Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  “I don’t suppose you can say.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Will you protect Colombian interests?”

  “I cannot say that.”

  All that the President would say was that Colombia, in rejecting a treaty she herself had proposed, had forfeited any further consideration by the United States. “I have no use for a government that would do what that government has done.”

  Both men were anxious for the interview to end. They perfectly understood each other. Roosevelt saw that if anyone was capable of bringing about the revolution, it was this tremendous little foreigner. Bunau-Varilla, in turn, was convinced that the United States would find a way to support him.

  THE PRESIDENT’S FAUX PAS about a “plan” may not have been involuntary. When receiving officers and gentlemen—Bunau-Varilla was, like himself, a colonel—he was sure that his confidence would not be abused. (It might, however, be discreetly used.) With advisers, Roosevelt was even franker, telling Professor Moore that he would recognize Panama if it revolted and set up an independent government “under proper circumstances.”

  In the same spirit, he now informed Albert Shaw that he would be “delighted” to hear of an uprising on the Isthmus. “But for me to say so publicly would amount to an instigation of a revolt, and therefore I cannot say it.” With his current unpopularity among unionists, white Southerners, and Wall Street bankers, he dared not risk any word or deed that might revive old images of him as a rash, rough-riding imperialist.

  John D. Long could not have chosen a worse time to publish an article in Outlook jocularly recalling the days when the President, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, had wanted “to send a squadron across the ocean to sink … the Spanish fleet while we were still at peace with Spain.” Roosevelt angrily denied the allegation, but critics of his Administration thought that Colombia should take it as a forewarning. “He is the most risky man the United States has had in the Presidency,” declared the Philadelphia Record.

  Another article, by Henry Watterson in the Louisville Courier-Journal, alleged that half of the forty million dollars that American taxpayers were paying to the Compagnie Nouvelle for canal rights would be kicked back to various American senators, lobbyists, engineers, and columnists—the “thieves” behind the original switch to Panama. While nobody believed that Roosevelt had any “share of the stealage,” he was being importuned by too many unscrupulous parties. There was only one honest alternative: to opt for Nicaragua, and quickly. “Time’s up, Mr. President!” Watterson taunted. “Will you act … or will you continue to play politics?”

  Philippe Bunau-Varilla demolished Watterson’s claims in a letter to the New York Sun. He noted that “not one cent” of the canal-rights money could be disbursed illegally, since the Compagnie Nouvelle was in receivership, and thus managed by the courts of France. As for the Nicaragua route, “it has all the advantages over Panama except the technical ones.”

  Watterson was reduced to weak taunts aimed at “Mr. Vanilla Bean.” The nickname stuck, to Bunau-Varilla’s fury, but the charges of corruption did not.

  MANUEL AMADOR GUERRERO, an elderly physician accredited by the Panamanian revolutionary junta, met with Bunau-Varilla in New York. An American intermediary, known only as “W,” had led him to believe that the Roosevelt Administration would contribute at least six million dollars of unspecified secret funds to his cause. The money was needed to buy gunboats that would prevent Colombia from landing reinforcements on the Isthmus when revolution broke out. Bunau-Varilla told him to forget about any such subsidy.

  A more realistic hope, based on Roosevelt’s hints in the Executive Office, was that the United States Navy would provide such protection, under Roosevelt’s treaty obligations to keep traffic across Panama clear. Amador said that in that case the junta had no worries about the five hundred Colombian troops garrisoned in Panama City. They had been so long neglected and underpaid by Bogotá that they could certainly be bribed to join the revolution.

  Bunau-Varilla grandly promised to raise one hundred thousand dollars for this purpose. If he could not borrow it from a New York bank, “I can provide it, myself, from my own personal fortune.”

  Downtown, as the conspirators shook hands, William Nelson Cromwell prepared to decamp for Paris. “The fun of the game” was rapidly becoming too fraught for him. He was terrified that President Marroquín would find out that he, too, had been plotting with Panamanians, and cancel the Compagnie Nouvelle’s remaining rights.

  And there was still the dread prospect that Roosevelt might yet decide to dig in Nicaragua. Obsequiously, Cromwell sent him a final appeal before sailing:

  YOUR VIRILE AND MASTERFUL POLICY WILL PROVE THE SOLUTION OF THIS GREAT PROBLEM.

  BUNAU-VARILLA, having invested so heavily in Panama’s future, returned to Washington on 15 October to see if John Hay would tell him anything more than Roosevelt had. The Secretary of State received him at home, and put on a dazzling display of diplomatic obtuseness. He waited for Bunau-Varilla to raise the subject of Panamanian unrest, then agreed that a revolution was likely. “But,” he added in his silky voice, “we shall not be caught napping.”

  He mentioned that a squadron of Navy ships was coaling up in San Francisco, and would next “sail towards the Isthmus.” There was some talk about the propensity of Latin American nations for political violence. Then Hay changed, or seemed to change, the subject. “I have just finished reading a charming novel, Captain Macklin.”

  He picked up Richard Harding Davis’s latest adventure story and said that it was about an American soldier of fortune who visits Central America and enlists in a revolutionary army, under the command of an idealistic Frenchman. “Take it with you,” Hay urged. “It will interest you.”

  That evening, on the train back to New York, a wildly excited Bunau-Varilla pored over Captain Macklin. Every page furthered his idealistic identity with the French general, fighting in the jungle for “justice and progress.” But the book also made him worry about mañana. When he next saw Dr. Amador, he behaved with Napoleonic briskness, handing over a plan of military action, a declaration of independence, a draft republican constitution, and “a code with which to correspond with me.” The United States, he guaranteed, would move to protect Panama within forty-eight hours of the revolution.

  Amador accepted both the documents and the promise. But he was much less willing to accede to Bunau-Varilla’s airy follow-up, “Nobody knows better than I the final aim, which is the completion of the canal and the best way to attain it. It will, therefore, be necessary to entrust me with the diplomatic representation of the new Republic at Washington.”

  All Amador could say was that he would discuss the matter with his colleagues. Bunau-Varilla, elated, began to design a national flag.

  THAT NIGHT, two young Army officers, Captain Chauncey B. Humphrey and Lieutenant Grayson Murphy, visited the White House to report secretly on a tour they had just made of Panama. Roosevelt listened with interest, having sent them south himself, to survey strategic approaches to the canal zone.

  They confirmed Bunau-Varilla’s predictions of a revolution, saying it would probably occur late that month, or in early November. While crossing by train from Colón to Panama City, disguised as English tourists, they had found themselves in the same car as José de Obaldía. The Governor and his aides, assuming that the foreigners spoke no Spanish, had openly—but unenthusiastically—talked about a break from Bogotá. Captain Humphrey got a feeling of general gloom, based on the failure of Panamanian revolutions in the past.

  He and Murphy also heard that a German lobbyist had influenced the Colombian Senate’s rejection of the canal treaty, that votes had been sold—either way—at seven to ten thousand gold dollars apiece, and that an American railroad man with “a remarkably attractive wife” had bought a number of nays.

  Casting aside his disguise, Captain Humphrey had later met with leaders of the junta. They proved to be so desperate for military aid that they actually
offered him command of their forces. If successful in winning Panama’s freedom, he and Lieutenant Murphy would get a quarter of the ten million dollars that Washington would then (surely) pay for canal rights.

  Humphrey had declined appointment, explaining that he was an American Army officer and served only one flag. But he had not scrupled to give free tactical advice (including how to seize a Colombian gunboat lying off Panama City), and a list of Texan arms suppliers. In exchange, he had gotten an indication of the junta’s current assets: five hundred troops, 2,500 arms, and $365,000 in cash and pledges.

  The President was not a passive auditor of Humphrey and Murphy’s tale. He impressed them with his topographical and political knowledge of the Isthmus. They half hoped he would say that the United States must avoid any military role there, so that they could resign their commissions and become real-life Captain Macklins. But he made no such disclaimer, and they were shown out into the night. “There goes our revolution,” Murphy muttered sadly.

  ROOSEVELT SPENT THE weekend brooding over the Humphrey-Murphy report, identifying to an almost comical degree with President Andrew Jackson. “There was an executive who realized not only the responsibilities, but the opportunities of the office,” he told a lunch group including George Haven Putnam. Old “King Andrew” was no saint, but he had never hesitated “to cut any red tape that stood in the way of executive action.… Now, Haven, I hear you chuckling. I know what you are thinking about.”

  On Monday, crisp cables began to issue from the White House and the Navy Department. The Dixie was loaded with a battalion of Marines and ordered to Guantánamo, Cuba, arrival date 29 October. Moody ordered the Boston to steam secretly, “with all possible dispatch” to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, within striking distance of Panama City, while the Marblehead, Concord, and Wyoming proceeded (as per Hay’s alert to Bunau-Varilla) to Acapulco. The only maverick movement in this slow concentration of forces was that of the gunship Nashville, which had only just left Colón. To wheel her round would excite Colombian suspicions, so she was allowed to continue to Caimanera, Cuba.

  In coincidental, yet related movement, the steamer Yucatán sailed for Colón from New York. Dr. Amador was on board, looking rather portly, because he wore under his vest the silk flag of Panamanian independence, stitched by Madame Bunau-Varilla. He was probably unaware that five years before, “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” had headed south on this same dilapidated vessel, with equal dreams of glory.

  On 23 October, in further irony, Roosevelt had a recurrence of the malarial fever that had stayed in his system since the Santiago campaign. He spent the afternoon lying on a sofa by a bright fire, with Edith knitting and rocking beside him.

  On 26 October, the New York Herald’s Panama correspondent, whose brother was a junta member, reported that seventy anti-Colombian insurgents had “invaded” the Isthmus. Governor Obaldía dispatched one hundred men to meet this imaginary force, conveniently weakening the garrison in Panama City.

  On 27 October, Roosevelt turned forty-five, and Dr. Amador was welcomed home. While the President, well again, celebrated with an eighteen-course dinner, Amador had to confess that the only aid he had won in el Norte was pledged by a Frenchman five feet four inches tall.

  BUNAU-VARILLA, HOWEVER, was as good as his word. He had already transferred one hundred thousand dollars in personal funds from Paris to New York. But, as a hard man, he set hard conditions on Amador. The money would not be sent on until he received a cable confirming the success of the revolution and appointing him Panama’s Minister Plenipotentiary in Washington. He would then press the Roosevelt Administration to protect and quickly recognize the new republic. “The only dangerous period for you will be from the moment the revolution begins to forty-eight hours after the telegram is handed to me.”

  Judging from his “trigonometrical” projections of the various movements involved—of United States warships, of Colombian reinforcements (already deploying), of junta agents throughout the Isthmus—the earliest likely date for such news was 29 October. When a cable from Amador arrived on that date, Bunau-Varilla congratulated himself. But the coded message was not what he expected:

  FATE NEWS BAD POWERFUL TIGER. URGE VAPOR COLON.

  SMITH

  Some of it, at least, he could decipher. Fate: Bunau-Varilla. News: Colombian troops arriving. Bad: Atlantic side. Powerful: in five days. Tiger: more than two hundred men. Smith: Amador. But urge vapor Colón seemed more language than code. Urge must be English, vapor either American English or Spanish. Vapor: steam. Steamer!

  He was being asked to arrange the dispatch of an American warship to Colón before the Colombian troops got there on 2 November. Bunau-Varilla grabbed a valise and rushed for a Washington train.

  Francis B. Loomis received him at home, coldly and noncommittally. The next morning, Bunau-Varilla hung around Lafayette Square, wondering whether to knock on John Hay’s door, when Loomis chanced, or contrived, to bump into him. Now the Assistant Secretary was confidential, if cryptic: “It would be terrible if the catastrophe of 1885 were to be renewed today.”

  Riding back to New York on the Congressional Limited, Bunau-Varilla deduced that Loomis had told him that the United States did not intend to permit the burning of Colón by government troops, as she had the last time Panama seriously rebelled. Which must mean that naval force of some sort was on its way. Newspapers aboard the train reported that the Nashville, last seen off Cuba, had arrived in Kingston, Jamaica—en route, surely, to the Isthmus. Five hundred nautical miles at ten knots an hour worked out to two days’ steam. About twelve extra hours would be necessary for preparations. Bunau-Varilla jumped out of the train at Baltimore.

  It was ten minutes past noon, 30 October 1903. He sent a wire to “Smith” in Panama City.

  ALL RIGHT. WILL REACH TON AND A HALF.

  Ton and a half: two and a half days. Calculating from now, that meant the Nashville should arrive off Colón in the small hours of 2 November. The revolution might be slightly delayed, but not compromised. Bunau-Varilla waited for another train, knowing there was little more he could do for the moment. He had “urged a vapor” to Colón. Now everything depended on “Smith.”

  ROOSEVELT SWATTED AWAY the late-October light on the White House tennis court. Despite twinges of gout and a thickening waistline, he triumphantly took a set from James Garfield. Then he put his racket away and prepared for humiliation in the November polls.

  It was his habit to be gloomy about elections, even in a year as “off” as this. Some thirteen states were due to choose governors, mayors, and local legislatures. Of these, only three gave him real cause to worry, because of Republican infighting. In New York, the party was badly split, boding ill for the state’s all-important electoral-college vote. In Delaware, he was accused—with some justice—of being equivocal between two GOP factions, one of which was corrupt. And in Ohio, Tom L. Johnson’s run for Governor was threatening the legislative majority that Mark Hanna would need for re-election. Roosevelt hoped that Johnson would be beaten, because a Hanna happily back in the Senate would be a Hanna less likely to think of running for the presidency in 1904.

  At least there was good news from London, where ElihuRoot, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Turner won a near-total victory at the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. Canada was left with a few token islands. Lodge, overjoyed (insofar as a Brahmin could feel joyful about anything), wrote to say that Roosevelt should not worry about temporary setbacks to his domestic policy. Such things only “looked” bad, in contrast to his general popularity and success. “I think you are fundamentally just as strong as you ever were.”

  If so—and Tuesday’s vote would tell—that political strength was secondary to the strength of will Roosevelt felt surging in himself with regard to coming events on the Isthmus. Now was the time to fulfill “not only the responsibilities, but the opportunities of the office.” Indeed, “Opportunity” was the title of his favorite Washington poem, by the late Senator John J. Ingalls, framed o
n the wall opposite his desk:

  Master of human destinies am I!

  Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait;

  Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate

  Deserts and seas remote, and passing by

  Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late

  I knock unbidden once at every gate!

  If sleeping, wake; if feasting, rise before

  I turn away. It is the hour of fate,

  And they who follow me reach every state

  Mortals desire, and conquer every foe

  Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,

  Condemned to failure, penury and woe,

  Seek me in vain and uselessly implore.

  I answer not, and I return no more!

  Whatever happened in Colón or Panama City over the next few weeks—or days, or hours—he must, if necessary, occupy the canal zone and start the digging by main force.

  ALL DAY LONG on Monday, 2 November, junta scouts scanned the sea northeast of Colón for signs of Bunau-Varilla’s promised gunboat. But they sighted nothing—not even the Colombian troop transport reportedly on its way. If the latter arrived first, their revolution would be much less sure of success.

  The Nashville was, nevertheless, approaching at full speed, and Secretary Moody knew all about the troopship. In a series of orders approved by Roosevelt, the Dixie had been dispatched to follow in the Nashville’s wake, while the Boston, Marblehead, Concord, and Wyoming were cleared for Panama City.

  The coordinated grace of these trajectories on Moody’s map board was deceptive. Straight lines could not render the communications errors, coaling delays, and bureaucratic blocks that slow any naval mobilization. The Dixie, now in Kingston, was unable to sail immediately, while the Pacific squadron, laboring down the Mexican coast, had yet to bypass Nicaragua. Meanwhile, the Isthmus remained quiet. Neither Bunau-Varilla (anxiously awaiting Amador’s confirmation cable in New York) nor Loomis were aware that the junta had postponed the revolution by forty-eight hours.