Authors: Edmund Morris
Theodore Rex (73 page)
Roosevelt turned to his two closest aides for counsel, and got only wisecracks. “
I think,” Philander Knox teased, “it would be better to keep your action
free from any taint of legality.” Elihu Root was even more sarcastic. “You have shown that you were accused of seduction, and you have conclusively proved that you were guilty of rape.”
Both men rallied behind him, however. Knox provided a written opinion, “Sovereignty over the Isthmus, as Affecting the Canal,” which showed that the United States had legal grounds for her recognition of Panama. And Root came up with an ingenious argument to protect recess appointments from Speaker Cannon’s forelengthening of Congress. Since the special session was by definition different from the regular, there must be a moment, no matter how infinitesimal, between them. This interval could be defined as a “constructive recess,” occurring neither before nor after but precisely
at
noon on 7 December 1903. As long as the President specified that time and date on all his commission sheets, he could reappoint Dr. Crum without Senate approval. Senator Tillman might fight the case all the way to the Supreme Court; in the meantime, Charleston would keep its black collector.
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 Hoar alone refused to join his Republican colleagues in supporting the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty. He cited the recent remark of another former Secretary of State, Richard Olney: “
For the first time in my life I have to confess that I am ashamed of my country.”
Roosevelt, congenitally unable to question the rightness of his own decisions, did not understand what Hoar and other moralists meant when they talked of “conscience” in foreign-policy making. If conscience was something more lasting than emotion, more flexible than intellect, he could do without it. He did not regret what he had done, because it was done. Second thoughts were like grief; they inhibited the vital onrush of life, of the world’s work. He only knew that opportunity—Senator Ingalls’s “master of human destinies”—had knocked unbidden at his gate:
It is the hour of fate
,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
,
Save death …
“
In this Panama business,” Roosevelt exploded to his son Ted, “the
Evening Post
and the entire fool mugwump crowd have fairly suffered from hysterics, and a goodly number of Senators, even of my own party, have shown about as much backbone as so many angleworms.” Quick to emasculate his critics, he dismissed the liberals of New York and Massachusetts as “a small body of shrill eunuchs.”
He kept such expressions private, yet the violence of his language betrayed fear that the eunuchs would revive his old reputation for impulsiveness. Since the
Northern Securities
suit, he had worked hard to persuade party professionals that he was both conservative and cautious. His impartiality in the coal strike, his quiet management of the Venezuela crisis, his voluntary abandonment of antitrust activities, his insistence on the open shop in government—these were hardly the policies of a radical. Yet here was Villard still berating him as “a rash young man,” and a Wall Street consortium pledging one million dollars to make Mark Hanna President of the United States.
The Republican National Committee was about to meet in Washington to make its first plans for 1904; then Philander Knox and attorneys representing the Northern Securities Corporation were to present their final arguments before the Supreme Court. Should either of these confrontations embarrass the Administration, Roosevelt’s hopes of another term could crash.
ON 9 DECEMBER
, Walter Wellman was admitted to the Executive Office and given a major scoop. He reported it the next day, in front-page articles in the Philadelphia
Press
and Chicago
Record-Herald:
Washington, Dec. 9
—President Roosevelt has refused to make peace with the trust and railway corporation leaders of New York. They approached the President with an offer to withdraw their opposition to him if he would give them certain assurances as to his future course. The President declined point-blank. Angered by this rejection … the big financiers started a last desperate movement designed to bring Senator Hanna forward as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President. This, too has failed. Mr. Hanna is not willing to become a candidate with the backing of Wall Street and the support of the Lily Whites of the South. These important disclosures,
which I am able to
make
on the highest authority
, explain much that has been going on above and beneath the surface during the past month.
Wellman said that the President’s importuners had represented J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, James J. Hill, and “the Rockefeller-Gould combination.” They were afraid he was a warmonger as well as a trustbuster: “
He might wreck the country any morning before breakfast.” Hanna, fortunately, was no alarmist. As for Roosevelt and Administration leaders, “they do not believe the judgment and level-headed common sense of the American people can be upset by such methods.”
The article, reprinted widely, was the talk of Washington on 11 December, when fifty-two Republican bosses convened at the Arlington Hotel. Hanna escorted them to the Green Room of the White House after lunch. “
Mr. President, I have the honor to present
en masse
the members of the Republican National Committee.”
He and Roosevelt stood side by side, with a mirror behind them, facing a semicircle of respectful faces. The committeemen could see the bald back of Hanna’s head in the glass, his arthritic stoop beside the President’s bursting virility. There was an awkward pause.
| HANNA | You had better pass around the room, Mr. President, and shake hands with each one. |
| ROOSEVELT | All right, I was just wondering which was the best way to get at them. |
| HANNA | You will have no trouble.… They are all anxious to see you. |
| ROOSEVELT | (bowing) I have sat at the feet of Gamaliel. |
Laughter warmed the room as he made his circuit.
Two days later, the committee came out of conference and expressed almost unanimous support for the President. As an endorsement, it was neither binding nor, indeed, expressed with any particular enthusiasm. But clearly Gamaliel had laid down his staff.
ON 14 DECEMBER
, Knox put on a brilliant performance before the Supreme Court. Edith Roosevelt was there to watch and listen for her husband, along with Lodge, Spooner, and Moody. The little Attorney General spoke calmly, piling premise upon premise with plump smacks of fist into palm. He argued that any obstruction to interstate commerce, “whether it be a sandbar, a mob, or a monopoly,” could and should be removed by the government. The Northern Securities Company was obstructive in that it had the effect, if not the technical title, of a “trustee arrangement” uncontrollable by individual states. Although the Justices listened impassively (Oliver Wendell Holmes
slouching, silky-mustached, on the extreme left of the Bench), most observers felt that Knox’s argument was unanswerable.
