Theodore Roosevelt (7 page)

Holmes shrugged off the White House's reaction and repeated to friends a quip supposedly made by a senator: “What the boys like about Roosevelt is that he doesn't give a damn about the law!” But his final verdict on TR, given years later, was graver. Writing to his friend, Sir Frederick Pollock, and recalling that Roosevelt couldn't forgive anyone who stood in his way, he added: “He was very likeable, a big figure, a rather ordinary intellect, with extraordinary gifts, a shrewd and I think rather unscrupulous politician. He played all his cards—if not more.”

TR may have indeed been petty on the subject of Holmes's dissent, but his attitude toward constitutional law was that of any progressive chief executive whose primary concern was to see legislation judicially interpreted in ways to foster his social programs. He had no desire to subvert the Constitution; he simply wanted it to operate for what he considered the good of the nation as a whole and not for the benefit of any particular social or commercial class. He was always irate, for example, at the nullification of the Constitution by the action of southern states in virtually disenfranchising the Negro, but he had been helpless to correct it in view of the solidity of his opponents and the then indifference of the North. He had been also angered by the conversion of the Fourteenth Amendment into a charter of liberty for the great corporations, but here he was by no means helpless, as the Northern Securities case had shown.

He had never been much drawn to the study of law. Even in his brief time at law school he had been repelled by the doctrine of caveat emptor, which flew in the teeth of what to him was the revered code of a gentleman's honor. How could any man calling himself that invoke a law to protect himself from some poor bloke to whom he had sold shoddy goods? TR was always more of a humanitarian than Holmes, who tended to look rather askance at the common herd of mankind and who defined freedom of speech, despite his resolution to protect it, as “the right of a fool to drool.” Roosevelt always insisted that he had never usurped power, that he had simply used it, whenever he could get his executive hands on it, and as broadly as possible, for the benefit and protection of the nation placed in his charge.

When TR observed to a friend that he always wanted a great constitutional lawyer at his side, and the friend pointed out that he had always had the services of William Howard Taft and Elihu Root, both undisputed authorities in the field, he retorted: “Yes, but they don't always agree with me.”

Seven

In 1901, when TR took office, the Isthmus of Panama was legally, however tenuously, a part of the Republic of Colombia. In the preceding half century more than fifty riots and attempted uprisings had signaled the perennial discontent of the Panamanian people in their frustrated desire for independence. Many of these had been put down by the Colombian government with the military assistance of the United States. Rusting in the jungles of the isthmus was the rotting machinery of the French company that had failed in its attempt to build a transoceanic canal, but which still held the Colombian concession for such a waterway. Obviously the company desperately hoped to sell this concession to the American government for forty million dollars (less than half its original asking price). Its representative in these negotiations was a very clever and wily Frenchman living in Panama, Philippe Bunau Varilla, ably aided by his New York counsel, William Nelson Cromwell. Both men well understood the ambitious and aggressive nature of the American president and knew how to dangle in front of him the lure of a waterway that would change the navigation of the seas and double the striking power of our navy.

The legal position of the United States, in the event of its failure to obtain Colombia's consent to operate under the purchased French concession, was hazy, to say the least. A treaty between Colombia (then New Granada) and the United States in 1846 guaranteed the United States the right of transit across the isthmus, but there was some question whether Colombia was bound by a treaty made by New Granada, its predecessor state, even though TR clung to the theory suggested by a lawyer that the treaty was similar to a covenant running with the land. The proposed Hay-Pauncefort Treaty in 1898 between Britain and the United States would have given the two signatories a partnership in any canal to be constructed and would have prohibited its military defense, but TR had seen that it would be contrary to his basic naval needs to open the canal to possible enemies and also wanted sole control, both of which points were conceded in the second treaty. Congress was willing now to go along with the canal project; the Nicaraguan route was abandoned; Cromwell's deal with the French was accepted—everything was ready. Colombia was offered ten million dollars outright and a quarter of a million a year for rent, when suddenly Bogotá changed its mind and demanded much more.

What happened now was that patience ran out. There was a feeling in our administration that the Colombian government was hopelessly corrupt and impossible to deal with. Bunau Varilla and Cromwell had their revolution ready in Panama; all they needed was help from the United States in blocking the landing of any Colombian troops sent to quell the rebellion. Was that not part of the long-accepted role of Uncle Sam in preserving order in the isthmus? Anyway, the landings were blocked, and with the loss of only one life, an innocent bystander. The Republic of Panama was promptly recognized and promptly established, and the way was clear for American engineers to start their huge and totally successful project of uniting the two oceans.

TR would again and again seek to justify his role in the whole business, not always to everybody's satisfaction. At the outset he wrote to his son Kermit: “Any interference that I undertake now will be in the interest of the United States and of the people of the Panama Isthmus themselves. There will be some lively times in carrying out this policy.” In 1911 he stated: “While I was president I kept my foot down on these revolutions [the sporadic Panamanian riots], so that when the revolution referred to did occur, I simply lifted my foot.” And in the usual fashion of his defense he lambasted the Colombians morally: “Panama revolted from Colombia because Colombia, for corrupt and evil purposes, or else from complete governmental incompetency, declined to permit the building of the great work which meant everything to Panama. By every law, human and divine, Panama was right in her position.” His action, he asserted, was only opposed by “a small body of shrill eunuchs who consistently oppose the action of this government whenever that action is to its own interests. Even though at the same time it may be immensely to the interest of the world.” His final blast was this: “To the worst characteristics of seventeenth-century Spain, and of Spain at its worst under Philip II, Colombia has added a squalid savagery of its own, and it has combined with exquisite nicety the worst forms of despotism and of anarchy, of violence and of fatuous weakness, of dismal ignorance, cruelty, treachery, greed, and utter vanity.”

Yet again in the year 1911, speaking in Berkeley, California, he made what some critics have deemed the ultimate confession. Referring to his having recognized the new government of Panama without waiting for Congress to be in session, he stated: “I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate.”

Perhaps Elihu Root, his brilliant secretary of war at the time, had the last word at a cabinet meeting in which TR undertook to explain just what he had done and why. Root, whose dry wit and acidity were appreciated by a chief who, despite his strong opinions, understood the importance of candor in his staff and could even laugh at it, concluded that before hearing the president's defense he had deemed him guilty only of seduction but he now saw him guilty of rape!

One of the several things that TR never forgave Woodrow Wilson for was the latter's action as president in apologizing to Colombia for our role in acquiring the Canal Zone and in persuading Congress to make a compensating grant.

How do we think of TR's action today? Should he have waited for further negotiations with Colombia? But even had Colombia agreed on a price for the concession, would it have been feasible to construct the canal in the teeth of Panamanian intransigence? Might they not have seen the waterway as enhancing their tyrant's power and prestige and sought to sabotage the work? TR saw his chance to improve world trade and render our fleet more formidable against an already menacing Japan at the price of giving independence to a small oppressed nation that passionately desired its liberty. And all at the price of a single life! When one thinks of what the United States has done in our time all over the globe to foment resistance to dictators, sometimes at a questionable gain either to us or to the people we aimed to help, it seems to me that one must think twice before calling TR an irresponsible imperialist.

The president took a broad view of his powers during the actual construction of the canal. If, as he once explained to his secretary of war, he should deem it best to place the three locks on the Pacific side at Miraflores instead of Sosa and dispense with the lake at Sosa by means of a broad sea-level channel, he would not hesitate to do so. But perhaps, he added with a caution always more visible in his acts than in his words, there should be added to the order the phrase “as recommended by the President and the Secretary of War,” to avoid giving some congressman who wished to hamper the construction the chance to yell about not having followed the instructions of the legislators.

Although no president had up until then left the continental limits of the United States while in office, TR could not resist his desire to see the great project actually under construction, and he and his wife sailed for Panama on the USS
Louisiana
escorted by two other battleships. It was heady business, and he wrote: “It is a beautiful sight, these three great war vessels steaming southward in close column, and almost as beautiful at night when we see not only the lights but the loom through the darkness of the ships astern.… It seems a strange thing to think of my now being President, going to visit the work of the Panama Canal which I have made possible.”

There was to be no nonsense, however, in Panamanian politics, however much that nation's independence had been recognized, that might interfere with the smooth working of the canal. In 1908, the last year of his second term, TR wrote sternly to Taft, then his secretary of war:

You are authorized to say to President Amador that the Government of the United States will consider any attempt at the election of a successor by fraudulent methods or methods which deny to a large part of the people opportunity to vote constitutes a disturbance of public order, which under Panama's constitution requires intervention, and this government will not permit the government of Panama to pass into the hands of anyone so elected.

Eight

John Morton Blum's careful study of TR's correspondence has made it clear how close a watch he kept on the appointments to state Republican committees and how deftly he constructed a personal organization within the party. As president he was always careful to consult the Republican senator of the state where any political appointment was to be made, but he also made sure it was understood that he was free to consult others as well. During his first term Senator Mark Hanna of Ohio, the old champion of McKinley, was still the dominant, or at least the rival, power in the party, and he had not only been opposed to Roosevelt but was known to be hankering for the next presidential nomination. TR's own fierce ambition for the same goal was accentuated by his distaste for owing his present elevation to an assassin's bullet; he yearned to be elected in his own right. After he had slowly but surely loosened Hanna's grip on the party, he was able to say, with a sigh of relief: “He has caused me a little worry but not much.” Hanna's premature death suddenly eliminated this threat, and TR and his running mate, Senator Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana, were easily nominated in the 1904 Republican convention and as easily elected the following fall. Running against a conservative Democratic candidate, Judge Alton B. Parker, Roosevelt polled 7.6 million votes, 56.4 percent of the popular vote to Parker's 37.6 percent, and swept the electoral college 336 to 140, carrying every state outside the South save the border state of Kentucky.

Industry and finance did not yet show the alarm about TR they were later to feel. Northern Securities had bothered them, but TR was still a Republican. Contributions to his campaign funds included $50,000 from Henry Clay Frick; $100,000 each from George J. Gould (son of Jay) and John Archbold (Standard Oil); and $150,000 from J. P. Morgan. The Republican treasurer, Cornelius Bliss, perhaps wisely, did not feel it necessary to inform the candidate of these.

TR, elated by his sweeping victory at the polls, felt at last that he had secured the confidence of the American people, and he became more open in the annunciation of his socially progressive principles, his “Square Deal,” as it came to be known. In his annual message to Congress in 1905 he called for a pure food and drug law, supervision of insurance companies, investigation of child labor, an employers' liability law for the District of Columbia, and suits against railroad rebates.

He also made a public pronouncement that he was later bitterly to regret: “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.”

Race relations occupy so much of our news today that it is natural to inquire what TR did about them. There is no question that he found any sort of racial or religious discrimination odious, but there was far less that a president could do about them in his day than in ours. Indeed, there was very little he could do. The South was solid in its determination to maintain segregation; states' rights were deemed sacred, and the North was indifferent. TR could only express his helpless indignation at the counting of Negroes as part of the voting population without allowing them to vote: “It is an outrage that this one man [Congressman John S. Williams of Mississippi] should first be allowed to suppress the votes of three black men, and then to cast them himself in order to make his own vote the equal of that of four men.” And he could only add, “To acquiesce in this state of things because it is not possible at the time to attempt to change it without doing damage is one thing. It is quite another to seem formally to approve it.”