Theodore Roosevelt : a biography by Pringle Henry F. (Henry Fowles) 1897-1958

Author:Pringle, Henry F. (Henry Fowles), 1897-1958
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919, Presidents, Presidents, Presidents
Publisher: San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Published: 1984-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

ratification was possible. But when the American minister told Hay that a $10,000,000 payment to Colombia by the New Panama Canal Company would be sufficient, the Secretary of State answered that the United States could not "covenant with Colombia to impose new financial obligations on the canal company."

Roosevelt's letters offer further proof. "They are mad to get hold of the $40,000,000 of the Frenchmen," he wrote Hay on August 14, 1903, "and they want to make us a party to the gouge." In his final apologia, he wrote that the Colombians had "expected to get from us the $40,000,-000 we were to pay the French."

To save the money of the unidentified stockholders, whose names he did not know, Roosevelt made ready to seize Panama. He was not deterred by possible bloodshed or by the fact that the United States would violate the fundamentals of international law. His program was formulated very quietly.

Chapter VI t TOOK PANAMA

*

While Cromwell and Bunau-Varilla were busy with plans for a revolution in Panama in the summer and fall of 1903, President Roosevelt was giving consideration to a solution of his own. Virtuously, he "cast aside the proposition to foment the secession of Panama." The United States could not, "by such underhanded means," encourage a revolt against Colombia. The President admitted, however, in communicating these views to Dr. Albert Shaw on October 10, 1903, that he would "be delighted if Panama were an independent State." Roosevelt also told President Schurman of Cornell that "for me to announce my feelings would be taken as equivalent to an effort to incite an insurrection in Panama.

"If Congress will give me a certain amount of freedom and a certain amount of time," he added, "I believe I caD do much better than by any action taken out of hand."

Three days before the United States Senate confirmed the Hay-Herran Treaty in March, 1903, Roosevelt prepared for possible trouble with Colombia. He ordered Secretary of

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