Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [170]
A similar order went out to Hubbard’s fellow commanders on the Pacific side.
Darkness settled over Washington. Two thousand miles south, in a warmer twilight, the Nashville dropped anchor off Colón.
INSTEAD OF RETIRING with Edith after dinner, Roosevelt boarded a special sleeper to New York. It was his habit every election eve to head homeward to vote. He enjoyed the ritual. If Panama chose to revolt now, it would have to do it without him.
He was awakened at 6:00 to prepare for transfer across Manhattan. At the same hour in Colón, first light disclosed another overnight arrival in the harbor: the Colombian troopship Cartagena. While the President bathed and breakfasted, Commander Hubbard sent an inspector aboard the Cartagena and found her to be swarming with tiradores, select sharpshooters of the Colombian Army. None of them seemed to have a clear idea of why they had been sent to the Isthmus—only that they had been ordered by General Juan Tovar to debark quickly.
On shore, Chief Meléndez and other junta agents braced for trouble. Colonel James Shaler, the sympathetic superintendent of the Panama Railroad, agreed that at all costs the tiradores must be kept from crossing over to Panama City. Yet Commander Hubbard, inexplicably, raised no objection to the debarkation.
Hubbard’s problem was that he had not yet received his secret orders from Washington. He had no more clue than the captain of the Cartagena as to why he had been ordered back to Colón. At 8:20 A.M., therefore, the troopship nosed up to the Panama Railroad dock, and five hundred tiradores came ashore, bristling with weaponry.
Simultaneously, Roosevelt crossed the East River in bright fall sunshine. Behind him, the towers of Manhattan scintillated. Electoral bunting flapped in the streets, and huge crowds—too huge for Republican comfort—lined up to vote. At 8:30 he reached the Long Island Rail Road pier, settled into a waiting “special,” and its whistle blew for Oyster Bay.
Another, very short private train prepared to depart Colón for Panama City. Colonel Shaler had rigged it to accommodate the Colombian battalion’s sixteen senior officers. As he seated them, he explained that Governor Obaldía was anxious to see General Tovar as soon as possible. The tiradores would follow later in the day, as soon as more rolling stock could be procured. Shaler’s courtly urgency overcame Tovar’s doubts, and the train pulled out of the depot, leaving behind five hundred puzzled soldiers. The wooden houses of Colón slipped by at increasing speed. Jungle crowded in, and vegetation slapped at the sides of the car. Tovar and his aides rode over the saddle of hills Roosevelt wanted to divide, swaying in chlorophyllous gloom, suspended between two oceans.
THE PRESIDENT VOTED above Yee Lee’s Laundry in Oyster Bay at five minutes before ten. Then he drove out along Cove Neck for a quick look at Sagamore Hill. The big house was shuttered and dark, ghostly with sheeted furniture. A heavy fume of camphor balls discouraged entry. He walked around the estate, and noticed that the old barn, where he had romped with so many of his children, was beginning to give way. Two dogs greeted him; a third stared indifferently. Japanese maples trembled in full, scarlet leaf, but most other trees were bare, exposing a wider panorama of Long Island Sound than he had seen all summer.
“THE BIG HOUSE WAS SHUTTERED AND DARK.”
Sagamore Hill in winter (photo credit 18.1)
After about a half hour fighting desolate emotions, he returned to his carriage and was driven back to Oyster Bay station.
AS ROOSEVELT DID SO, Commander Hubbard agonized over yesterday’s orders, which had at last come through to the Nashville. He did not quite understand them, still having no knowledge of the prerevolutionary situation in Panama. The tiradores did not look like a “force with hostile intent,” now that they had lost their leaders. They squatted under the arcades