Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [181]
It was counsel like this that Roosevelt dreaded losing in the new year. “Whenever I see you or Root under the weather,” he told Knox, “I sympathize with Mr. Snodgrass when he beseeched Mr. Winkle for his sake not to drown.”
I AM ENABLED TO lay before the Senate a treaty providing for the building of the Canal across the Isthmus of Panama.
The section of the President’s Message that George Hoar had bridled at was read aloud to Congress on 7 December. Roosevelt wrote with evident confidence that Hoar’s colleagues would ratify the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, already endorsed (albeit angrily and reluctantly) by the Panamanian government.
He reviewed United States–Colombian relations since 1846, showing how successive secretaries of state had interpreted the old Treaty of New Granada, always in the interest of free, neutral transit across the Isthmus. He quoted Lewis Cass: “Sovereignty has its duties as well as its rights, and none of these local governments [should] be permitted, in a spirit of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of intercourse on the great highways of the world.” With no hint of irony, he also quoted William Henry Seward on the need of the United States to “maintain a perfect neutrality” in connection with political disturbances south of the border. He cited Attorney General James Speed’s opinion that Washington was obliged to defend the Isthmus “against other and foreign governments.”
For more than half a century, the United States had behaved honorably toward Colombians—favoring them, indeed, by electing not to dig in Nicaragua, and in drawing up the first canal treaty at their request. The Colombians had then repudiated it in such a manner as to make plain that “not the scantiest hope remained of ever getting a satisfactory treaty from them.” As a result, the people of Panama had risen “literally as one man.”
“Yes, and the one man was Roosevelt,” said Senator Edward Carmack.
The President proceeded with his usual list of local riots and rebellions since 1850. He noted that on ten occasions—four times at Colombia’s request—American soldiers had been obliged to protect transit, life, and property. He scornfully quoted yet another request, just received, for the United States to crush the Panamanian revolution, so that President Marroquín could declare martial law and approve the old treaty “by decree.”
Under such circumstances the government of the United States would have been guilty of folly and weakness, amounting in their sum to a crime against the nation, had it acted otherwise than it did when the revolution of November 3 last took place in Panama. This great enterprise of building the interoceanic canal cannot be held up to gratify the whims, or … the even more sinister and evil peculiarities, of people who, though they dwell afar off, yet, against the wish of the actual dwellers on the Isthmus, assert an unreal supremacy over the territory. The possession of a territory fraught with such peculiar capacities as the Isthmus in question carries with it obligations to mankind. The course of events has shown that this canal cannot be built by private enterprise, or by any other nation than our own; therefore it must be built by the United States.
The comments of congressmen afterward suggested that they were waiting to see how the American people reacted to the President’s Message. “I don’t know what’s in it,” said Representative William P. Hepburn of Iowa, dodging reporters.
Within a few hours, a largely favorable wind of opinion had begun to blow, and both parties adjusted sail. Senator