At about five o’clock, as Tobar, his officers, and Huertas sat conferring on a bench outside the barracks near the gate to the seawall, Tobar was informed that a crowd had begun gathering at the front of the building. General Amaya went out and returned to confirm the report. Huertas asked if it was not time to order out the first patrol. Tobar assented and Huertas, excusing himself to change out of his dress coat, went inside, followed by General Castro.
When a company of soldiers marched out with fixed bayonets, the generals were still sitting in the same place. The soldiers wheeled to the right of the seawall gate, as if to pass in front of the generals, but then suddenly opened into two files, one going in front of the seated men, the other behind. At a command the soldiers stopped and swung about with bayonets lowered at the astonished generals.
“Generals, you are my prisoners,” said the officer in command, a young captain named Salazar.
“I am the commander in chief” Tobar declared.
“You and your aides,” answered Salazar.
“By whose orders?”
“General Huertas’.”
Tobar lunged at the nearest soldier in an effort to escape, but was instantly hemmed in by bayonets. He appealed to Salazar, begging him not to be a traitor. He called on sentinels along the wall, the other soldiers, to come to the defense of their country, all to no avail. But neither he nor any of his companions had attempted to draw a sword or reach for a side arm.
Disarmed, they were marched out the seawall gate, through a crowd of several thousand people, and on to Cathedral Plaza, across the plaza and up Avenida Central to the jail, the crowd shouting “Viva Huertas! . . . Viva Amador! . . . Viva el Istmo Libre!” Those in the crowd who were armed began firing shots in the air.
Minutes after the generals were locked up, at 5:49 by the wall clock in the railroad office, Herbert Prescott was on the phone to tell Shaler and Meléndez. It was “the hour of freedom.”
Amador ordered that Obaldóa be taken into custody–as a matter of form–then went himself to see the American vice-consul, Felix Her-man, who dictated a cable to Washington:
UPRISING OCCURRED TONIGHT, SIX; No BLOODSHED. ARMY And Navy OFFICIALS TAKEN PRISONERS. GOVERNMENT WILL BE ORGANIZED TONIGHT, CONSISTING THREE CONSULS, ALSO CABINET. SOLDIERS CHANGED. SUPPOSED SAME MOVEMENT WILL BE EFFECTED IN COLON. ORDER PREVAILS SO FAR. SITUATION SERIOUS. FOUR HUNDRED SOLDIERS LANDED TODAY, BARRANQUILLA.
Then, immediately, Amador, Ehrman, Arango, Federico Boyd, and Tomas Arias repaired to Cathedral Plaza to be acclaimed by the crowd.
At dusk, as the municipal council met to give the junta its formal recognition, the Colombian gunboat Bogotá opened fire, throwing five or six shells into the city, killing one man–a Chinese shopkeeper who had been asleep in bed–and a donkey. These were the day’s only casualties. When a shore battery responded, the ship withdrew behind an island in the bay and was heard from no more. The Padilla, meantime, had kept perfectly silent.
So by nightfall there remained only the problem of the troops at Colon.
II
It was very early on the morning of November 4 that Commander Hubbard of the Nashville issued the order addressed to Superintendent Shaler forbidding the movement of “troops of either party [Colombian or insurgent] or in either direction by your railroad.” So when the young Colombian colonel, Eliseo Torres, who had been left in charge, appeared again at Shaler’s office that same morning to resume his effort to get transportation for his men, Shaler had only to tell him that his hands were tied. The troops and the number of women who accompanied them were camped in the streets and were the cause of much curiosity. There had been no friction with the local populace; not the slightest sign of trouble. And Torres, having no means of communication with Panama City, knew nothing of what had transpired there the day before and had yet to grasp the extreme gravity of his own situation.
Not until noon was he told–by Porfirio Meléndez, who, after conferring with Shaler, escorted Torres across Front Street to the saloon at the Astor Hotel. Over a drink, Meléndez explained what had happened to the generals, warned the young officer that more American help was on the way, and offered him a handsome honorarium in cash if he would be so sensible as to order his men back onto the Cartagena and quietly sail away.
The response of the young officer was explosive. He “flew into a violent passion” and, like Pedro Prestan, announced that he would burn the town and kill every American in it unless the generals were released by two that afternoon.
So there followed two extremely critical hours.
Hubbard had all American women and children put on board a German steamer then in port and on another ship belonging to the railroad. He gathered the men inside the railroad’s stone warehouse and landed a detachment of forty sailors with an extra supply of arms. Cleared for action, the Nashville weighed anchor and moved in closer to shore, her guns trained on the railroad wharf and on the Cartagena, which to the surprise of everyone got up steam and departed at full speed.
The Colombians had the railroad building surrounded almost immediately, their purpose being, in Hubbard’s view at least, to provoke an attack. It was a situation ripe for catastrophe. Yet for all the tension on both sides, no shots were fired and at about 3:13 Torres walked up to the barricaded building and told Hubbard that in fact he was “well disposed toward the Americans” and wished only to make contact with General Tobar to find out what he was supposed to do. He proposed that he withdraw his own troops to Monkey Hill, that Hub-bard and his force return to the Nashville, and that he be permitted to dispatch an emissary to Tobar to explain the gravity of the situation and to bring back Tobar’s answer. After a hurried conference with Shaler, Meléndez, and the American consul at Colón, a man named Oscar Malmros, all of whom were impressed by Torres and convinced of his “good faith,” Hubbard agreed to the proposition. Two emissaries were chosen, one of Torres’ men and a local policeman. Shaler at once produced a special train, then put through a call to apprise Panama City of what had happened.
A murderous showdown had thus been averted for the moment. A number of people had kept their heads. However, with the Cartagena no longer standing by to evacuate Torres and his troops, the problem of their departure had also been compounded, and their quickest possible dispatch from Colon–from the Isthmus entirely–was of paramount importance to the success of the revolution. For as long as loyal troops remained where they were, Bogotá’s claim to de facto sovereignty over Panama was quite as valid as that of the junta. Colonel Torres was in a comparatively strong position, furthermore. No insurgent force had as yet made itself known in Colón, and if the American commander stood by his own order that neither loyal nor insurgent forces could be transported on the railroad, then no insurgent force could be brought over from Panama City to challenge him. With nearly five hundred well-armed veteran troops at his command, he was unquestionably a force to reckon with, and he certainly had it within his power to lay waste to Colón as threatened, and to much of the railroad and its property. Most important, as he wrote in a note for Tobar, he and his men were fully prepared to “resist any attack rather than be traitors.”
Torres was, in fact, the trump card and everything depended on how Tobar chose to respond.
At Panama City it was decided that a personal appeal by Amador (El Presidente, as the crowds were now calling him) might do the trick. The day at Panama City had been a very different one from that at Colon. The junta was riding high; the whole city was celebrating; the new flag had been raised at the Government House and at Cathedral Plaza. “The world is astounded at our heroism,” Amador had told the troops at the barracks that morning. “Yesterday we were but the slaves of Colombia; today we are free. . . . President Roosevelt has made good. . . . Long live President Roosevelt! Long live the American Government!” He and Huertas had stood beside eight large wooden boxes filled with Colombian silver delivered for the troops from the Ehrman Bank. (Huertas and his officers, as they were informed privately,
would receive their share in another five days, with checks drawn on another local bank, Isaac Brandon & Brothers.) “We have the money! We are free!” exclaimed Huertas, who was picked up in a chair and borne in triumph through the streets at the head of an enormous crowd. When a sudden downpour struck just as the parade reached the plaza, all who could crowded into the Central Hotel, where for another jubilant hour bottles of champagne were poured over Huertas’ head.
Amador got to the police station about five o’clock, or roughly half an hour before the arrival of the emissaries from Colon. He talked to Amaya first, then to Tobar, and his point was the same with both: that further resistance on their part was useless since the United States was involved. “You must understand that we who started this movement are not insane,” he told Amaya, whom he had known for years but had yet to face in quite this way. They were seated in the guardroom alone. “We fully appreciated the fact that in no case could we withstand all the rest of the nation, and in consequence we had to resort to means that, although painful, were indispensable. The United States has fully entered into this movement . . . and our independence is guaranteed by that colossus.”
With Tobar he had been more explicit, saying that the plan had been sanctioned in Washington, that the United States had already supplied him with $250,000 to meet the expenses of establishing the new republic, which was quite untrue.
The generals refused to be swayed. “I answered Señor Amador,” Tobar later related, “that I would take no account of what he had just told me, as my duty and the duty of the army I commanded was sufficiently clear, and that in consequence no human force could drag from me the order he desired.”
Apparently Amador was no more out the door when the two messengers from Colón were brought in. Tobar read the note from Torres and said he positively refused to order the evacuation. Yet neither would he order Torres not to depart. Colonel Torres knew his duty, the general insisted.
Nor had he anything different to say the following morning, November 5, when it was reported from Colón that Torres and his men had marched back into town from Monkey Hill–claiming the mosquitoes had driven them out–that Hubbard had landed his force once again, and that therefore the situation was fully as serious as before.
Urgent meetings were called on both sides of the Isthmus. Shaler was on the phone to Prescott perhaps five or six times. Then at about five o’clock Tobar, Amaya, and the other Colombian officers were told to get ready to leave for the railroad depot. It had been decided to take them back to Colon.
They left the jail, surrounded by a large, well-armed escort. But at the station Herbert Prescott refused to put Tobar aboard until Tobar gave his word that he would make no attempt to escape. An extended “altercation” took place, Prescott insisting that Tobar must go as a voluntary prisoner because orders from the American government prohibited the transportation of soldiers to guard him.
Tobar, unfortunately for his cause, stood on his dignity. As an officer he could give no such guarantee; they could either transport him as a prisoner in fact, he said, or they could return him to prison. The argument dragged on, more time passed. Prescott called Shaler on the phone to ask what to do. Commander Hubbard, who was in the Colón office at the moment, told Shaler to tell Prescott to put the generals under an armed civilian escort and send them across.
And this was what was about to be done, the generals were actually seated on the train, when Shaler called again, great excitement in his voice. He and Porfirio Meléndez had just succeeded in getting Colonel, Torres to agree to embark on the Orinoco, a Royal Mail steamer that had come in the day before. The price, Shaler told Prescott, would be $8,000. Prescott had only to get the money from the junta and he, Shaler, would pay Torres out of the railroad’s safe and the troops could start their evacuation immediately.
Ordering one of the others to hold the generals until he got back, Prescott rushed out of the depot and took a carriage back to Cathedral Plaza where he found Amador, Boyd, and Arango. The only available cash, the three said, had been given out already to Huertas’ troops, but the Brandon bank would vouch for whatever was necessary. Not wanting to lose a minute more than necessary, Prescott raced back to the phone, called Shaler, and told him he had the money. Fifteen minutes later Shaler called back and said the Colombian troops were just beginning to go on board the Orinoco.
Commander Hubbard, as he later testified in Washington, had had no part in the bargain struck with Torres. Shaler and Porfirio Meléndez had done all the talking, and Torres, as Shaler acknowledged, had agreed to their offer only after Shaler assured him that five thousand American troops were about to arrive. Then, at 6:20, as if on cue, the Dixie had been sighted on the horizon.
The $8,000 for Torres was carefully counted out in the railroad office by the company’s cashier, a Mr. Wardlaw, and by Joseph Lefevre, a local resident who was later to become Minister of Public Works for the new Republic of Panama. The money, all in American twenty-dollar gold pieces, was put in two sacks and was carried out the door.
The only snag had occurred just as the troops were crowding onto the wharf beside the Orinoco. The local agent for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company had suddenly specified cash in advance for their passage to Cartagena. Shaler told him there was not money enough left in the railroad safe, but not to worry, that whatever the cost it would be covered soon enough. Citing various regulations, the agent at first refused, then said he would clear the ship if Shaler and Hubbard put their signatures on a voucher for the passage money, which came to something over É1,000. Both men signed their names, and as a final gesture, Shaler sent Torres two cases of champagne.
At 7:05, while the troops were still going aboard, the Dixie anchored in the harbor. It was pitch dark by this time and raining very hard. At 7:35 the Orinoco cast off and steamed away, and in less than an hour four hundred Marines under Captain John A. Lejeune had landed.
The formal proclamations were read the following morning in front of the Colón prefecture. “We separate ourselves from our Colombian brothers without hatred and without joy,” Porfirio Meléndez read from the declaration of independence, but the joy of the crowd was unmistakable. As a gesture of gratitude, Meléndez then asked Major William Black, the Walker Commission officer, to raise the new flag.
In Panama City that same morning, Senor Don Eduardo Ycaza, who had been appointed paymaster by the junta, began writing checks drawn on the Brandon bank–$30,000 to Huertas, who was to get another $50,000 later on (why he wound up with $80,000 all told, rather than the $65,000 originally promised, has never been explained); $35,000 for General Varón of the Padilla, $10,000 each for Captain Salazar, who had handled the actual arrest of the generals, and several other of Huertas’ officers whose loyalty was deemed important.
Tobar and his generals, who had been returned to police headquarters, were again released and transported by train to Colón to await passage on the next ship to Cartagena.
Cables to Secretary of State Hay were composed and sent in the meantime, one from Arango, Arias, and Boyd, the other from Vice-Consul Ehrman. The authority of the new republic, the cables said, had been established and enthusiastically received throughout the entire Isthmus (in fact no news of the uprising had as yet reached several important parts of the interior), and Philippe Bunau-Varilla had been appointed “confidential agent” in Washington.
The reply came that afternoon. It was dated November 6–12:51 P.M. The United States government had formally recognized the new Republic of Panama.
III
It had been fifty-seven years since Benjamin Bidlack had signed the treaty at Bogotá, fifty-five years since the United States Senate had confirmed the treaty, fifty-one years since the first trains had begun rolling on the Panama Railroad. And in all that time, throughout the entire second half of the nineteenth century, there had been no serious misunderstandings as to the critical agreements of the treaty contained in Article XXXV. In no way was the arrangement to impair Colombian sovereignty over
the Isthmus; Colombia was to remain the sole protector of the Isthmus and of the isthmian transit against domestic obstruction. The clear specific intent was to safeguard for Colombia its sovereignty in perpetuity, a guarantee for which Colombia had been willing to grant to the United States the right to create an isthmian transit–rail or canal. The United States was obligated to maintain order only when requested by Colombia and, as President Cleveland once stated, “always in maintenance of the sovereignty of Colombia.”
“The purpose of the stipulation [Article XXXV],” Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, had declared in 1865, “was to guarantee the Isthmus against seizure or invasion by a foreign power only. It could not have been contemplated that we were to become a party to any civil war in that country by defending the Isthmus against another party.” Concerning Colombia, the United States desired nothing more, Seward wrote, than the enjoyment of “complete and absolute” sovereignty, and if that were “assailed by any power at home or abroad,” the United States would be ready to cooperate with Colombia to “maintain and defend” its sovereignty.
The same or similar policy had held under subsequent administrations in Washington, including three illustrious Republican secretaries of state–Hamilton Fish, William Evarts, and James G. Blaine. Secretary Fish, for example, had on one occasion notified the American minister at Bogotá that the treaty of 1846 “has never been acknowledged to embrace the duty of protecting the road [the Panama Railroad] . . . from the violence of local factions . . . it is . . . the undoubted duty of the Colombian Government to protect it [the railroad] against attacks from local insurgents.”
Thus the secret orders cabled to Commander Hubbard from the Navy Department, November 2–to prevent the landing of any armed force “either government or insurgent”–had been contrary not only to the spirit and intent of the treaty but to long-established policy and precedent. Colombia, the sovereign, was to be denied the right to land its own troops on the pretext that the United States was obligated to maintain “free and uninterrupted transit” on the railroad. In addition, the orders had been issued when there was not a sign of disturbance as yet anywhere on the Isthmus, when no revolution had even been declared, let alone physically set in motion.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 372