David McCullough Great Moments in History E-book Box Set: 1776, The Johnstown Flood, Path Between the Seas, The Great Bridge, The Course of Human Events by McCullough David

Author:McCullough, David [McCullough, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

II

When Dr. Manuel Amador first landed in New York he had still to meet William Nelson Cromwell. Dr. Amador, whose full name was Manuel Amador Guerrero, was a leading physician and a popular figure in the social life of Panama City. His wife was the brilliant Maria de la Ossa and he himself was known as a man of “unblemished character,” large property interests, and much political acumen. Born in Turbaco (near Cartagena), Colombia in 1833–which made him just seventy in 1903–he was a graduate of the University of Cartagena who had come to Panama at the time of the gold rush. His political career as a Conservative had flourished along with his medical practice until 1867, when he was designated president of the Department of Panama, but did not take office because of a revolution. Defeated, captured by the opposition, he was sent into exile, not to return again for a year, at which point he went back to medicine at the Santo Tomas Hospital, where he became superintendent. It was as chief physician of the Panama Railroad, however, that Dr. Amador had attained most of his influence and prestige, as well as his interest in the canal. He had been among those prominent Panamanians to appear at the various occasions arranged to honor Ferdinand de Lesseps. When Lieutenant Wyse made his second journey to Bogotá in 1890 to secure an extension of the Wyse Concession for the court-appointed liquidator, the doctor was the head of a delegation of Panamanians who joined Wyse there to lobby in his behalf.

He was a neat, frail-looking man of medium height with thin white hair, a shaggy white walrus mustache, large ears, and heavy black brows, and he wore small steel-rimmed glasses. In his photographs at least, he seems to have had a habit of looking at people with his head cocked slightly sideways. He was also a man of nerve and ambition and he had come to New York to help arrange a revolutionary takeover at Panama.

The first known organized meeting of the movement had been held at a country estate outside Panama City on a Sunday late in July, probably July 25, 1903, a meeting at which Dr. Amador had not been present. Those who were there included his old friend Senator Jose Agustin Arango, Carlos Constantino Arosemena, and an American named Herbert G. Prescott, all of whom, like the doctor, were employees of the Panama Railroad and had been in regular communication with William Nelson Cromwell. Arango, a senator from the Department of Panama, was the railroad’s attorney on the Isthmus, its land agent and chief lobbyist; Arosemena was a staff civil engineer; Prescott was the assistant superintendent. Also present were the United States consul general at Panama City, Hezekiah A. Gudger, and two officers from the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the only American Army officers on the Isthmus, who had been sent by the Walker Commission, Major William Black and Lieutenant Mark Brooke. The complete guest list is said to have numbered twenty-five or twenty-six people and the hosts were Ramon and Pedro Arias.

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