An Unlikely Trust by Gerard Helferich

Author:Gerard Helferich [Helferich, Gerard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2017-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

Even as the president mulled his options, matters in Panama were taking their own course. As early as May 1903, a group of influential citizens in Panama City had begun plotting the state’s independence. Among those brought into their confidence was an American, James Beers, who was port captain and freight agent for the Panama Railroad. Beers apparently reported the group’s activities to his superior at the company, William Nelson Cromwell, who called him to New York for a consultation. In Panama, meanwhile, the would-be junta expanded to include other prominent members, several of whom also had ties to the railroad, including its chief physician, Manuel Amador Guerrero, who seemed eager to serve as the new country’s president. In July, the conspirators apprised several Americans of their plans, including Hezekiah Gudger, the U.S. consul; J. Gabriel Duque, owner of the Star and Herald newspaper; Herbert Prescott, assistant superintendent of the railroad; and William Murray Black, a major in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. On August 4, Beers returned to Panama and passed along Cromwell’s guarantee of aid. The plotters pressed ahead, and reports from Panama confirmed the growing likelihood of revolution.

In late August, Amador sailed for New York, hoping to secure more specific promises of help, including guns and money from Cromwell and military support from Washington. J. Gabriel Duque arrived on the same steamer, and during an extraordinary private meeting, Cromwell offered the newspaperman a loan of $100,000, to be used for purchasing arms and bribing the small Colombian garrison in Panama. Despite Duque’s American citizenship, the lawyer also reportedly offered him the presidency of the breakaway country. Then Cromwell telephoned the State Department and arranged a meeting between Duque and John Hay for the following morning. During the interview, Hay was careful not to commit his government, although he made it clear that the United States intended to build a canal in Panama regardless of any objections in Bogotá.

But Duque was not as sympathetic to the revolution as Cromwell, Hay, and the others supposed, and on leaving the State Department, he contacted the Colombian embassy and reported all that he had heard about the plot. Outraged, Ambassador Herrán wrote Cromwell, warning that Colombia would hold him and his clients responsible for any disturbance in Panama and implicitly threatening to cancel the Compagnie Nouvelle’s concession and to revoke its property rights. Shaken, Cromwell refused to meet with Amador again.

Alerted to events in New York, whether by Cromwell or some other source, Philippe Bunau-Varilla arrived from Paris on September 22. Two days later he met with Amador, who was still bewildered by Cromwell’s sudden coldness. Then on the morning of October 9, Bunau-Varilla was in Washington, paying his respects to an old acquaintance, Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Loomis, who was in charge of the department while John Hay spent some time at his summer home in New Hampshire. When Loomis offered to introduce him to President Roosevelt, ostensibly to discuss the long-running French political scandal known as the Dreyfus Affair, Bunau-Varilla eagerly accepted.

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