David McCullough Library E-book Box Set

by David McCullough

  What followed instead was a long diversion by Hay, a lot of small talk seemingly about a novel the Secretary had just read and that he happened to have at hand. Giving Bunau-Varilla the book, he told him to take it and read it at first opportunity. The title was Captain Macklin, and the author was Hay’s friend Richard Harding Davis. Bunau-Varilla was to write that it was “the subtle symbol, the password exchanged between Mr. Hay and myself.”

  The story, as Hay briefly recounted for Bunau-Varilla, concerns an idealistic young West Point cadet, Royal Macklin, who sails to Central America (on a ship called Panama) to seek his fortune after being expelled from the Academy for a minor infraction of the rules. He casts his lot with an older French officer and together they bring off a revolution in Honduras. There is much of the author’s customary zest for manly combat, and at one point, the hero, a figure very much like the author, kisses the locket given to him by his sweetheart and thereby recovers his confidence and determination. But it is also a book in which the local political leader is a figure of ridicule, the revolution is a “comic opera,” and Central America is seen as a frontier of untold opportunity if only the white man were to take charge.

  “‘I know all of Central America, and it is a wonderful country,’” observes one character, a North American.

  “There is not a fruit nor a grain nor a plant that you cannot dig out of it with your bare fingers. It has great forests, great pasture-lands, and buried treasures of silver and iron and gold. But it is cursed with the laziest of God’s creatures, and the men who rule them are the most corrupt and the most vicious. . . . They are a menace and an insult to civilization, and it is time that they stepped down and out, and made way for their betters, or that they were kicked out.”

  The book’s most memorable figure, however, is the French free booter, a tragic, sad, honorable, chivalrous knight-errant who fights on at the head of Latin soldiers, but who is plainly too good for them. To John Hay, as he told Bunau-Varilla, the ambitious young Macklin and the French officer were brothers in spirit, “searchers after the Ideal.”

  By his own account Bunau-Varilla came away from the interview in something like a spiritual daze. He had met “one of the most noble characters it has ever been given me to know”; he would “cherish . . . the memory of Mr. Hay [with] an almost religious admiration.” Was Hay saying that they too were “searchers after the Ideal”? did Hay see this Frenchman’s own soldierly part in the epic of Panama as akin to that of the Frenchman in the story? Plainly the American Secretary of State was trying to tell him something. “Did he not wish to tell me symbolically that he had understood that the revolution in preparation for the victory of the Idea, was taking shape under my direction? . . . It only remained for me to act.”

  The same evening, the evening of October 16, two Army officers were ushered into the President’s office at the White House to report on their confidential mission to Panama. Captain Chauncey B. Humphrey was an instructor of drawing at West Point; Lieutenant Grayson M.-P. Murphy had graduated from the Academy only the year before. Either might have been picked to portray Captain Macklin had anyone been casting a stage production.

  From all they had seen, the officers told the President, a revolution on the Isthmus could be expected at any moment. Rifles and ammunition were being smuggled into Colón in piano boxes, a fire brigade recently organized in Panama City was intended as a revolutionary military unit, a man named Arango was the ringleader (they had picked up the name of the wrong Arango, as it happens), and the people of Panama seemed unanimous in their low regard for the government at Bogotá.

  As Lieutenant Murphy would later confide, the prospects for a swift, neat, potentially lucrative revolution had struck them as so very certain that they were thinking of resigning their commissions forthwith and “assisting in its consummation.” Their plan was to approach J. P. Morgan for the necessary financing. For bringing the revolution off, their fee was to be $100,000 each, a fair cut they believed of the $10,000,000 the United States was to turn over to Panama.

  That their reconnaissance had been no chance or casual assignment is borne out by a subsequent written report, which includes such vital details for a military campaign as the best positions for artillery to command Colón and Panama City and the estimated number of mules that could be procured in remote interior villages. Nor is there much question that the word of such men would have carried great weight with Roosevelt. Probably theirs was the first account of the situation in Panama that he felt he could regard as trustworthy.

  However, the response they saw was such that they left the White House convinced the United States would play no part in any such revolution. They had been astonished at how much Roosevelt seemed already to know of the topography of the Isthmus and other such details, but their immediate mutual reaction was to scrap any further thought of seeing J. P. Morgan. “There goes our revolution,” Murphy said. “I sail for the Philippines.”

  Philippe Bunau-Varilla was now in high gear. He had gone directly from Hay’s house to the station, had taken the next train to New York, and during the stop at Baltimore had sent a telegram telling “Smith” that “Jones” expected to see him at the usual place at 9:30 in the morning. At the stated hour Amador knocked at Room 1162 at the Waldorf, which, according to Bunau-Varilla, deserved to be regarded as “the cradle of the Panama Republic.”

  He had Amador sit down. There was no time left to quibble over details. Amador was to question neither his assertions nor his sources. He could now assure Amador that he and his junta would be protected by American forces within forty-eight hours after they proclaimed their new republic. Only one prior commitment was required. They must agree to entrust him, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, with the diplomatic representation of the new nation at Washington. He must be the one to draw up the canal treaty with the American Secretary of State.

  Amador objected. To have a foreigner serve as their first representative abroad would be a blow to Panamanian pride.

  “I can easily see that,” Bunau-Varilla answered, “but a supreme law must dictate our resolution. It commands us to assemble every element which may ensure final success. A battle royal will be fought at Washington. Let him wage it who is best equipped to win the victory.”

  Amador promised to see what he could do.

  The following day, October 18, was a Sunday, a sparkling autumn Sunday along the Hudson River, as Bunau-Varilla went north by train again to John Bigelow’s place at Highland Falls, adjacent to West Point. On Monday he returned, looking like any other man of affairs newly refreshed by country air and vistas, but bringing in his suitcase a strange silk “flag of liberation” that Madame Bunau-Varilla and Bigelow’s daughter Grace had spent nearly all Sunday stitching together “in the greatest secrecy.”

  Amador appeared again at Room 1162 for a last briefing. Bunau-Varilla displayed the flag, which, according to Bunau-Varilla, Amador “found perfect.” The design was very like that of the flag of the United States, the differences being that the white stripes were yellow and in place of white stars were two yellow suns (symbolizing the two continents) joined by a yellow band (for the canal). As one Roosevelt biographer would note, there is a certain injustice to the fact that Roosevelt was unaware of these latest preparations. With his sense of humor and boyish love of adventure he would have savored every detail.

  Amador said it would take him at least fifteen days after reaching Panama to get everything ready. His ship was due at Colón on the twenty-seventh. Bunau-Varilla said he could not wait that long. He wanted the revolution to occur on November 3–election day in the United States–which gave Amador exactly seven days once he reached home. If he and his friends could not do what had to be done in that time, if the revolution did not occur on the third, then they were on their own and he would take no responsibility for the consequences.

  Amador received all the documents Bunau-Varilla had prepared, the code, the flag, on the following morning just before his ship sailed. He was also given
the text for a telegram that he was to send to Bunau-Varilla the moment the new republic was proclaimed.

  The government has just been formed by popular acclamation. Its authority extends from Colón inclusive to Panama inclusive. I request you to accept the mission of Minister Plenipotentiary in order to obtain the recognition of the Republic and signature of Canal Treaty. You have full powers to appoint a banker for the Republic at New York, and to open credit for immediate urgent expenses.

  Upon receipt of this message, and only upon its receipt, he would send Amador the promised $100,000 and the guaranteed military protection would arrive within forty-eight hours. According to Bunau-Varilla, Amador then departed from the Waldorf, having solemnly affirmed his complete agreement with all “conditions thus stipulated.”

  Amador sailed on the steamer Yucatan, the same ship that had once carried Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders to the war in Cuba. To the purser, he entrusted a package, telling him to put it in the ship’s safe and to guard it carefully, as it was vital to the future of Panama. The purser, young George Beers, was the son of Captain James Beers.

  “The plan seems to me good,” Amador had written to his son, the Army doctor, in a letter mailed just before sailing.

  For Bunau-Varilla the week that followed was interminable. He busied himself with cables to Paris banks to arrange for a loan of $100,000 borrowed against personal securities and saw to the transfer of the money by cable to a New York bank (Heidelbach, Ickelheimer & Company). But mainly he worried over the possible movement of Colombian troops from Cartagena to Panama, a turn of fate that, if it came too soon, could wreck everything. He watched the New York papers and on October 26 read with “indescribable joy” a small dispatch saying that General Tobar, commander of the Colombian troops at Cartagena, though expected to leave soon for the Isthmus would probably not do so until November.

  On the twenty-seventh, the day the Yucatan was due at Colón, there was no word from Amador. And there was nothing on the twenty-eighth. But on the morning of the twenty-ninth, Bunau-Varilla received the following signed “Smith”:

  FATE NEWS BAD POWERFUL TIGER. URGE VAPOR COLON.

  The first part of the message was in Bunau-Varilla’s code and was perfectly clear.

  Fate–This cable is for Bunau-Varilla

  News–Colombian troops arriving

  Bad–Atlantic

  Powerful–Five days

  Tiger–More than 200

  Though the rest– Urge vapor Colon– did not conform to the prearranged code, he took it to mean Send steamer Colón,

  These were puzzling and annoying words and he was at a loss to understand what they implied. But then it dawned that Amador wanted him to send an American man-of-war to Colón at his, Amador’s, request. He was asking Bunau-Varilla to prove to the others at Panama, to the rest of the junta, that he could deliver on notice and exactly what was needed. “It was not information which was transmitted to me, it was a test to which I was being submitted.”

  The little Frenchman was at once in a grand state of agitation. An American ship must be sent to Colón at once; everything depended on it. But how? “If I succeeded in this task the Canal was saved. If I failed it was lost.” He could think better on a train he decided, and so out of the Waldorf he hurried, on his way to Washington again.

  He saw Francis Loomis at his home that evening and told him to keep in mind the date November 3. There would be a repetition of what had happened at Colón in 1885, he said, and it would be a terrible shame if no American ship were on hand, or if her commander were to behave as had the commander of the Galena during the Prestan Uprising. Apparently Loomis said he could not and would not commit himself. But the following morning, as Bunau-Varilla was walking about Lafayette Square wondering whether to call on Hay directly, he ran into Loomis and this time Loomis declared in a notably formal manner that the situation at Colón was indeed “fraught with peril” and that it would be “deplorable if the catastrophe of 1885” were to be repeated.

  And this, according to Bunau-Varilla’s subsequent account, is all Loomis said. Still the message was clear: “The words I had heard could have but one interpretation: ‘A cruiser has been sent to Colon.’ ”

  He was at that moment like the character in King Solomon’s Mines who, recalling that a solar eclipse is imminent, tells his savage captors that he will show his powers by blotting out the sun. He now had only to inform Amador that the ship was on its way and the first sight of it on the horizon at Colón would have exactly the desired effect.

  A very great many people, however, were to find this explanation extremely difficult to believe. The Frenchman had gone to Washington, it would be charged, not to clear his thoughts or to stroll idly about Lafayette Square, but to tell Loomis to send a ship at once and that Loomis had assured him the next morning that the ship was on its way.

  The answer given to this charge is vintage Bunau-Varilla:

  My only reply to such critics is that they have not the slightest idea of scientific methods.

  I built all this subtle diplomatic structure as a bridge is built: that is, by calculating its various elements, and not by trying to obtain direct information which it would have been impossible to obtain.

  The abstract operations of trigonometry lead to results more certain than physical measurements, when both operations are possible, but in the majority of cases trigonometry alone can be used. I have made diplomacy as it were by trigonometry.

  Such a method will without doubt seem incomprehensible to many minds.

  He had noticed in the New York papers the reported movements of certain American naval vessels. The Dixie had been reported on its way to Guantanamo a few days earlier in The New York Times. The Nashville was at Kingston, Jamaica. If a ship had been ordered to Colón, it would be the Nashville, the one stationed nearest Colón, which, as he knew, had been in Colón earlier in the month. Figuring the ship’s speed to be ten knots, he decided that she could cover the five hundred miles from Kingston to Colón in two days. He then added twelve hours for preparations before sailing, which, he reckoned, would bring her over the horizon at Colón on the morning of November 2.

  Having talked to Loomis, he took the morning (eleven o’clock) train back to New York and again at Baltimore got off to send a wire to Amador. The wire went off a little after noon on October 30. Decoded it read as follows:

  ALL RIGHT WILL REACH TWO DAYS AND HALF.

  In The New York Times delivered to his room the morning of Sunday, November 1, on page 4 in the bottom right-hand corner, Bunau-Varilla found a small dispatch datelined Kingston, Jamaica, October 31:

  The United States gunboat Nashville sailed from here this morning under sealed orders. Her destination is believed to be Colombia.

  * Reportedly it was Senator Hanna who put Roosevelt on to Cromwell. “You want to be very careful, Theodore,” Hanna is supposed to have advised in fatherly fashion, “this is very ticklish business. You had better be guided by Cromwell; he knows all about the subject and all about those people down there.” Roosevelt replied that “the trouble with Cromwell is he overestimates his relation to Cosmos.” “Cosmos?” said Hanna. “I don’t know him–I don’t know any of those South Americans; but Cromwell knows them all; you stick close to Cromwell.”

  13

  Remarkable Revolution

  It was a remarkable revolution–I think the most remarkable I ever read of in history.

  –SENATOR SHELBY M. CULLOM

  I

  Manuel Amador’s arrival at Colón had been without incident. By prior agreement none of his fellow conspirators were waiting to greet him when his ship docked. He was met only by Herbert G. Prescott, assistant superintendent of the Panama Railroad, who came on board with the port captain, as appeared perfectly routine, to carry off any papers or documents Amador would not wish to have found in his possession. The doctor came ashore looking innocent enough, and there seemed nothing unusual about the fact that he and Prescott departed together
on the next train to Panama City. Had the doctor been searched, however, he would have been found to have an odd-looking flag wrapped about his waist.

  The trouble started that evening when the flag and the rest of Philippe Bunau-Varilla’s revolutionary paraphernalia were presented to the others at a secret gathering in a house on Cathedral Plaza, the home of Federico Boyd. Amador’s report evoked only disappointment or harsh disapproval. The mere promises of an unknown Frenchman impressed no one. The idea of an independence movement that did not include the whole of the Isthmus was viewed as asinine, since several of those present owned extensive properties outside the Frenchman’s proposed zone. The expectation had been that Amador would return with an actual agreement signed by John Hay or possibly even Roosevelt himself. Nobody liked the flag, which was thought to look too much like the flag of the United States.

  It was nearly midnight when the meeting disbanded and the only agreement reached was that emissaries should be sent to the interior to drum up revolutionary support. Amador went home thoroughly dejected.

  The following day it appeared that the whole game was up. Tomás Arias, one of the wealthiest, most influential members of the junta, came to tell Amador that he was backing out. “You are an old man,” Arias said, “Arango is an old man, and you don’t care if you are hung. I do not like to be hung.”

  Within hours Amador further learned from José de Obaldía, governor of the Department of Panama, that a force of picked Colombian troops–a detachment of tiradores, or sharpshooters–was on its way to Colón from Barranquilla. Obaldia, another wealthy landowner, had been appointed governor by José Marroquín only the summer before and because Obaldía was known to favor separation from Colombia in the event the canal treaty fell through, the appointment had caused a great stir in Bogotá. He was not involved in the conspiracy, only sympathetic and a close personal friend of Amador’s. In fact, he happened to be living temporarily in Amador’s house.*