Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [424]
147 Straus suggested TR, Letters, vol. 3, 648–49.
148 Roosevelt seized Ibid. “Your ‘covenant running with the land’ idea worked admirably,” TR wrote Moore on 12 Nov. 1903 (TRP).
149 That evening Story of Panama, 469; copy of Hay statement, 7 Nov. 1903, in TRP.
150 Professor John Bassett John Bassett Moore to Oscar Straus, 11 Nov. 1903; Straus, Under Four Administrations, 175. Notwithstanding accusations of unseemly haste, TR did not formally recognize Panama until 13 Nov. 1903. As Moore explained to the public, he at first “merely recognized de facto authorities on the spot.… It is not an uncommon thing to recognize and hold intercourse with such authorities, pending the determination of the question of formal recognition.” New York Evening Post, 11 Nov. 1903.
CHAPTER 19: THE IMAGINATION OF THE WICKED
1 A man can be Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, 179.
2 “This mad plunge” New York Evening Post, 7 Nov. 1903.
3 “It is the most” Ibid. It was probably around this time that TR, hearing that Villard was circulating a story about Kaiser Wilhelm’s ability to dismantle and reconstruct a complex Edison phonograph, ejaculated in his highest falsetto, “I wish that somebody would take Oswald Villard to pieces and forget to put him together again!” Villard, Fighting Years, 153.
4 “Nations must strike” Albert H. Walker to New York Evening Post, 10 Nov. 1903, copy in PCK. For modern historical comment, supportive of TR’s Panama policy in 1903, see also Collin, “Big Stick,” 302–6, 312; Friedlander, “Reassessment”; and Marks, Velvet on Iron, 97–105.
5 “Nothing that Alexander” Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
6 However, 75 Public Opinion, 19 Nov. 1903; Literary Digest, 21 and 14 Nov. 1903; Washington Evening Star, 6 Nov. 1903.
7 South American reactions “Latin American Views of Panama and the Canal,” Review of Reviews, Mar. 1904. See also John Patterson, “Latin American Reactions to the Panama Revolution of 1903,” Hispanic America Historical Review 24 (1944), and E. Bradford Burns, “The Recognition of Panama by the Major Latin American States,” Americas 26 (1969).
8 “We have converted” Article by “Santander A. Galofre,” ca. Dec. 1903, sent to Philippe Bunau-Varilla (PBV).
9 In Europe, as in The Times, undated clipping in John Hay scrapbook (JH); Leipzig Grenzboten, qu. in Literary Digest, 26 Dec. 1903.
10 A British visitor Henry W. Lucy, Sixty Years in the Wilderness (London, 1924), 214.
Historical Note: TR’s difficulties with public opinion in the aftermath of the Panama Revolution were complicated by a brief, but intense, war scare on the Isthmus. The concentration of United States warships continued as planned until, by 15 Nov., two walls of American armor effectively denied Colombia sea access to her former department. Panama City was defended by the Boston (7 Nov.), Marblehead (10 Nov.), Concord (10 Nov.), and Wyoming (13 Nov.). Several of these gunboats patrolled the new Republic’s coasts, extending the limits of protection to both eastern and western borders. Colombia, meanwhile, sent a special mission to Panama, under General Rafael Reyes, with a view toward settling differences and reuniting. The junta refused to let Reyes land at Colón, whereupon John Hay asked that he be given “a courteous reception and considerate hearing” offshore. On 19 Nov., Reyes met with junta representatives aboard a French steamer. He offered them many concessions humiliating to his government, but they declared the Panama revolution to be “irrevocable.” Reyes sailed north to plead, equally vainly, for an indemnity from Washington. On 3 Dec., reports that Colombian forces were advancing into Panama reached the White House. Secretary Moody ordered the Prairie from Guantánamo to Colón with a detachment of Marines to complement the Dixie’s. On 15 Dec., another detachment from the Atlanta tracked down a force of two thousand Colombian soldiers in Darien. Moody responded with further deployments.