Read Online Theodore Roosevelt by Louis Auchincloss - Free Book Online

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