Theodore Rex (67 page)

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 battali
on 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:

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.

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 on the wall opposite his desk:

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.