Theodore Rex (70 page)

By the time Roosevelt tired of jotting, he had listed 114 author names. “
Of course I have forgotten a great many.” His catalog did not strike him as impressive. “About as interesting,” he concluded, “as Homer’s Catalogue of the Ships.”

He dozed off several times as the train raced south. Night fell. The weather was still mild and clear. Democratic weather. Faceless stations
whizzed by in the dark. Sooner than expected, Washington loomed ahead. At 8:14 he alighted at Sixth Street Station. A reporter pushed an election dispatch into his hand. He stopped and read it under the bright platform lights. The Republican Party had suffered a landslide defeat in New York.

Refusing comment, Roosevelt shook hands with the locomotive crew, then climbed into a waiting White House carriage. It rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue past the
Evening Star
and
Post
buildings, only half noticed by crowds peering up at giant, illuminated stereopticon screens. Preliminary polling figures alternated with celebrity portraits and comic “moving pictures.” By 9:00, Roosevelt had arrived in the West Wing telegraph room to check on further results. But Loomis was there with a cable that drove all thoughts of the election from his mind. It was Vice Consul Ehrman’s nervous message of five hours before. Now, Ehrman cabled again:

Roosevelt sent at once for his top State and Navy Department aides. Hay arrived within minutes, accompanied by Loomis. Moody was still out of town, so his second in command, Charles H. Darling, came instead, followed by Admiral Taylor, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and two assistant officers. A crisis conference began in the President’s office.

Ehrman’s “no bloodshed” was good news, and Arango, Boyd, and Arias seemed to be going about their business efficiently so far. But the presence of those soldiers in Colón was indeed “serious” (and would look even more so when Roosevelt found out there were five hundred, not four). The
Nashville
was so far the only American presence on either side of the Isthmus. Hubbard’s guns and Marines might, or might not, be enough to stop the government battalion from crossing over and quashing the revolution.

All the more reason, therefore, to keep Tovar’s troops on the Caribbean side.
But “reason” of a legal nature must be found in the treaty of 1846. Roosevelt was aware that early in his own presidency, the State Department had blocked a shipment of rebel arms along the railroad, on the ground that they might be used to prevent further transport of anything. Could the same scruple now justify blocking a shipment of government soldiers, whose only mission was to maintain the integrity of the Colombian federation?

Apparently, it could. Roosevelt authorized a draft set of instructions for the Navy Department to set in cipher, and cable immediately:

Remarkable in this document was its lack of any reference to the “strict neutrality” imposed upon American commanders in earlier Isthmian crises.

By 10:30
P.M.
, the specific order to Commander Hubbard was ready for transmission and signed by Hay. Further cables went to the other ships involved, although their urgency was largely symbolic. The
Atlanta
had to finish stoking up in Kingston before it could join the
Nashville;
the
Boston
had not yet cleared Honduras; the rest of the Pacific Squadron would need three more days to get to Panama City. At least the
Dixie
was nearing Colón, where Hubbard could doubtless use it.

Up Pennsylvania Avenue, the stereopticon watchers were roaring, as result after result flickered onto the screens. Mayor Seth Low of New York City had conceded defeat. A Democratic rout was announced in Maryland. Especially loud cheers, around eleven o’clock, signaled a triumph for “Hanna Republicans” in Ohio.

The White House conference broke up fifteen minutes later, after another cable from Panama City announced that a government gunboat had tossed five or six shells into the city, “killing a Chinaman in Salsipuedes street and mortally wounding an ass.” If that was the extent of Colombia’s rage so far, a tired President could get some sleep.

THE BIG WORD
REVOLUTION
crowded election results on the right-hand side of the front page of
The Washington Post
the next morning. Most other newspapers, however, treated the story from Panama City as if it were the final, entirely predictable installment of a serial that had begun well but lost its power of suspense. In any case, the New York
World
had given away the ending nearly four months before—even forecasting yesterday’s date. This temporary lack of interest (the story being by no means over) enabled Roosevelt, Hay, Loomis, and Darling to concentrate on the worsening crisis in Colón.

Commander Hubbard, by triple authority of the White House and the State and Navy Departments, had issued a denial of rail transport to the
tiradores
. (They were free to march across the Isthmus, if they liked, on a mud trail two feet wide, through one of the wettest jungles in the world.) Hubbard informed Colonel Shaler in writing that any redistribution of troops, loyal or revolutionary, “must bring about a conflict and threaten that free and uninterrupted transit of the Isthmus which the Government of the
United States is pledged to maintain.” He had sent an early copy of this order to Colonel Torres, emphasizing that it applied to both sides, and trusting in his “cordial” cooperation.

Torres reacted with cordial fury. He was still unaware of what had happened in Panama City, but he had grown increasingly nervous since the departure of his commanding officers. Their silence was suspicious, as was Hubbard’s cryptic reference to a possible “conflict.” Did the commander mean a clash with
insurrectos
inland, or an international battle right here on the Colón waterfront? Torres knew only that an American naval officer was denying him the right to cross his own country.

The mid-morning train from Panama City arrived, bringing the first unofficial news of yesterday’s uprising. Porfirio Meléndez offered to buy Torres a drink. Under soothing fans at the Astor Hotel, he confirmed that Panama had seceded from Colombia. The new republic’s security had been guaranteed by the United States, which was sending more warships. General Tovar was in jail, along with his fellow officers, and so was Governor Obaldía. All Panamanians supported the revolution, so resistance was “entirely useless.” If Colonel Torres would be so good as to order his men to surrender their arms, the
junta
would provide rations and passage back to Barranquilla.

Torres went in a frenzy to the prefect of Colón and told him to deliver an ultimatum to Consul Malmros. Unless Tovar and Amaya were freed by 2:00
P.M.
, he would open fire on the town “and kill every U.S. citizen in the place.”

When Commander Hubbard heard of this threat, shortly after one o’clock, he took it as tantamount to “
war against the United States.” All male Americans in Colón were ordered to take cover in Shaler’s stone depot, while their women and children were rushed aboard steamers in the harbor. Forty-two heavily armed Marines simultaneously came ashore to defend the railroad, while the
Nashville
patrolled the waterfront. Its guns covered the town at boardwalk level.

Undeterred, Torres’s five hundred men surrounded the railroad yard.

IN WASHINGTON
, the President lunched with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes—“one of the most interesting men I have ever met”—and Sir Frederick Pollock, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University. Roosevelt enjoyed their company, yet remained temperamentally unable to understand the workings of minds more concerned with reason than power.

In New York, Philippe Bunau-Varilla decoded a cable from his friend “Smith” in Panama City. It was not, as he expected, his appointment as the new republic’s Minister Plenipotentiary, but a pressing demand for one hundred thousand pesos. He decided to send half that amount. Fifty thousand pesos equaled about twenty-five thousand dollars, or one quarter of his total pledge. If
junta
members wanted the rest, they would have to make good on
the ministership—and certify that they held both coasts. The United States was not likely to dig a canal on only one side of the continental divide.

“
With all the insistence possible,” he cabled back, “I recommend you to seize Colón.”

COLONEL TORRES
, closeted with Chief Meléndez, let his 2:00
P.M.
deadline pass. For another hour and a quarter, Colombians and Americans continued to draw beads on each other across the railroad yard. The tension increased as the
Cartagena
, which had raised anchor after the
Nashville
lowered its guns, steamed toward the horizon at a speed suggesting she sought safety beyond it. Now that they had lost their troopship, the
tiradores
were more than ever compelled to stand and fight.

Then Torres approached the depot, smiling. Evidently there had been some pecuniary progress in his negotiations with Chief Meléndez. He told Colonel Hubbard that he now felt “most friendly” toward the United States. But he needed an authorization from his captive leader before he called off his men.
Colonel Shaler undertook to transport a pair of Colombian envoys to Panama City for that purpose, and Commander Hubbard promised them safe conduct. After their special train had puffed off, Torres and Hubbard agreed to a mutual, modified fallback. The Marines would retire to the
Nashville
, and the battalion would camp on a hill outside town, while Colón would be left under the control of Chief Meléndez.

A state of unnatural calm settled over the shabby little port, even as Panama City, where the first revolutionary bonuses had just been paid out in silver, abandoned itself to wild celebrations. In Bogotá, mobs raged through the streets and stoned President Marroquín’s house. And in Washington, Roosevelt and Hay worried over a cable from Malmros:
PANAMA IN POSSESSION OF COMMITTEE WITH CONSENT OF ENTIRE POPULATION
…. 
COLON IN THE POSSESSION OF THE GOVERNMENT
.

And in New York, a naval emissary boarded a steamer of the Panama Railroad Company with a secret package addressed to the commander-in-chief of the North Atlantic Fleet. It contained war plans for an emergency occupation of the Isthmus.