Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [419]
This would appear to be damaging evidence that TR was dissembling when he stated in his Special Message of 4 Jan. 1904, “No one connected with this Government had any previous knowledge of the revolution [in Panama] except such as was accessible to any person of ordinary intelligence who read the newspapers and kept up a current acquaintance with public affairs” (TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 2, 743). But Bunau-Varilla, when shown the diary entry in 1913, remarked that “a few points … seem to have been confused in Mr. Bigelow’s memory.” He specifically disputed the allegation that Loomis and TR were fully informed of his revolutionary plans, and said that he had “strictly abstained” from giving any details that might implicate either himself or his listeners (Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen, 312).
As with the Venezuela episode, there seems to have been a concerted effort after the fact to create archival lacunae. Loomis’s normally copious correspondence with John Hay is purged between 17 Aug. 1903 and 31 Jan. 1904 in FBL. The papers of TR, Hay, and Moody are mysteriously quiet on all matters to do with the revolution. Amador’s unpublished memoir is remarkable for its deletions of what the author described as “political secrets” about the role played by the Roosevelt Administration (Story of Panama, 643). Fletcher saw many more documents than Bunau-Varilla was willing to deposit in his Library of Congress collection. Cromwell’s papers have vanished entirely; a small collection of his letters, once filed in the Miles P. DuVal papers at Georgetown University, have also disappeared.
TR’s own comments on the meeting suggest more self-control than Bunau-Varilla remembered, but confirm that a tacit message was sent and received.
36 “under proper circumstances” TR on 15 Sept. 1903, qu. in Moore, “Autobiography.”
37 In the same spirit TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628. TR also told Shaw that he had rejected as “underhand” a proposal in early September “to foment the secession of Panama.” He did not elaborate.
38 John D. Long could Quoted in Literary Digest, 24 Oct. 1903; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628–29, 631–32.
39 Another article Literary Digest, 3 Oct. 1903. See also Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 298–301.
40 demolished Watterson’s Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 299–301.
41 Watterson was reduced New York Sun, 28 Sept. 1903; Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 301.
42 MANUEL AMADOR GUERRERO Story of Panama, 29–30; Parks, Colombia and the United States, 135; Philippe Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB).
43 A more realistic Bunau-Varilla had been warned by Herbert G. Squire, an intimate of Mark Hanna, not to count on the President unless there was a revolution in Panama. “TR cannot go to the electorate with a record of having broken the law.” Philippe Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB). See also Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 312.
44 Amador said that Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 313.
45 “I can provide” Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 357; Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 135.
46 Downtown, as the Story of Panama, 282; Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 158.
47 YOUR VIRILE William Nelson Cromwell to TR, 14 Oct. 1903 (TRP).
48 BUNAU-VARILLA, having This section is based on Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 318–22. See also McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 354–55, and DuVal, Cadiz to Cathay, 310–11.
49 THAT NIGHT, two White House appointment book, 16 Oct. 1903 (TRP). Story of Panama, 367–68. See TR to Elihu Root, 14 Mar. 1903, and Samuel M. B. Young to Elihu Root, 24 Dec. 1903 (ER). The following account is based on Chauncey B. Humphrey, “History of the Revolution of Panama,” unpublished ms., 5 Jan. 1923, copy in the files of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, Oyster Bay, N.Y. Supplementary details from Story of Panama, 367–68, and Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 353–54. According to Humphrey,