three days after he had signed the treaty, directing him not to sign but to await further instructions.
The reaction in Washington was immensely favorable. To nearly everyone it seemed a solid, straightforward treaty, and in spite of the fiery, often brilliant, unyielding opposition of John Tyler Morgan, who proposed no less than sixty amendments, it was ratified by the Senate on March 17, without amendment and by an overwhelming margin (73 to 5).
By the treaty the Compagnie Nouvelle was authorized to sell its “rights, privileges, properties, and concessions” to the United States, and Colombia granted the United States control of a canal zone six miles wide from Colón to Panama City, but not including either of those cities. The franchise was for a hundred years and was renewable at the option of the United States. In return the United States was to pay the Republic of Colombia the lump sum of $10,000,000 cash (gold) plus an annual rent of $250,000. Though Colombian sovereignty over the canal zone was specifically recognized in Article IV, the United States was permitted to establish its own courts of law within the zone and to enforce its own regulations concerning the canal, ports, and the railroad. Police protection for the canal and the railroad was to be provided by Colombia, but if Colombia was unable at any time to meet this obligation, the United States could act with Colombia’s consent, or in an emergency, without that consent.
The response to the agreement in Bogotá was another matter, however, and the Colombian Congress had yet to grant its sanction. The Colombian government insisted still that it had the right to negotiate its own settlement with the Compagnie Nouvelle. The annual payment of $250,000 was regarded as too little, since it was no more than what was being received yearly from the Panama Railroad as things already stood. Being vastly larger, more important, more valuable, the canal ought to pay more than the little railroad, it was felt, and the payments for the canal, as the treaty presently read, were not to start until nine years after ratification. Ten million dollars was not enough for the cession of any territory in Panama, wrote a noted Colombian intellectual and political activist, Raul Perez, in the pages of the North American Review. “Panama is bone of the bone and blood of the blood of Colombia, and has always been her cherished hope.”
Nor did the expressed guarantee of Colombian sovereignty within the canal zone appear quite so conclusive in Bogotá as it did in Washington.
Repeated warnings of Colombian anger over the treaty were cabled to the State Department by the American minister at Bogotá, Arthur Beaupré. “Without question public opinion is strongly against its ratification,” Beaupré wrote as early as March 30. What began as suspicion had quickly become outspoken hostility, he reported two weeks later. The Colombians, he reported next on May 4, believed the guarantee of sovereignty meant nothing, that “the lease is perpetual . . . the whole document is favorable to the United States and detrimental to Colombia.”
Beaupré was to be the target of much criticism later. He would be blamed for his roughshod, amateurish handling of the situation, his disregard of Latin sensitivities. But the charges are at odds with the facts of his career (he had had six years’ experience in Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia), his reputed “urbane, dignified manners and courtly demeanor,” and the perception apparent in his striking dispatches. That he was frequently blunt, even dictatorial, in his pronouncements to Colombian officials is also a matter of record, but in view of his orders from Washington he was left with little choice.
As of April 28, for example, Beaupré was instructed to inform the Colombian government that the United States would consider any modification whatever of the terms of the treaty as practically a “breach of faith” on the part of the Colombian government. By June, as the Colombian Congress was about to convene in special session, John Hay had abandoned any pretense of regard for the wishes or feelings of the Colombian people. The message of June 9 to Beaupré was strikingly ominous. “If Colombia should now reject the treaty or unduly delay its ratification, the friendly understanding between the Two countries would be so seriously compromised that action might be taken by the Congress next winter which every friend of Colombia would regret.” Beaupré was ordered to communicate the substance of this verbally to the Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was, as one noted diplomatic historian would observe, “an aggressiveness rarely found in friendly diplomatic intercourse.” The contrast in tone to that of the correspondence relating to the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, for example, could not have been much more pointed.
The nature of the threatened “action” was never specified officially, but just four days later, William Nelson Cromwell emerged from the White House after a “long conference” with the President and immediately dispatched his press agent, Roger Farnham, to the Washing ton bureau of the New York World. The following morning, June 14, the World carried this remarkable item:
Washington, June 13, 1903
President Roosevelt is determined to have the Panama canal route. He has no intention of beginning negotiations for the Nicaragua route.
The view of the President is known to be that as the United States has spent millions of dollars in ascertaining which route is most feasible, as three different Ministers from Colombia have declared their Government willing to grant every concession for the construction of a canal, and as two treaties have been signed granting rights of way across the Isthmus of Panama, it would be unfair to the United States if the best route be not obtained.
Advices received here daily indicate great opposition to the canal treaty at Bogotá. Its defeat seems probable for two reasons:
1. The greed of the Colombian Government, which insists on a largely increased payment for the property and concession.
2. The fact that certain factions have worked themselves into a frenzy over the alleged relinquishment of sovereignty to lands necessary for building the canal.
Information also has reached this city that the State of Panama, which embraces all the proposed Canal Zone, stands ready to secede from Colombia and enter into a canal treaty with the United States.
The State of Panama will secede if the Colombian Congress fails to ratify the canal treaty. A republican form of government will be organized. This plan is said to be easy of execution, as not more than 100 Colombian soldiers are stationed in the State of Panama.
The citizens of Panama propose, after seceding, to make a treaty with the United States, giving this Government the equivalent of absolute sovereignt
y over the Canal Zone. The city of Panama alone will be excepted from this zone, and the United States will be given police and sanitary control there. The jurisdiction of this Government over the zone will be regarded as supreme. There will be no increase in price or yearly rental.
In return the President of the United States would promptly recognize the new Government, when established, and would at once appoint a minister to negotiate and sign a canal treaty. This can be done expeditiously, as all the data is already supplied.
President Roosevelt is said to strongly favor this plan, if the treaty is rejected. . ..
It is known that the Cabinet favors the President’s idea of recognizing the Republic of Panama, if necessary to secure the canal territory. The President has been in consultation both personally and by wire with leading Senators, and has received unanimous encouragement. . ..
It is intended to wait a reasonable time for action by the Colombian Congress, which convenes 20 June, and then, if nothing else is done, to make the above plan operative.
The article was unsigned. The White House issued no denials.
A large part of the problem in Washington was a pervading ignorance of, indeed a chronic disinterest in, Colombia in general, Colombian politics, or the individuals with whom Beaupré was dealing. Bogotá itself was still as removed from the rest of the world as it had been when Lieutenant Wyse made his trek over the mountains in 1878. It was one of the most isolated, inaccessible cities in the world. In all Colombia in 1903, in a country as large as the combined areas of California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, there were less than four hundred miles of railroad. To reach Bogotá from either Buenaventura or Barranquilla still required anywhere from Two weeks to a month of arduous travel. By North American standards Colombia was pathetically poor and backward and its government was both unstable and financially destitute as a result of a disastrous three-year civil war that had only ended in November 1902.
The present head of state was a Conservative, a direct descendant, politically speaking, of Rafael Nunez, whose triumphs following the uprisings of 1885 had centralized political power in Bogotá under a new constitution. He was Jose Manuel Marroquín, an elderly, bearded scholar and man of letters whose shyness had kept him in the background most of his career. In 1897 he had been elected first designado, or vice-president, on a ticket with an eighty-five-year-old presidential candidate named Manuel Sanclemente, also a scholar, who was in extremely feeble health. In 1900 Marroquín had taken power by coup d’etat.
At the State Department and at the White House, Marroquín was understood to be an iron-handed despot. His power was thought to be absolute and thus the whole process of treaty ratification by a specially convened Colombian Congress was regarded in Washington as a charade. Marroquín supposedly had only to say the word and the treaty would be accepted. At both the State Department and the White House the consensus was that Marroquín and a few cohorts would one day retire to some private place and divide up the $10,000,000 payment from the United States.
But in fact Marroquín’s power was limited, his personal prestige was in the decline, and in his every move concerning the canal issue he was subject to savage attacks from his political opponents, the Liberals, who accused him of selling out to the North Americans. Personally he was a rather abstract and inefficient idealist and, generally speaking, those about him were politically high-minded men of character, whatever their limitations, and exceedingly sensitive about their national honor–none of which, again, was ever quite understood in Washington.
Colombian regard for the political ideals of the United States was enormous. The country’s federal and state system had been modeled after that of the United States. Bolivar, the Liberator, was known as the “George Washington of South America.” Wealthy and educated Colombians sent their sons to be educated in the United States. By no means did the leading political figures fit the portrayal Theodore Roosevelt was to provide. An American minister to Colombia, James T. Du Bois, was to write some years later in this connection, “An impartial investigation at Bogotá . . . convinced me that, instead of ‘blackmailers’and ‘bandits,’ the public men of Colombia compare well with the public men of other countries in intelligence and respectability. . . .” Until 1903, Du Bois said, Colombia was the best friend the United States had south of the Rio Grande.
Another large and important part of the problem in Washington was William Nelson Cromwell, since Roosevelt’s and Hay’s appraisal of the situation in Bogotá, the picture they had of Marroquín and his regime, the tactics devised, even the wording of instructions to Beaupré, were strongly influenced by Cromwell.* Especially was his influence felt at the State Department. He was consulted just about daily; he was relied upon for information (Cromwell had his own paid operative in Bogotá to keep him posted); his say, his expertise, were major factors at virtually every important juncture, as is plain in the record and as Cromwell himself would later boast.
It was a highly unorthodox arrangement, to say the least, to have the attorney for the corporation most directly in line to benefit from the treaty, a man with no official title, no rightful business to be involved in any official capacity, operating at will at the highest diplomatic level, instrumental to a degree exceeded only by the Secretary and the President, and with full impunity. But such was this exceptional man’s influence over Hay and such it had been since the negotiations began. When Hay had at last put his large, legible signature to the treaty in January, it was to Cromwell that he turned and presented the pen.
Most important, Cromwell had succeeded in persuading Hay–and thus Roosevelt–that the United States must not sanction or be party to any move by Colombia to deal independently with his client, the Compagnie Nouvelle. Roosevelt had earlier sent Attorney General Philander C. Knox to Paris to make a thorough examination of the French firm, which Knox reported to be “vested with good and sufficient title to the property it intended to convey.” On February 17, Knox had formally notified the company that its offer of sale was hereby accepted by the United States; that is, that the United States would pay the full asking price of $40,000,000 for the Panama holdings. So as the company’s attorney, Cromwell was determined that nothing should jeopardize this unprecedented transaction, this largest real-estate sale on record.
Specifically, he was determined that Colombia would be given no chance at any part of the $40,000,000.
Hay not only agreed to this in principle, but instructed Beaupré to make it known in Bogotá in the plainest terms. Thus the State Department was being used to secure the interests of the French company, its stockholders, and its American attorney, who, if the sale went through, stood to profit more personally than any other individual involved.
And it was when Beaupré reported back that ratification could probably be secured if the French company were to agree to pay Colombia $10,000,000 that Hay responded with his ominous telegram of June 9, a telegram drafted by Cromwell.
That the United States government had no rightful authority in a dispute between a foreign power and a private corporation was lost sight of. A settlement by Colombia and the Compagnie Nouvelle would have cost the United States nothing, and in retrospect it would appear that even a comparatively modest settlement–plus a little tact–could have resolved the whole issue quite swiftly. But to Hay, to Roosevelt, talk of a Colombian lien on the French company was patent extortion, a “holdup.” As men of honor they could never be “party to the gouge,” as Roosevelt expressed it.
Their personal regard for Latin-American politicians of any nationality had never been particularly high, it must be emphasized, but Cromwell had succeeded in convincing them that here they were dealing with the slipperiest, most corrupt variety of Latin American and that the sovereignty issue was the purest political hypocrisy. So the report from Beaupré that $10,000,000 from the French company would settle everything served only to substantiate all their worst suspicions of “those bandits in Bogotá,” as Roosevelt was to call them.
When in early August the State Department released the information that the Colombians were holding out on the treaty in the hope of getting more money, the press mistakenly reported that the increased payment was to come from the United States–a misstatement the State Department did not bother to contradict. The widespread impression, therefore, was that Colombia was trying to “hold up” the United States, which was not at all the case.
The generally arbitrary tone assumed by the State Department, the threatening cable of April 28, were all designed to call Colombia’s bluff, Cromwell would later explain. The story he planted in the World had also been contrived, he said, purely to frighten the Colombian Congress into ratifying the treaty.
Quite possibly that is so. But it is also possible that his underlying intention right along, perhaps even the underlying hope at the White House, was for the treaty to fail at Bogotá. In other words, if the language used by Beaupré or a story leaked by Cromwell following an ostentatious exit from the White House infuriated the Colombians, it was because they were meant to, because a crisis situation was wanted.
A great deal would be written and said to refute accusations that the White House or the State Department was ever in any way party to the kind of scheme Cromwell had prophesied for the World in such amazing detail. And in fact the full story of what was transpiring behind the scenes will probably never be known. Cromwell, for example, for all that he would have to say for public consumption, appears to have purposefully created one of the larger gaps in the historical record. For in the otherwise complete file of his business dealings, still in the possession of the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, there is not a paper relating to his Panama operations; all correspondence, cables, documents, expense vouchers, and the like are mysteriously missing.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 367