Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [160]
Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of medieval Italy, and medieval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and wherever the tendency became a habit it invariably and inevitably proved fatal to the state.… There resulted violent alternations between tyranny and disorder, and a final complete loss of liberty to all citizens—destruction in the end overtaking the class which had for the moment been victorious as well as that which had momentarily been defeated. The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.
Uniquely, the checks and balances of American democracy worked to prevent any such lodgment. National unity was a moral challenge, rather than an economic one:
The line of cleavage between good and bad citizenship lies, not between the man of wealth who acts squarely by his fellow and the man who seeks each day’s wage by that day’s work, wronging no one.… On the contrary, [it] separates the rich man who does well from the rich man who does ill, the poor man of good conduct from the poor man of bad conduct. This line of cleavage lies at right angles to any arbitrary line of division as that separating one class from another, one locality from another, of a man with a certain degree of property from those of a less degree of property.
A civilized commonwealth, enjoying “the true liberties which can only come through order,” depended on square dealing between representatives of capital and labor. Just as the former had accepted a limited degree of public scrutiny, so must the latter face up to their own public duty. In any recession acerbated by strikes and union violence, “the first and severest suffering would come among those of us who are least well off at present.”
William Jennings Bryan would not have used the last two words. It was little touches like that—innocent, optimistic—that endeared Roosevelt to his audiences, even when he was trying to be severe.
BY MID-SEPTEMBER, predictions of Panamanian independence were being published almost daily in American and European newspapers, and voiced aloud even in Bogotá. Isthmian delegates to the Colombian Congress began to pack their bags and head for home. Senator José Domingo de Obaldía called out to the secretary of the American legation, “We’ll meet within a few weeks in the new Republic of Panama.”
Desperate to keep Colombia intact, President Marroquín ignored Obaldía’s open rebelliousness and appointed him Governor of Panama. Tomás Herrán, in Washington, was reminded of Spain’s panic just before the loss of Cuba. Only a last-minute ratification of the treaty, he cabled his minister, could save Colombia now. Otherwise, the Colossus of the North would “indirectly” favor the coming revolution, and would doubtless jump to recognize an independent Panama. “President Roosevelt is a decided partisan of the Panama route, and hopes to begin excavation of the canal during his administration. Your excellency already knows the impetuous and vehement character of the President, and you are aware of the persistence and decision with which he pursues anything to which he may be committed.”
Proposals for a “resumption of negotiations” came by return of wire. Some last-chancers in the Colombian Senate were under the impression that the United States would pay forty million dollars, rather than ten, for canal rights, in exchange for a legislative finding that canceled the Compagnie Nouvelle’s extended concession. Hay ignored this transparent attempt at fraud.