Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [173]
One of their first official acts was to send Shaler a telegram warning him, in the strongest terms, “not to accede” to any request for transportation of the tiradores. “This act would be of grave consequences for the company you represent.”
KENNETH GRAHAME. Somerville and Ross. Conrad. Artemus Ward. Octave Thanet. Viljoen. Stevens. Peer. Burroughs. Swettenham. Gray. Janvier. London. Fox. Garland. Tarkington. Churchill. Remington. Wister. White. Trevelyan …
By the time Roosevelt tired of jotting, he had listed 114 author names. “Of course I have forgotten a great many.” His catalog did not strike him as impressive. “About as interesting,” he concluded, “as Homer’s Catalogue of the Ships.”
He dozed off several times as the train raced south. Night fell. The weather was still mild and clear. Democratic weather. Faceless stations whizzed by in the dark. Sooner than expected, Washington loomed ahead. At 8:14 he alighted at Sixth Street Station. A reporter pushed an election dispatch into his hand. He stopped and read it under the bright platform lights. The Republican Party had suffered a landslide defeat in New York.
Refusing comment, Roosevelt shook hands with the locomotive crew, then climbed into a waiting White House carriage. It rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue past the Evening Star and Post buildings, only half noticed by crowds peering up at giant, illuminated stereopticon screens. Preliminary polling figures alternated with celebrity portraits and comic “moving pictures.” By 9:00, Roosevelt had arrived in the West Wing telegraph room to check on further results. But Loomis was there with a cable that drove all thoughts of the election from his mind. It was Vice Consul Ehrman’s nervous message of five hours before. Now, Ehrman cabled again:
UPRISING OCCURRED TONIGHT, SIX. NO BLOODSHED. ARMY AND NAVY OFFICIALS TAKEN PRISONERS. GOVERNMENT WILL BE ORGANIZED TONIGHT, CONSISTING OF THREE CONSULS, ALSO CABINET. SUPPOSED SAME MOVEMENT WILL BE EFFECTED IN COLóN. ORDER PREVAILS SO FAR. SITUATION SERIOUS. FOUR HUNDRED SOLDIERS LANDED TODAY. BARRANQUILLA.
Roosevelt sent at once for his top State and Navy Department aides. Hay arrived within minutes, accompanied by Loomis. Moody was still out of town, so his second in command, Charles H. Darling, came instead, followed by Admiral Taylor, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and two assistant officers. A crisis conference began in the President’s office.
Ehrman’s “no bloodshed” was good news, and Arango, Boyd, and Arias seemed to be going about their business efficiently so far. But the presence of those soldiers in Colón was indeed “serious” (and would look even more so when Roosevelt found out there were five hundred, not four). The Nashville was so far the only American presence on either side of the Isthmus. Hubbard’s guns and Marines might, or might not, be enough to stop the government battalion from crossing over and quashing the revolution.
All the more reason, therefore, to keep Tovar’s troops on the Caribbean side. But “reason” of a legal nature must be found in the treaty of 1846. Roosevelt was aware that early in his own presidency, the State Department had blocked a shipment of rebel arms along the railroad, on the ground that they might be used to prevent further transport of anything. Could the same scruple now justify blocking a shipment of government soldiers, whose only mission was to maintain the integrity of the Colombian federation?
Apparently, it could. Roosevelt authorized a draft set of instructions for the Navy Department to set in cipher, and cable immediately:
For NASHVILLE. In the interests of peace do everything possible to prevent government troops from proceeding to Panama [City]. The transit must be kept open and order maintained.
Direct the ATLANTA to proceed with all speed to Colón.
Also the BOSTON [to Panama City].
Repeat all of yesterday’s orders.
Remarkable in this document