Amador was told that Mr. Cromwell was out. When Amador declined to leave, insisting that he be received by the attorney, Cromwell at last burst out of his office and ordered Amador to go at once and not come back. In the end the elderly physician was shoved into the hall and the door was slammed behind him. No explanation had been given and there appeared to be nowhere else to turn. Furious, worried that his money was running out, at a loss to report what had happened by means of his code phrases, he sent off a one-word cable (in English)–“Disappointed”–to his friends in Panama and prepared to leave on the next ship.
But then through a Panamanian banker based in New York, Joshua Lindo, of Piza, Nephews & Company, at 18 Broadway, Amador received word that if he simply remained quiet in New York there would be “help from another quarter.”
“We can never know too much about the personality of Theodore Roosevelt,” a learned student of the President’s career once remarked. And to the many who were trying to appraise what was happening in regard to Panama, or more important, what the next turn might be, that personality seemed the crux of the matter.
“The warning I gave [in a previous telegram] . . . is founded on threatening statements which he has uttered in private conversations, and which by indirect means have come to my knowledge,” wrote Tomas Herrán to his home office on September 11. “Your excellency knows the vehement character of the President, and you are aware of the persistence and decision with which he pursues anything to which he may be committed. These considerations have led me to give credit and importance to the threatening expressions attributed to him.”
And Roosevelt’s ultimate response to the Panama situation was to become the most disputed act of his career largely because it appeared to be an act of such violent impulse, an expression of what even many of his strongest admirers saw as an arrogant, nearly infantile insistence on having things his way and plunging ahead heedless of obstacles or consequences. To some observers there seemed something unpleasantly appropriate about the fact that his recreational passion at Sagamore Hill that summer of 1903 was the so-called point-to-point “obstacle walk,” the one rule, the only rule, being that the participant must go up and over, or through, every obstacle, never around it. He was invariably the leader on such escapades, followed by a band of excited children, perhaps a stout-hearted guest or two. Once his sister Corinne Robinson saw him approach “an especially unpleasant-looking little bathing-house with a very steep roof” and she hoped this time a detour would be in order. “I can still see the sturdy body of the President of the United States hurling itself at the obstruction and with singular agility chinning himself to the top and sliding down the other side.” But for all the “vehement” reputation, for all his unpleasant private remarks concerning contemptible little creatures in Bogotá, for all the deliberate misstatements or threats by Cromwell and others that he let stand, Roosevelt was still taking no action as summer ended and the record shows that he was still giving serious thought to several possible “ways around” at Panama.
The expert on international law, Professor Moore, was invited to spend a night at Sagamore Hill to elaborate on his theory. Mark Hanna was queried for his views. (Hanna recommended patience and moderation. He was sure a satisfactory settlement could be reached with Colombia.) Hay remained a steady sounding board.
Hay observed in early September that a revolution on the Isthmus was “altogether likely,” but advised caution and careful consideration. “It is for you to decide whether you will (1) await the result of that movement, or (2) take a hand in rescuing the Isthmus from anarchy, or (3) treat with Nicaragua.”
Roosevelt’s reply of September 15 was to agree to do nothing until he returned to Washington at the end of the month. “Then we will go over the matter very carefully and decide what to do.” Only to this extent had he reduced the field of choice. Henceforth, he told Hay, he wanted no further dealings with “those Bogotá people.”
“No one can tell what will come out in the Isthmian Canal business,” he wrote that same day to his friend “Will” Taft in the Philippines.
Once, in describing his method of executive leadership, Roosevelt remarked to a friend, “When I make up my mind to do a thing, I act. A good many . . . call me jumpy and say I go off half-cocked, when, as a matter of fact, I have really given full consideration to whatever it is that is to be done.” It was his quickness in following up on a decision that misled people, his cousin Nicholas would reflect years later; the decision itself, however, was rarely ever arrived at without enormous forethought.
For the moment, Roosevelt was waiting also for response to a request made through Secretary of war Elihu Root as far back as mid-March, before the Senate approved the Hay-Herrán Treaty. He had ordered that two or three picked men from the Army be sent to Panama in civilian dress to appraise the situation from a military point of view and to report back to him personally.
On October 1, or several days after Roosevelt’s return to Washington, Tomas Herrán reported the official policy to be one of “watchful waiting.”
III
Manuel Amador’s “help from another quarter” arrived September 22. “I had gone to New York by pure chance,” Philippe Bunau-Varilla maintained later. But so “fortuitous” a coincidence would strike many as highly improbable. It had been just two weeks since Amador had sent his “Disappointed” cable, or exactly time enough for Cromwell to have wired Paris and have Bunau-Varilla catch the next steamer.
At any rate the audacious little engineer had been busy much of the summer burning up the wires to Bogotá with vigorous, costly cables to Marroquín warning of dire consequences should the Colombians reject the treaty. He had been corresponding with Loomis at the State Department and publishing lengthy paid announcements in Le Matin. He was sure the dark forces that had destroyed Ferdinand de Lesseps were loose again.
Once in New York, according to his subsequent testimony, he “never even saw the shadow” of Cromwell. He had come, he said, to pick up his thirteen-year-old son, Etienne, a hay-fever victim who had been spending the summer at John Bigelow’s country place on the upper Hudson. “I naturally took advantage of my presence in America to visit and to question, as to the state of affairs at Panama, those who could give me any information,” he wrote later. In fact, through Joshua Lindo, whom he had known in Panama years before, Bunau-Varilla was in touch with Amador by phone the day after his arrival.
He had checked in at his favored Waldorf-Astoria and it was in his room there, Room 1162, that he and Amador sat down to talk for the first time on the morning of September 24, at precisely 10:30, according to Bunau-Varilla’s recollection. They too had known each other in years past on the Isthmus, but Bunau-Varilla had by no means forgotten what the difference in rank had been between a mere local physician in the employ of the railroad and the director general of the Compagnie Universelle.
Amador, “deeply moved by emotion and indignation” (according to Bunau-Varilla), unburdened himself of all that had happened. If his friends in Panama should be found out and shot as a result of Cromwell’s meddling, Amador declared, then he would kill Cromwell. Bunau-Varilla called it “unpardonable folly” ever to have listened to Cromwell in the first place. “With your imprudence you have indeed brought yourselves to a pretty pass,” he lectured. The situation, how-ever, was not hopeless. To extricate themselves from their plight the doctor and his friends had only to appeal to reason and to put the matter in the hands of Philippe Bunau-Varilla. “Tell me what are your hopes and on what are based your chances of success. Tell me all calmly, methodically, precisely.”
The particulars, as Amador presented them, were these: Only a small, weak garrison of federal troops was maintained on the Isthmus. The soldiers had not been paid for months and their commanding officer, young General Huertas, was known to be sympathetic to the revolutionary movement. Colombia, however, had command of the sea and so could land more troops at will.
(Except for the part about General Huertas, it
was all information that could have been obtained from a careful reading of the newspapers over the past few months–or from Cromwell, were Bunau-Varilla and Cromwell secretly in contact with each other, a side of the story that will never be known.)
The immediate need was money Amador said. Exactly what figure did he have in mind? Bunau-Varilla asked. Six million dollars replied Amador, which would cover the cost of the necessary gunboats.
Bunau-Varilla told Amador that he now understood the situation perfectly and that he would need a few days to devise a solution. In the meantime Amador was to keep out of sight and talk to no one. Amador had impressed him as a risky confederate–“a childish dreamer.” If Amador wished to make contact by phone, he was to use the name Smith. “I shall take that of Jones.”
According to Bunau-Varilla he was now confronted with a grave question of conscience. “Had I the moral right to take part in a revolution and to encourage its development?” The answer, he quickly decided, was yes. “Yes, because Colombia was obviously prosecuting a policy of piracy aiming at the destruction of the precious work of Frenchmen.”
IV
At noon on October 10, 1903, Assistant Secretary of State Loomis escorted Philippe Bunau-Varilla across from the State Department to the White House. Loomis was a handsome man in his early forties, starched, eager, with a marvelous handlebar mustache and thin black hair plastered with brilliantine. A former press agent, Loomis planned to introduce Bunau-Varilla to Roosevelt informally as the publisher of Le Matin. Loomis, another of Bunau-Varilla’s “personal friends,” had been spotted and cultivated by the Frenchman in Paris a few years before when Loomis was en route to a post in Portugal.
According to the subsequent recollections of both Bunau-Varilla and Roosevelt, their conversation began with talk of the Dreyfus Affair and of the part played by Le Matin, after which Bunau-Varilla asserted, “Mr. President, Captain Dreyfus has not been the only victim of detestable political passions. Panama is another.” The exchange that followed was conducted by all parties with scrupulous care. Describing the scene later, Roosevelt would remark that there might just as well have been a Dictaphone in the room. Bunau-Varilla predicted a revolution on the Isthmus and according to Bunau-Varilla the “features of the President manifested profound surprise.”
“A revolution?” murmured Roosevelt (according to Bunau-Varilla’s account). “Would it be possible?”
Bunau-Varilla said later that he never asked Roosevelt what the United States would do in the event of such an uprising. But in Roosevelt’s version, given off the record ten years later, Bunau-Varilla asked point-blank whether the United States would prevent the landing of Colombian troops, then added, “I don’t suppose you can say.” To which Roosevelt replied in substance that he could not. All he could say was that Colombia by its action had forfeited any claim on the United States–and that he had no use for the Colombian government.
In a letter to Roosevelt written only a few months later, a letter very possibly written on request, Loomis stated, “Nothing was said that could be in any way construed as advising, instigating, suggesting, or encouraging a revolutionary movement.”
Be that as it may, Bunau-Varilla left the President’s office positive that he knew where Roosevelt stood, and Roosevelt allowed later that had Bunau-Varilla failed to grasp what he, Roosevelt, intended to do then Bunau-Varilla would not have been very bright. “Of course I have no idea what Bunau-Varilla advised the revolutionists,” Roosevelt would tell John Bigelow, “. . . but I do know, of course, that he had no assurances in any way, either from Hay or myself, or from anyone authorized to speak for us. 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 that he was able to make a very accurate guess, and to advise his people accordingly. In fact, he would have been a very dull man had he been unable to make such a guess.”
Bigelow, however, was among those who would remain unconvinced. And his private observations cast a very different light on the situation. Bunau-Varilla had come to Bigelow’s country place at Highland Falls, on the Hudson–his family was staying with the Bigelows– immediately after seeing the President, and from the conversation that had passed between them there, Sunday the eleventh, Bigelow clearly understood that Roosevelt had been fully informed as to Bunau-Varilla’s revolutionary plan. Bigelow, it should also be noted, was a staunch admirer of Roosevelt’s and would later share none of the scruples over the role of the United States in “the Panama business,” as Roosevelt called it. The following is taken from Bigelow’s private journal. It was written within a week of Bunau-Varilla’s White House conference:
Bunau-Varilla was up over Sunday, has seen the President and the Ass’t Secretary of State; unfolded to them his scheme for proceeding with the Isthmian Canal without much more delay. . . . It is in brief to have Isthmians revolt from the Colombian govt, declare their independence . . . issue a Proclamation to that effect, adopt the Constitution of Cuba at the same time, and give Dictatorial powers to the President [Amador] who is an old and trusty friend of B-V., have the U.S. send vessels to protect . . . the new state from any hostility that could do it any harm, etc. &c.
But according to Bunau-Varilla it was only when he was on the train back to New York from Washington that he conceived his plan. Fundamentally, it was no different from what Cromwell had outlined for the World months earlier, except that Bunau-Varilla saw American gunboats playing the key role. He knew it would work, he said later, because he had watched it happen during the revolution of 1885. In point of fact, however, he had seen no such thing, since no American force at Panama had prevented the landing of Colombian troops in 1885 or during any previous disturbance.
He saw Amador at the Waldorf the night of the thirteenth and told him there was no cause to buy gunboats, explaining why in only the most general terms. Amador insisted that there was still a great need for money to guarantee the support of the Colombian garrison at Panama City. Bunau-Varilla thought $100,000 ought to be sufficient and promised to provide that amount from his own pocket if necessary. Amador remained highly agitated. He had had visions of much larger sums; he felt there ought to be a commitment from someone in Washington, something beyond the Frenchman’s mere say-so. He was distressed over a notion of Bunau-Varilla’s that the new republic need only comprise the canal zone, not the whole of the Isthmus. If he and his friends wanted the entire Department of Panama, they could take it later, Bunau-Varilla said; with the canal treaty ratified, they would get the $10,000,000 authorized by the Spooner Act and could wage all the war they wanted.
They separated “coldly,” but Amador was back again first thing the next morning, pale and haggard after a sleepless night, and declared himself prepared to go along with whatever Bunau-Varilla wished.
“This is what I call a sensible speech,” responded Bunau-Varilla. He would be leaving again that morning for Washington. The doctor meantime was to prepare himself to sail for Panama. On Bunau-Varilla’s return from Washington, he would be given the precise program of action.
At his Washington hotel over the next few days, prior to seeing John Hay, Bunau-Varilla prepared everything he thought Amador would need–a ready-made revolution kit, including a proclamation of independence, a basic military plan, a scheme for the defense of Colón and Panama City, the draft of a constitution, a code by which he and the rebels could correspond. The one element lacking for the moment was a flag for the new republic.
Things began to move rapidly. On October 15, Cromwell, who had been staying under cover this whole time, sailed for France, removing himself thereby from any possible association with activities in Washington or New York. As a parting gesture, in a letter to Roosevelt dated the fourteenth, he advised that his associates in New York would be on call at the President’s command. “Never before was this problem of the ages so near solution as at this moment,” Cromwell wrote, “and, if the opportunity be lost, it probably will be lost for centuries to come.”
&
nbsp; It was also on the fifteenth that a dispatch went out from the Navy Department to Admiral Henry Glass, commander in chief of the Pacific Squadron. One week hence, on the twenty-second, he was to proceed with his squadron on an “exercise cruise” to Acapulco. Further instructions would follow.
The next day, October 16, with Loomis again serving as his entreé, Bunau-Varilla saw John Hay at Hay’s house on Lafayette Square–this at Hay’s suggestion. The meeting occurred in the afternoon and it was a most curious and ultimately critical confrontation.
Bunau-Varilla had pictured Hay as cold and severe, an American Bismarck, as he later wrote, but instead he found a man of “delicate and refined mind” whose ideas “coincided rigorously with my own.” Together they deplored “the blindness” of Colombia. The entire state of affairs, declared the Frenchman, would end in a revolution, and Hay agreed that this, unfortunately, was the most probable hypothesis. “But we shall not be caught napping,” Hay said. “Orders have been given to naval forces on the Pacific to sail towards the Isthmus.”
To anyone with a personal interest in a revolution, this was, as both men appreciated, a momentous, an invaluable, piece of information. But as in Bunau-Varilla’s exchange with the President, the tone remained one of perfect propriety. Bunau-Varilla appears neither to have registered any response to the news nor to have given Hay any indication as to his own intentions.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 369