The Panama Canal – Part 2: I Took The Isthmus

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Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.

Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network; and as always, I’m your host, Zach Cornwell.

You are listening to Part 2 of a multi-part series on the construction of the Panama Canal. I say “multi-part” series because I don’t actually know yet how many installments there will be; but in all likelihood, we’re looking at a 3, maybe 4-parter, depending on how close to the present day we dare to drift.

But before we proceed into the next chapter of this weird & wonderful story, let’s quickly remind ourselves on the major beats of last episode, so we’re freshly equipped with all that important context.  

In Part 1, we met some fascinating and tragic figures, but the main character in the story of the Panama Canal….is Panama itself. For most of human history, the razor-thin isthmus separating the Atlantic and Pacific was a vital crossroads of Central American culture. As Elias Marlowe writes:

“The Isthmus of Panama was a bustling, populated land. Estimates of the population vary wildly, from 200,000 to as high as two million people. It was a landscape of dozens of competing chiefdoms, large and small, each with its own territory, alliances, and enemies. They lived in villages of thatched-roof houses, cultivated fields of maize, and fished the rivers and coasts. Their leaders were adorned in brilliant gold, their shamans communed with a world of powerful animal spirits, and their warriors engaged in ritualized conflict. It was a world with a deep and complex history, a dynamic and living place that was utterly unprepared for the cataclysm that was about to unfold.”

The cataclysm in question, of course, was the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16^th century. With their galleons, gunpowder and taste for gold, the conquistadors made quick work of the Panamanians, aided and reinforced by invisible battalions of smallpox microbes. By the 1520s, the Spanish crown fluttered over the isthmus, and the European world had discovered a potential path between the world’s oceans. Although, to quote the great British humorist Oscar Wilde, America was never “discovered”, it was merely detected.

Semantics aside, Panama clearly represented an enormous opportunity. If someone could figure out how to bridge the gap, to dig a channel across the isthmus, maritime society would be completely transformed, and the world economy would reap the rewards.

Well eventually, about 300 years after the Spanish first waded ashore, that special ‘someone’ finally came along. He wasn’t Spanish, British or even American. He was French: The entrepreneur extraordinaire, Monsieur Ferdinand de Lesseps.  

De Lesseps had some experience in constructing paradigm-shifting canals. In 1869, he famously completed the Suez Canal in Egypt, cementing his reputation as a mover of men and a maker of dreams. It was such a tremendous achievement that the British, France’s eternal rival, fumed over the fact that THEY had not been the one to build an Egyptian canal. As one newspaper put it:

“The Suez Canal should have been constructed with English capital and by English energy; and we, as a nation, have little reason to thank the diplomatic authorities and the scientific experts who kept on assuring us, year after year, that the scheme was an absurdity…. If M. de Lesseps had not been a man of the stuff and stamp of which all great inventors are made, if he had not toiled on to the attainment of his end in spite of every hindrance, the Suez Canal would now exist only on paper…. The recollection of the period when our public men pooh-poohed the very notion that the canal could ever be anything other than a colossal folly ought surely make us somewhat sceptical of the assertion still frequently made, that when the canal is completed it can be of no practical use…. The opening of the new water highway between the East and the West will mark an era in the annals of humanity.”

In short, Ferdinand De Lesseps was clearly a man to bet on, no matter how crazy the scheme might sound. The Hero of Suez, as he came to be known, could’ve hung up his hat and spent the rest of his life in comfortable veneration, but for a man like that, retirement is death, and you’re only as good as your next big win.

Like an aging athlete hoping for one more championship ring, or a celebrated film director grasping for one last masterpiece, the temptation of yet another moment in the sun was impossible for de Lesseps to resist/ignore

So, in 1881, when de Lesseps formed a private company and announced that he would be building a new canal in Panama, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for the first time in history, the optimism was infectious. Bankrolled by middle-class and blue-collar French shareholders, the de Lesseps Syndicate set sail for Panama with high hopes and even higher interest rates.  

But plans for any Panama Canal – French or otherwise - were knee-capped by one crucial problem: Panama itself. From the climate to the wildlife, every part of the isthmus seemed intent on pushing the Europeans out like a splinter. To their shock and dismay, the French discovered that Panama was nothing like Egypt. As historian David McCullough writes:

At Suez the digging had been mostly through sand. The climate at Suez had been hot, but dry; the climate at Panama, eight months of the year, was not only hot, but heavy, smothering, with a humidity of about 98 percent. At Suez, […] the annual rainfall at Suez had been about nine inches. At Panama the annual rainfall could be measured in feet, not inches; ten feet or more on the Caribbean slope, five to six feet at Panama City. Suez was as flat as a tabletop, with a maximum elevation along the canal line all of 50 feet above sea level. Panama was covered with steep little mountains, and the maximum elevation on the canal line would prove to be 330 feet. There was the Panama jungle. And there was the Chagres River, which still stood directly in the path of the canal. “

The terrain was daunting enough, but the real killer, the thing that truly doomed the French project from the start, was disease. Mosquito-borne illnesses like Yellow Fever and Malaria absolutely decimated the workforce, killing and crippling hundreds – if not thousands - of workers every year. As historian Daniel Immerwahr wryly observes: 

“It was a known bug: humans didn’t travel well. Take them from one part of the planet to another and their typical response was to get sick and fall down.”

Even the project’s Chief Engineer, Jules Dingler, was not immune from the predations of disease. In less than a year, his entire family – his wife, his son, his daughter, his daughter’s fiancé – had all died from Yellow Fever.

Meanwhile, ballooning costs and systemic corruption took their toll, and back home in France, shareholder confidence began to collapse. Piece by piece, dollar by dollar, death by death, time chipped away at the project. To quote the French author Victor Hugo: “Great blunders are often made, like large ropes, of a multitude of fibers.”

In the end, Ferdinand de Lesseps Panama project unraveled. As David McCullough writes:

“The extraordinary venture had lasted more than a decade. It had cost, according to the best estimates, 1,435,000,000 francs—about $287,000,000—which was 1,000,000,000 francs more than the cost of the Suez Canal, far more in fact than had ever before been spent on any one peaceful undertaking of any kind.”

And all that money, all that ambition, went to rust on the isthmus. According to Elias Marlow:

A ghost fleet of dredges, steam shovels, and locomotives was abandoned to the jungle, which immediately began to reclaim the scarred landscape.

And that, folks, is where we left off last time.

This time, in Part 2, we’re moving into a new and diplomatically turbulent phase of the story. As the United States of America sets its star-spangled crosshairs on the isthmus, our cast will dramatically expand to include a whole host of morally dubious and rhetorically gifted players. Senators, soldiers and saboteurs; Drifters, grifters and revolutionaries. All sorts of people, with all sorts of motivations, who all want a piece of Panama.

So, with that prologue done and dusted, let’s break out the can of bug spray, put on our hiking boots, and head back into the jungle.

Welcome to The Panama Canal: Part 2: “I Took The Isthmus”

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It’s September 6^th, 1901.

12 long years after the collapse of the French Syndicate.

We, however, are stateside, in the city of Buffalo, New York.

In modern times, Buffalo is mostly known for chicken wings drenched in a neon orange hot sauce. But 125 years ago, the city had a very different claim to fame. In the fall of 1901, Buffalo, New York is home to the Pan-American Exposition.

PAN-AMERICAN EXPO

In common parlance, the Pan-American Expo is a ‘fair’ – with exhibits, performers, attractions and distractions. A perfect way to spend a summer day. But don’t be fooled, my friends – the Buffalo Expo is no quaint county fair with dunking booths, clowns and corn dogs. This is something else entirely. The fairest fair of them all. Something truly, undeniably historic.

Conceived as a towering showcase of American technological progress and a tribute to “Western” civilization, the Pan-American Expo has lured in almost 8 million visitors during its six-month run. More than 40,000 tickets torn every day. 50 cents for adults, 25 for the kiddos. As historian Scott Miller writes:

It was a portrait of America in the Gilded Age. Women in full-length skirts and tight-fitting corsets in the fashion of the iconic Gibson Girl shaded themselves with parasols. The men, seeking relief from the sun with jauntily perched straw boaters [hats], fingered coins deep in their pockets, confident in their jobs. Children in sailor suits skipped and laughed and pulled their parents along as fast as they could. The smoky aroma of grilling bratwurst, the echo of chirping piccolos and booming tubas, the bellow of an elephant, all signaled they had nearly reached the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901.

And once inside those gilded gates, all these visitors are in for quite the experience.

As birds soar on summer thermals, and the fluffy white clouds part, the full extent of the Pan-American Expo comes into view. Spanning 350 acres in upstate New York, the organizers of the Exposition have constructed a sort of miniature city, with flowering gardens, picturesque promenades, and over 100 colorful buildings packed with sights and delights for all ages.

Rainbow City, the newspapers call it.

Unfolding your paper map of the Expo, it would’ve been hard to decide where to start. There were, after all, so many ways to “Do the Pan”, as the advertisers liked to say. You could head over to the Ethnology Building and catch the Apache Indian show (performed by real Apaches!) Or you could swing by the Machinery Building and learn about the the latest advances in gas, steam and hydraulics.

“Visitors marveled at every sort of attraction,” writes Scott Miller, “a mock Japanese village, a Trip to the Moon exhibit where midgets served green cheese, and, of course, the pachyderm (or elephant), a nine-ton specimen decorated by Queen Victoria for its service with the British army in Afghanistan.”

And if you managed to keep your energy up and stay until the sun went down, you’d be treated to very special display. At night, all the buildings would blaze to life with electric light, courtesy of energy produced by nearby Niagara Falls.

MEETING MCKINLEY

But today, on September 6^th, 1901, the most exciting attraction, the one people have been lining up for all day / since the gates opened, is at the Temple of Music, a gorgeous dome-shaped building daubed in Easter Egg shades of pink, gold and mint green. Today, at 4pm, visitors to the Expo will get the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to personally meet the President of the United States of America.

That’s right folks, for one day only, President William McKinley himself is Doing the Pan, and he wants to shake your hand.

Somewhere in the Temple of Music, surrounded by a phalanx of shifty-eyed Secret Service agents, President McKinley cracks his huge knuckles / straightens his tie / and prepares to meet a few hundred of his 76 million constituents.

For most career politicians, mingling with the masses is a chore, an obligation of the office. But not for William McKinley. The President / He likes people - and not just the ones that voted for him. He likes being around them, talking to them, kissing their babies and hearing their stories. In Washington, even the most cynical political operators had to admit that he was “a sweet man”, in possession of what one historian called “unfailing affability.”

That disarming personality is what got him elected to the Presidency in 1896, and got him re-elected in 1900. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he looked pretty good on a poster. As Miller writes: “At fifty-eight, McKinley was still handsome enough for his looks to be a campaign asset.”

In short, this is the kind of President that people get very excited to meet.  So, naturally, by the time McKinley squeezes his barrel frame into pinstripe trousers and a frock coat, there’s already a line out the door. In politics, the humble handshake is an art form unto itself, and over the years McKinley has honed his technique down to a science. According to Miller:

“He perfected his own handshake, the “McKinley grip,” to prevent cramping. When confronted with a long reception line, he made a point of extending his hand first and clasping the other’s fingers so he couldn’t be squeezed back. Then he would grab hold of his visitor’s elbow with his left hand and deftly move him along, clocking up to fifty people a minute.”

With so many people to meet today, time is of the essence; so, at 4PM sharp, McKinley nods to his Secret Service detail and says “Let them come”. And to the President’s delight, the people have come in droves to see him today. He especially enjoyed seeing children in the line, fidgeting impatiently. As Miller continues:

“To every child, the president bent over, shook hands warmly and said some kind words,” wrote a young newspaper reporter, John D. Wells. One boy broke from his mother’s hand to dash to the president’s side. His horrified mother arrived seconds later but McKinley, who loved children, brushed off the breach of protocol and complimented the boy’s enthusiasm.”

By 4:07pm, McKinley has been shaking hands for seven minutes, around 200 people at his normal rate of play, and yet, the line just keeps getting longer. Then, the President turns to face the next person in line, a thin young man with brown hair parted to the side and a dimpled chin to match his own. McKinley extends his right hand, but instead of shaking it, the young man jams something covered in a white handkerchief into the President’s ribs.

Then, a couple of firecrackers go off. Two loud pops, one after another.

A bit early for fireworks, McKinley thinks. Then he feels the heat on his skin, smells the stink of gunpowder, and sees two little red roses blooming on his shirt.

Suddenly there is screaming and shoving and scuffling. Shouts of “Get the gun! Get the gun!” and “The President has been shot!”.

Through the red haze, swaying and clutching his chest, McKinley sees a crowd of civilians and Secret Service men tackling the young man to the ground. Then they are kicking and punching and striking and turning that dimpled chin into a mess of black and blue. Just before he passes out, the President manages to wheeze one last executive order:

“Don’t let them hurt him.”

President William McKinley died 8 days later on September 14^th, 1901 of an infection caused by the assassin’s bullet. The triggerman, the nation soon found out, was a 20-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz (Shell-gosh). From his prison cell, a bruised and bloodied Czolgosz made his motivations abundantly clear:

“I don’t believe in the Republican form of government, and I don’t believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them. […] I killed President McKinley because I done my duty. I don’t believe in one man having so much service, and another man should have none.”

Well, despite the young assassin’s best hopes, the United States did not slide into anarchy after McKinley died. That’s the thing about American presidents. You can kill ‘em / When one dies, we always have a spare lying around somewhere, just in case. The Oval Office has an understudy - and the show must always, always go on.

So, with William McKinley dead, who would inherit the mantle of Commander-in-Chief? Who, overnight, just became the most powerful man in the Western hemisphere? Well, to many people in Washington, the answer to that question was quite alarming. As one Ohio Senator reportedly said at the time:

“Now look! That damned cowboy is President of the United States.”

The cowboy in question, of course, was McKinley’s Vice President, a 42-year-old firebrand named Theodore Roosevelt.

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TEDDY

Normally when we meet a new character on this show, I like to spell out their name so you can sort-of mentally map it and remember the person a bit easier. But in this case, that feels a little unnecessary. Because everyone has heard of Teddy Roosevelt.

At the mere mention of the name, a very specific image probably strides into your mind’s eye. Huge white teeth. Little round glasses/spectacles. A walrus mustache – and something about speaking softly and carrying a big stick.

Teddy Roosevelt – or “TR” to his friends - was as interesting a person as you will ever find in American politics. More than a century after his death, he is still venerated as one of the most impactful, magnetic and controversial men to ever sit in the White House. In high school, I had a history teacher who talked about Teddy Roosevelt the way women talk about Brad Pitt or Pedro Pascal.

Yes, to this day, there’s just something about TR that continues to fascinate.

And in the twisty, serpentine story of the Panama Canal, he has a huge part to play.

And it all started the day his boss died.

When two .32 caliber bullets buried themselves in President William McKinley’s chest in September 1901, Teddy Roosevelt was serving as his Vice President. And when McKinley expired a week later, Roosevelt placed his hand on his heart and promised to fairly and faithfully inhabit the highest office in the land. He was – and remains – the youngest person to ever become President. And although his first few weeks in the White House should’ve been black with grief, TR could barely suppress his enthusiasm. As one contemporary journalist wrote:

“He strode triumphant among us, talking and shaking hands, dictating and signing letters, and laughing. Washington, the whole country was in mourning, and no doubt the president felt that he should hold himself down; he didn’t; he tried to, but his joy showed in every word and movement. […] No man ever had a better time being President.”

Teddy Roosevelt emphatically believed in the Great Man theory of history. Specifically, that he was the next one. As a sickly little boy in upstate New York, Young Theodore decided early on that he was destined for great things, frail physique and severe asthma be damned / notwithstanding.

“As his five-dollar name suggests,” writes Daniel Immerwahr, “Roosevelt was the scion of the Atlantic elite. He was born into the New York aristocracy—his father helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History. Educated at Harvard and a rising star in the world of reform politics, “Thee,” as he signed his letters, was as pedigreed an eastern thoroughbred as the country could produce. Yet there was something of the western mustang in him, too. In 1883 Roosevelt left New York for Dakota Territory, where he established a ranch on the border of the Badlands. There, he threw himself into frontier life with a convert’s zeal. […] He lived in a log cabin. For four years, punctuated by trips back east, Roosevelt felled trees, rounded up bandits, hunted, and braved the elements. His friends included the Wild West showman Buffalo Bill Cody; Pat Garrett, the man who shot Billy the Kid; and Seth Bullock, the famous sheriff of Deadwood.”

In so many ways, Roosevelt was a little boy’s idea of what an American man should be. He could ride a horse, split a log, shoot a bear at 20 yards, and be back at the house in time to discuss military history over a glass of brandy and a dinner he killed himself.          

Yes, to TR, life was one big safari, and he racked up accomplishments like trophies in a hunting lodge. Over the span of just 15 years, he served as a New York state representative, a Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, a Colonel in the Army, the Governor of New York, and finally in 1900, Vice President of the United States.

And in between all of that, he still made time for pillow fights with his kids./ small children.

Suffice to say, Roosevelt was a political wild card, and an extremely ambitious one at that. And when he assumed the role of President in the wake of McKinley’s assassination, many people were very anxious about what kind of President this human tornado was going to be. What was his agenda? What were his priorities? What did he want to do?

Well, unsurprisingly, Roosevelt had some very specific ideas about the future trajectory of the United States.

SEA POWER

Somewhere in the Library of Congress, there is a faded black & white photograph of Teddy Roosevelt, taken sometime during his first term. It shows the President standing tall and upright, left hand in his pocket, right hand leaning on a globe of the world, big as a workout ball. We’re told it was one of his favorite possessions.

The only disappointing thing about this globe - at least in Roosevelt’s mind - was that all the spaces on it were completely filled in. By the dawn of the 20^th century, there were no more wild places, no more frontiers left to explore. Every corner of the world had been tamed, claimed, and named. As Daniel Immerwahr writes:

“For industrializing societies, the nineteenth century had been one of relatively easy expansion. The United States spread west, Russia spread east, and the European powers turned south, toward colonies in Asia and Africa. Yet by the century’s end, it looked finished. Indian Country had been ground down to a small nub, Africa was carved up, and even the Pacific islands, save some in the far south, were under the flag of distant governments. Add into the accounting such areas as Latin America, the Middle East, and China, which had been partitioned into spheres of influence and commercial control, and it was hard to see where future expansion might take place. “The world is nearly all parceled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and colonized,”

lamented the British arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes. The global frontiers had been closed.”

But as Roosevelt paced back and forth in his office like a caged tiger, stopping occasionally to spin his globe, a powerful thought popped into his brain. Not an original thought, exactly - but powerful, nonetheless: All the greens and browns and beiges on his globe were carved up and spoken for…but the blue spaces – the oceans and the seas – those were still wild and free. As wild as the West ever was.

If the United States was going to become a great power – not just a regional power, but a real global power…it needed to be a sea power. As Roosevelt said at the time:

“We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond.”

And like so many sparks of Presidential genius, that idea could be traced to something someone else had said many years before. To a book that he had read.

Teddy Roosevelt had always been a voracious reader, supposedly capable of devouring two books in a single day. But of all the tomes Teddy made a meal of, one of his absolute favorites was a book called The Influence of Sea Power by Captain Alfred Mahan of the US Navy War College. The book was as dry as the sea was wet, but its core ideas kindled a fire in Roosevelt’s imagination. As David McCullough helpfully summarizes:

“By tracing the rise and decline of past maritime powers, he [Mahan] had arrived at the extremely simple theory that national greatness and commercial supremacy were directly related to supremacy at sea. This, he declared, was the towering truth of history.”

Of course, Roosevelt thought. It made perfect sense! Athens, Carthage and Rome. Venice, Byzantium and Great Britain. What did all of history’s great empires have in common? They were all killers on the high seas, able to project overwhelming military/naval force far beyond their own shores. And America, Roosevelt believed, needed to do the same.

There were many actionable conclusions in Captain Mahan’s book, but one of the most important was the idea that in order for the United States to truly establish itself as a maritime power, it needed to link its Atlantic and Pacific coasts with some kind of waterway. And the only way to do that, was to build a canal in Central America.  

A US-controlled, inter-ocean waterway was not only a strategic opportunity, Roosevelt realized, it was a national security imperative. >>What were to happen, for example, if the United States got itself into a shooting war with a seafaring foreign power? How would America be able to move its warships between its far-flung coasts and reinforce itself in naval engagements? Would the US Navy have to spend its existence in perpetual bifurcation?

Well, if anyone doubted the theoretical case for an inter-ocean canal when Mahan’s book was published in 1890, its strategic necessity was amply demonstrated in the real world 8 years later. In 1898, during William McKinley’s first term, the United States got itself entangled in a hot war with that Sick Man of the Caribbean, the Spanish Empire.

It began as most wars do – stupidly.

In February of 1898, a US warship called the USS Maine mysteriously exploded off the coast of Cuba, which by that point was the last Caribbean colony rattling around in Spain’s tin cup. More than 250 American sailors were killed in the blast, the Spanish were promptly blamed, and employing some very creative usage of question marks and the passive voice, American newspapers were sounding the horns of war. Among the loudest of the hawks in McKinley’s administration was Teddy Roosevelt himself, who at that time was serving as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

Well, by the summer of that year, American shells were flying over just about every patch of territory the Spanish had left outside of Spain, from the Philippines and Guam in the Pacific, to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. The story of the Spanish-American war is a saga unto itself – one we do not have time for today – but one particular incident from the conflict is especially relevant to our story. As Matthew Parker writes:

At the beginning of the conflict, the United States’ most powerful battleship, the Oregon, stationed in San Francisco, found herself marooned far from the action. The vessel was ordered to proceed at once to the Atlantic, a 15,000-mile course around the Horn. Sixty-seven days later, its heroic progress followed daily by the press, the warship arrived to join the decisive Battle of Santiago Bay.

The demonstration of the military significance of a shortcut through an isthmian canal could have been made to order. “The construction of such a maritime highway,” proclaimed McKinley at the end of 1898, “is now more than ever indispensable.”

And when McKinley was assassinated in 1901, the conviction to build an inter-ocean canal did not die with him. In his new office in the White House, President Teddy Roosevelt traced a finger over his favorite globe, eventually coming to a halt on the little ribbon of land separating the Atlantic from the Pacific: Central America.

As President, the ongoing prosperity and security of the United States was his responsibility, and an inter-ocean canal was vital to those ends. They’d done without during the Spanish-American war, but the Spaniards were pushovers, imperial fossils that crumbled at a touch. God forbid a real threat came along and a warship like the Oregon was trapped on the other side of the continent, unable to join the fight. No, America needed a canal, and it needed one sooner rather than later. As the Panamanian writer Ovidio Diaz Espino writes:

“With an Isthmian canal allowing easy access to the Pacific, Roosevelt concluded, the United States could become the strongest nation in the world.”

But talking about building a canal, and actually pulling it off, were very different things. How many French skeletons, Roosevelt wondered, were buried in that jungle? How many excavators and tractors and train cars were strewn across the isthmus, covered in rust and creeper vines, standing like the ominous ruins of some dead civilization. That puffed-up old charlatan, Ferdinand de Lesseps, had thrown every bit of muscle and money he could find at the dream of a Panama Canal. He’d conned half of France into putting up their life savings, and still the Syndicate had failed.

But why had they failed? Teddy wondered. Corruption, incompetence, disease – the downfall of De Lesseps was well documented. If the United States was going to succeed where the French had not, they needed to be much, much smarter about this than their Gallic cousins. And frankly, Roosevelt spun his globe, was Panama even the right spot/location/place for a canal?

Many people in Congress believed that it was not. For years, a powerful faction in the Senate had been advocating for a route that didn’t go through Panama at all. The best location for a Central American canal, they insisted, was not Panama, but Nicaragua, its neighbor two doors to the North.  

Nicaragua, its proponents in Congress said, had none of the baggage that Panama did. Nicaragua was geographically girthier sure -a few hundred(?) miles wider, and would therefore require a longer waterway to bridge the oceans, but it was clean, politically stable, and relatively free of infectious disease. But best of all, it was not Panama. Pestilential Panama, the Nicaragua faction sneered, was damaged goods. A glorified graveyard for the engineering class of France.

And so, as Roosevelt settled into his new role as President, his mind turned like a furnace over the question of the canal. And meanwhile, in the echoey alcoves of the US Senate, alliances were forming, allegiances were shifting, and money was changing hands.

That America would build a canal was certain. But its ultimate location was still up in the air.

Would it be Panama, or Nicaragua?

As 1901 became 1902, the stage was set for what came to be known as “the Battle of the Routes.”

--- MUSIC BREAK ---

It’s Wednesday, June 4^th, 1902.

About nine months after William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York, and Teddy Roosevelt took over as President.

We are in Washington DC, the capitol of the United States.

With a Commander-in-Chief as garrulous as Teddy Roosevelt, the White House is usually swarming with reporters and newspapermen, all fishing for a soundbite from the famously entertaining President. But today, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is enjoying a rare reprieve from its journalist infestation. Because today’s big story isn’t at the White House; it’s two miles down the road on Capitol Hill, where reporters from every rag in town are pushing and shoving to get a good seat in the hallowed halls of Congress.

This afternoon, there’s going to be a big debate in the Senate.

Debate, of course, is the cornerstone of any functioning democracy – and a quite few malfunctioning ones too. Because sometimes the only way to get anything done is to put everyone together in a room, and shout at each other until a compromise which satisfies no one is reached. As Winston Churchill supposedly quipped, “Democracy is the worst form of government. Except for all the other ones.”

And so, 90 senators from all 45 states have gathered in this cavernous chamber for a healthy exchange of ideas and insults. In their three-piece suits and black top hats, they’ve come from all across the American continent – from big-city fiefdoms like New York and Massachusetts, to industrial hubs like Ohio and Illinois. Even stage-coach country is represented here, by Senators from Wyoming, Nevada and the Dakotas.

But the focal point of this fracas, the center of gravity for today’s debate, is the senior senator from the great state of Alabama, a human stick of dynamite by the name of John Tyler Morgan. That’s M-O-R-G-A-N, Morgan. Looming under his peers in a wool coat and a Southern scowl, one of the most powerful Senators in Washington is preparing himself for battle.

John T. Morgan is no stranger to battlefields, of course. 40 years earlier, during the American Civil War, he’d served as young cavalry officer in the Confederate Army, cleaving Yankee dogs from neck to navel with his Alabama-forged saber. But despite his best efforts, the North had won that war, (to the ruin of his kith and kin) and the only weapon Morgan wielded these days, at the age of 77, was a razor wit. As David McCullough writes:

His sense of humor was a bit like that of Mark Twain, whom he resembled to a degree. “A lie,” he [Morgan] was once heard to declare on the floor of the Senate, “is an abomination unto the Lord and an ever-present help in time of need.”

But today, Morgan is not here to tell lies; he is here to illuminate the blessed truth. As his staff and attendants whisper updates in his ear, Morgan prepares to deliver the most important speech of his life. In just a few minutes, he’s going to stand up on that ‘ol dais and tell his fellow Senators why they should – no, why theymust – vote in favor building an inter-ocean canal not through Panama, but through Nicaragua.

For almost two decades, John T. Morgan had been strongly advocating for a Nicaragua Canal. It is no exaggeration so say he’d made it his life’s mission. As the Chairman of the Senate Committee for Interocean Canals, known more commonly as the “Morgan Committee”, he was, writes David McCullough, “the ultimate authority on the subject.”

But why, you might ask, would an Ex-Confederate Alabama Senator care so much about a canal through Nicaragua? Did it really matter where a canal was built, as long as it connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans? Well – yes.  As McCullough continues:

“Several of [Morgan’s] strongest arguments for a Nicaragua canal were avowedly provincial. An ocean passage at Nicaragua would mean a return of prosperity to the South. A Nicaragua canal would be closer to any American port than would a canal at Panama, but a Nicaragua canal would also be seven to eight hundred miles closer to the Gulf ports of Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston than to New York or Boston. He foresaw his native southland fronting on one of the world’s principal sea lanes and every Gulf port a major coaling station. World markets would open for southern lumber, southern iron, cotton, manufactured goods. It was a position that made him extremely popular at home.

Morgan also believed the Nicaraguan route to be superior: it was closer to the United States; it offered the lowest pass anywhere on the cordillera of Central America; it provided as much as one hundred miles of navigable lakes and rivers; and it was a more stable country than Colombia, which had been ravaged by a fifty-year-old civil war. Furthermore, unknown to the public, Morgan had an interest in the Maritime Canal Co. In short, building the Nicaragua Canal had become the centerpiece of Senator Morgan’s career.”

Yes, to John T. Morgan and dozens of other Senators, both North and South, the merits of a Nicaragua Canal were obvious. And yet today, its future hangs in the balance, threatened by a competing vision, a shadowy alliance of fixers and foreigners known collectively as “the Panama Lobby.”

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As Morgan straightens his bow tie and strides up toward the podium, there is a jerky/lurching anger to his movements. The fact that he has to give a speech about this at all is not only annoying, it is patently absurd. Six months ago, this was not a controversial issue at all. No one with two brain cells to rub together doubted the superiority of the Nicaragua Route.  

“At no point,” writes Matthew Parker, “had the Panama route been considered a serious option. The scandals in Paris, the well-publicized attrition from disease, and the seemingly insuperable engineering and political problems had given Panama a distinct odor of failure. […] Nicaragua, on the other hand, was seen as a clean slate—free of the taint of poisonous European influence.”

“By the start of 1902 not a single politician of importance had ever declared himself in favor of a Panama canal,” writes McCullough, “The idea had no constituency, whereas the enthusiasm for Nicaragua, within Congress and without, appeared to be overwhelming. Any ordinary citizen who dared even to suggest that perhaps the French had picked the best place after all, or that a Panama canal ought not be dismissed out of hand because it was a French idea or because it would be a Panama canal, spoke virtually alone.”

But then, something had changed.

Someone (or several someones) had started making the rounds in Washington, greasing palms, bending ears, and forcefully advocating for the long-reviled Panama route. In a matter of months, as if by magic, this mysterious, furtive lobby had almost single-handedly resurrected the Panama issue, destabilized the national consensus on Nicaragua, and endangered John T. Morgan’s life’s work.

Senator Morgan, it was widely known, was not the kind of man whose work you endanger. “To cross him in any fashion,” writes McCullough, “was considered extremely dangerous.”

So, who would do such a thing? Who would dare to cross blades- figuratively or otherwise - with the one of the most powerful men in the Senate, the ex-Confederate officer from Alabama? Well, on June 4^th 1902, as 89 senators and a few hundred spectators wait for Morgan to speak, the leathery old Southerner’s eyes flick up towards the gallery, searching for the author of his irritation.

You’re up there somewhere aren’t ya? he thinks. Listening, planning, plotting.

Where are you, you swindler, you con-man, you goddamn lobbyist?

Where are you, Monsieur Phillipe Bunau-Varilla? (Boo-No, Vuh-ree-ya)

THE LOBBYIST

Lobbyists are an indigenous form of life in American politics. They have been [t]here from the very beginning. Because wherever there are politicians making laws, there will always be people slipping money into their pockets and ideas into their heads about how exactly to make them.

In the modern day, we have lobbyists for just about everything. Pharmaceuticals, tech firms, and trade associations. Silicon, soy beans and cigarettes. And 125 years ago, in Morgan’s time, it was no different. There were lobbyists for the railroads, for steel. For tobacco, labor unions and emerging technologies like automobiles. All trying to cut deals with sympathetic Senators and sway the law in their favor.

And in 1902, into this crowded marketplace of ideas, stepped one especially talented lobbyist. A man by the name of Phillipe Bunau-Varilla. Next to Teddy Roosevelt, this guy is probably the most important character in this stage of the Panama Canal story.

If he handed you his business card– and he most certainly would have within seconds of meeting you – you would’ve seen his name printed in curly black script. B-U-N-A-U (Bunau) hyphen V-A-R-I-L-L-A (Varilla).

Is that French? you might ask.

It most certainly is, mon ami. But please, you can call me, Phillipe.

Last time, in Part 1 of this series, we spent a lot of time in French company. The French Company, to be precise, Ferdinand de Lesseps ill-fated Panama Syndicate. Well in 1893, after the syndicate collapsed into bankruptcy and scandal, many of its former executives were compelled by the French courts to purchase heaps of the now-worthless stock and become what is called “penalty shareholders”. As punishment for your business misdeeds / mercantile corporate sins, you will, by court order, purchase tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock that will never, ever rise in value - ever.  (Unless, of course, you can find some new sucker to pawn it off to)

And one of these penalty stockholders, condemned to financial purgatory, was our new acquaintance, the lobbyist Phillipe Bunau-Varilla.

B-V had not always been a lobbyist – he had once been an engineer, one of the hundreds of young men who had followed the Hero of Suez into the Panama misadventure. During his time on the isthmus, Bunau-Varilla saw more death than any one person should. He watched fellow engineers die twitching from Malaria or get crushed in sudden rockslides. But against all odds, Bunau-Varilla survived the ordeal and returned to France, only to be saddled with a bunch of worthless stock and zero chance of recouping his losses. At just 29 years old, his life seemed to be over before it even began.

But contrary to those unfair stereotypes about the French, young Phillipe was not ready to surrender just yet. He was fully committed to the dream of a Panama Canal, down to his Parisian bones. A true believer, as they say. The great Ferdinand de Lesseps had started the project, but now, with the Hero of Suez returned to the dirt, someone else needed to finish it.

10 long years they had toiled in that jungle. 22,000 dead. Over a billion francs spent. It could not all be for nothing. Their sacrifice had to mean something.

And so, [like the last priest of a fallen religion,] Phillipe Bunau-Varilla resolved to raise the Panama Canal from the dead.

As causes go, it wasn’t exactly hopeless. There was still 40(?) [a quarter] million dollars’ worth of infrastructure on the isthmus – train tracks and workshops and warehouses; Worker barracks, dredges and half-finished excavations. A little rusty, sure. A little moldy. But there was value there – a foundation, something to build upon. All we need, Bunau-Varilla told his fellow penalty shareholders, is a buyer.

If he could find someone to purchase the remnants of the disgraced Syndicate, not only would he relieve his own dire financial situation, he would redeem the dream of Ferdinand de Lesseps. He would uphold and preserve the honor of France. Maybe in few decades, they would be erecting statues to the “Hero of Panama” - one Phillipe Bunau-Varilla.

But first, he needed to find a /that buyer.

The most obvious (and really only) potential customer for the Syndicate’s assets was the United States. For better or worse, Uncle Sam owned the Western hemisphere, and if a Panama Canal was ever getting built, the Americans would be the ones to do it.

The only question was…how was he going to sell it to them? Bunau-Varilla knew that he couldn’t just waltz up to Capitol Hill and convince the Federal government to write him a check. Almost everyone in Washington was predisposed to a canal route through Nicaragua; Existing infrastructure or not, Panama was seen as a dead end. 

As Bunau-Varilla freely admitted in his memoirs, the task before him was “apparently impossible. It was nothing more nor less than to change the settled opinion of eighty million people.”

Somehow, he needed to hack through the bureaucrats like so many jungle vines and get to the man in charge. And in 1902, the man in charge was President Teddy Roosevelt.

So, Bunau-Varilla got to work.

With the help of the Syndicate’s connections on Wall Street – bankers and lawyers who saw dollar signs in this young man’s future – Bunau-Varilla made inroads into the outer peripheries of Washington’s political elite. He attended the right fundraisers, loitered in the right hotels, and got himself invited to the right parties. In his own words, he was “attacking the political fortress.” And to his own delight, Bunau-Varilla discovered that he had quite a knack for this kind of schmoozing, not unlike his hero, Ferdinand de Lesseps. As Matthew Parker writes:

“The Frenchman seemed a strange, exotic creature, with his theatrically impeccable manners, grandiloquent gestures, large head, and moustache waxed to two fine points, but his passion for Panama was plain.”

Dinner by dinner, handshake by handshake, the lobbyist built support for what he called “The Great Idea of Panama”. A key breakthrough in Bunau-Varilla’s charm offensive came when he won over Republican Senator Mark Hanna, a powerful ally of the Roosevelt administration. In the Frenchman’s retelling of the exchange, Senator Hanna literally said to him: “Mr. Bunau-Varilla, you have convinced me!” Of course, it didn’t hurt that the French Syndicate’s lawyers had recently made a $60,000 contribution to Hanna’s re-election campaign.

And yet, for all Bunau-Varilla’s lobbyist machinations, at the start of 1902, Congressional support still seemed firmly entrenched around the idea of Nicaraguan Canal, rather than a Panamanian one. The leader of the Nicaragua faction, the old Ex-Confederate John T. Morgan of Alabama, had an eagle’s grip around the votes he needed. The prevailing opinion, writes Matthew Parker, was that “there was a hole in Panama into which a lot of French money had been sunk, and that no canal would ever be possible there.”

But the biggest setback to Bunau-Varilla’s lobbying efforts occurred when, according to Matthew Parker: “

The United States signed a canal convention with the Nicaraguan government, and on January 9, 1902, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly backed a new bill from Congressman Hepburn appropriating $180 million for the construction of a Nicaraguan canal and sent it on to the Senate. In Washington the Panama venture was now being described as “a worthless ditch.”

To most rational observers, it looked like a foregone conclusion. Senate confirmation of the bill, locked into compliance by Senator Morgan of Alabama, would be a simple formality. The Panama Lobby, it seemed, had been defeated, and Bunau-Varilla’s dream was poised to die a second death. Even the American press seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion. As David McCullough writes:

“Cartoons in the papers showed the gates to Nicaragua swinging wide open, as a jaunty Uncle Sam marched through with pick and shovel.”

But then, a trumpet sounded on the horizon, and a very unexpected, very powerful ally came to Bunau-Varilla’s aid. The same man who had chased down bandits in the Dakotas and charged up hills in Cuba, was now riding to the defense of the Idea of Panama.

President Teddy Roosevelt had entered the fray.

All the lobbying Bunau-Varilla had been doing had somehow percolated back to the President and convinced him of the superiority of the Panamanian route. In all the books I’ve read about this, most historians treat Teddy’s heel turn as a sort of historical mystery. No one knows for sure exactly why, when or by whose words Roosevelt was convinced, but at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. The President was for Panama! And Phillipe Bunau-Varilla was ecstatic.

In the spring of 1902, Roosevelt began leaning hard on his fellow Republicans in the Senate. As the leader of this grand ‘ol party, he barked through his walrus mustache, I want this to happen. And so, gentlemen, by God, you will make this happen. Like obedient mastiffs, they bolted out the door, and started whipping the votes to defeat the Nicaragua faction.

THE GREAT DEBATE

Suddenly, what had seemed like a forgone conclusion was once again an open debate.

In his office across town, Alabama Senator John T. Morgan was so angry, he could’ve snapped his cane over one knee. Although he would’ve probably preferred to snap it over the head of that cowboy, that preening peacock prick of a President. After years of careful work and thoughtful advocacy for Nicaragua, this up-jumped understudy was going to ruin everything, all on the advice of some French fop and his Wall Street gargoyles.

Nicaragua was supposed to be the South’s salvation, a long-overdue reparation for that ruinous war that had gutted Dixie’s economy and chapped its pride. An economy built on the backs of 4 million slaves, granted - but that was neither here nor there.

It would come down, ultimately, to a majority vote in the Senate. And Morgan would do everything in his power to nip this Panama fantasy in the bud before it ruined not only the South, but the entire country along with it.

And so, on June 4^th, 1902, John T. Morgan of Alabama takes center stage in the Senate chamber, clears his throat, and makes his case. As David McCullough writes, quoting Morgan periodically:

Morgan called the Panama plan “a job which has disgusted France… until she had shuddered like a sick baby at the enormity of the villainies perpetrated by her own people.” The entire affair had been “gangrene with corruption.” The so-called New Panama Canal Company, were words spoken as though they had an unpleasant smell. The company’s assets and franchises were held to be virtually worthless, its stockholders little better than common thieves. Its officers were paid schemers and to be trusted under no conditions. These people, Morgan warned, had no intention of finishing the canal; their present efforts in Panama were a thin sham; their only objective, their only reason for existence, he insisted, was to sell their poisonous junk heap to the United States.  […] Nicaragua, by stunning contrast, was […] a sunny, hospitable land much favored by fortune. Nicaragua would be a fresh start.

Panama, declared the old Senator at length, was “death’s nursery”; those who wished “to touch that thing” might go ahead and do so.

Morgan closed with an appeal for an act of kindness, as he said, for his beloved South. “… I would brighten that land with the bloom of prosperous industry, and bring back to my brethren the consciousness that they live and move in the current of human affairs. I hope to see the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea… as busy with commerce as the bay of San Francisco.”

He had spoken for some two and a half hours and he had made no mention of engineering considerations.

The next day, the Panama faction delivered its rebuttal. Senator Mark Hanna, whom Phillipe Bunau-Varilla had personally lobbied and recruited, hauled his rotund frame to the dais and gave the speech. Although, everyone knew that Hanna was just a mouthpiece./ Hanna’s speech was an act of political ventriloquism As John T. Morgan murmured to his allies, Hanna might be talking, but it was Roosevelt who was speaking. As paraphrased and summarized by McCullough, Hanna said:

We have passed the experimental stage. We have passed the sentimental stage, we want the best route, we want the best canal, we want a canal to serve the needs of the entire world, we will build not just for today or next year but for all time. “It is the great, broad, liberal American policy for which we stand in the building of a world canal. I sympathize with all those who in other days, laboring for an isthmian canal, had but one star to guide them—Nicaragua—and who must now naturally feel like giving up an old friend to pass it by. But in this age of progress and development, the American people are looking to Congress to answer to them on this question without regard to sentiment….”

Panama is the place to build the canal for the following reasons. One: A Panama canal would be 134.57 miles shorter, terminal to terminal. Two: It would have considerably less curvature. Three: The time in transit, by steam, would be less than half that at Nicaragua—twelve hours against thirty-three. Four: Panama requires fewer locks. Five: Panama has better harbors. Six: Panama is “a beaten track in civilization.” Seven: Panama has a railroad “perfect in every respect.” Eight: A Panama canal will cost less to run. Nine: “All engineering and practical questions involved in the construction of the Panama canal are satisfactorily settled and assured….”

It was, by all accounts, a hell of a speech, considered easily the best Mark Hanna ever made in his career.  Many a backslap landed on the Ohio Senator as he sank back into his chair. And yet, for all his eloquence, it was still not enough. As Senatorial staffers and reporters whispered back and forth, it became clear that the Panama Lobby still did not have the votes to defeat Morgan’s coalition.

Panama had its merits, sure, but by all objective measures, Nicaragua was still considered the ideal location for an inter-ocean canal.

And that is when the French lobbyist, Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, was struck by a lightning bolt of inspiration. A “stroke of genius,” according to one historian. They were going about this all wrong, Bunau-Varilla told his allies. We’re trying to make Panama look like a better option; what we should be doing it making Nicaragua look a worse option. Thankfully, Mother Nature herself had recently provided evidence for this argument.

On paper, Nicaragua was a great option.

But it had one very large, very loud flaw: It was riddled with active volcanoes.

Unrolling a map of Central America, Bunau-Varilla explained to his cohorts in the Panama Lobby that Nicaragua had not one, not two, not three, but EIGHT active volcanoes dotted across its land area like a bad case of acne. And best of all, the Frenchman grinned, one of them had very recently exploded. As Ovidio Diaz Espino writes:

“All the documents and speeches that Bunau-Varilla and Cromwell (a Wall Street ally) had prepared in favor of Panama could not match the effect of one incredible occurrence. On May 6, Mount Pelée in the South Pacific exploded and buried the island city of Saint-Pierre, leaving only one survivor (out of 30,000 people). The disaster sent shudders throughout the world. Every nation, including the United States, sent relief shipments.

Bunau-Varilla immediately seized upon the disaster for his advantage. He had been preaching the dangers of volcanic dangers in Nicaragua as early as 1892, and this supposed danger had been a recurrent theme in his speeches in 1901. He sent every senator a well-crafted pamphlet: Look at the coat of arms of the Republic of Nicaragua; look at the Nicaraguan postage stamps. Youthful nations like to put on their coats of arms what best symbolizes their moral domain or characterizes their native soil. What have the Nicaraguans chosen to characterize their country on their coat of arms, on their postage stamps? Volcanoes!

A few weeks later, “Protecting Divinity” intervened with yet another well-timed occurrence. On May 14, a cablegram from New Orleans announced that (the volcano) Momotombo had violently erupted on the shores of Lake Managua (In Nicaragua), and that it had destroyed the wharves of the railroad’s Pacific terminus.”

Bunau-Varilla was overjoyed. It was as if God himself had personally reached down from Heaven to give the Panama Lobby the a public relations victory at its moment of greatest need.

“What an unexpected turn of the wheel of fortune!” Bunau-Varilla wrote later. “If not the strongest of my arguments against Nicaragua, at least the most easily comprehensible of them was thus made a hundred times more striking…”

For John T. Morgan, it was absolutely terrible timing. As one journalist observed:

“Now “even the mountains of Nicaragua are enlisted in the alleged conspiracy to defeat the great purpose of Senator Morgan’s life.”

Predictably, John T. Morgan and the rest of the Nicaragua faction did what US Senators tend to do when presented with incontrovertible evidence, they denied it ever happened / existed. From the dais, Morgan thundered that this was all a just a shameless ploy from the Panama Lobby, a fictional story meant to poison the discourse.

“I do not care to approach the discussion of this important measure in a cloud of volcanic smoke and ashes which the opponents of the measure outside of the Senate have brought as a funeral pall to place over it.”

Santos Zelaya, The President of Nicaragua, not wanting his country to lose out on a lucrative opportunity to host an American canal project, even crafted a fraudulent cable denying that any eruption took place:

THE NEWS PUBLISHED ABOUT RECENT ERUPTIONS OF VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES IN NICARAGUA ENTIRELY FALSE.

See? Morgan smirked, Fake news. But in those rosy days of shared objective reality, not even a practiced fabricator like the Senator from Alabama could convince people to disbelieve their own eyes and ears. Morgan was misinformed. Momotombo had in fact erupted, no matter how badly the Nicaragua faction wished otherwise.

But the coup de gras to the great debate was delivered on Monday June 16^th when Phillipe Bunau-Varilla orchestrated an ingenious public relations stunt. He arranged for every single US senator to receive a gift. A little visual aid, you might say. To drive the point home and inflame that little seed of doubt buried in every Senators mind. Three days before the big vote, they all received an official postage stamp from Nicaragua, which featured, wouldn’t you know it, a giant smoking volcano looming over a waterway.

It was, writes Anthony Burton, “not the best advert for a spot in which to build a canal.”

You see gentlemen?, Bunau-Varilla thumped the table, despite what the Mr. Morgan and the Nicaraguans say, this is clearly a country where volcanic eruptions are so common they put it on their stamps. To build a canal there would be a reckless mistake. You know what you have to do. And on June 19^th, 1902, they did it. One by one, 90 senators cast their votes, and when the results were read aloud, Senator John T. Morgan of Alabama could’ve climbed over the table and throttled the French lobbyist with his bare hands.

“The vote was 42 to 34,” writes David McCullough, “Panama had won by eight votes. So had there been a difference of just five votes, the result would have been a Nicaragua canal.”

As he watched his dream curl up die on the floor of the Senate, John T. Morgan rued the day and cursed his enemies: Bunau-Varilla, Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Hanna and all the rest. But he had to admit, it was almost funny. After years of hard work and careful planning, the Nicaragua faction had been licked by a stamp.  / In an astonishing twist of fate, the Nicaragua faction had been licked by a stamp.

Back at the White House, a Presidential aide burst into Teddy Roosevelt’s office and told him the good news.

It was official. An American inter-ocean canal would be built.

And it would be built in Panama.

With the votes counted, the bill passed, and the national debate settled, all that was left to do now was contact the Colombians.

Congratulations, amigos. You have been graciously selected by the United States of America to participate in this great endeavor in your sovereign territory. Just sign right here, we’ll cut you a little check and then we can get to work. If you wouldn’t mind, go ahead and put some champagne on ice for us.

But to Teddy Roosevelt’s surprise and fury, the Colombians had other arrangements in mind, and they were not going to be as compliant as he hoped.

--- MUSIC BREAK -----  

It’s November 3rd, 1903.

About a year and a half after the victory of the Panamanian Lobby in the United States Senate.

Today, we are 2,000 miles due south of Washington DC, in the balmy, sun-dappled capital of Panama province. Last time we were in Panama City, if you recall, it was serving as the Pacific-facing headquarters of Ferdinand de Lesseps’ doomed Syndicate, swarming with Jamaican workers, French engineers, and a small battalion of entrepreneurial prostitutes to keep them satisfied. Every day, trains crisscrossed the isthmus like colossal centipedes, carting away the malarial dead and bringing in fresh, enthusiastic bodies to replace them.

But that was almost 20 years ago.

To the barefoot children running through the streets and sword-fighting with sticks, the French Syndicate might as well be an ancient myth or a ghost story. Something the adults do not like to talk about. The fabled French venture was supposed to change Panama for the better, to inject money and commerce and opportunity into their littler corner of the world. Instead, it had puffed up all their hopes, then sank like a souffle, leaving Panamanians with nothing to show for 10 years of hard labor. As Elias Marlow writes:

“The collapse of the French canal venture in 1889 plunged the Isthmus of Panama back into the familiar state of economic depression and political neglect from which it had been so violently roused. The rusting machinery in the jungle and the silent, empty barracks were monuments to a shattered dream.”

And yet, life goes on

On this humid morning in 1903, the residents of Panama City skitter to and fro about their business, not bothering to glance up at the flag snapping and fluttering in the wind above the town square. It is a colorful flag, with three horizontal stripes – yellow, blue and red. The primary hues of their primary sovereign, Colombia, ruling from the mountain capital of Bogota, 400 miles away.

Looking up at that flag, his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword, is a Colombian military officer named General Esteban Huertas. That’s H-U-E-R-T-A-S (Huertas)

At just 27-years-old, Huertas is very young to be General, but to be fair, he’d been serving in the Colombian Army for most of his natural life. His career in the military started when he was just 9-years-old, tapping out rhythms as a regimental drummer boy; and in the intervening 18 years, a series of well-deserved promotions had made him the highest-ranking officer in Panama. Although that was a bit like saying you’re the most cheerful person at a funeral.

Compared to the ballrooms of Bogota, the Panamanian isthmus is a provincial backwater, a place where careers go to die. But General Huertas doesn’t mind. He’s made a home for himself here, befriended his neighbors, married a good woman, even popped out a few kids. Truth be told, he feels more Panamanian than Colombian at this point.

Which is, he realizes, the exact root of his current problem. As Huertas looks up at the yellow, blue and red, snapping in the breeze, that identity crisis is at the forefront of his mind. Because today, November 3^rd, 1903, Huertas has to make a big decision.

He has to decide whether or not to betray his country and participate in a revolution.

When people think about revolutions, they usually envision something like what happened in France and America in the 18^th century, or Russia and China in the 20^th. Huge, violent uprisings wreathed in gunfire and cannon smoke, worthy of a 20-foot oil painting. But the revolution brewing in Panama in the fall of 1903, was something much more discreet.

CONSPIRACY

Ever since Panama had been absorbed by the nation of Colombia in 1821, the population of the isthmus had been chafing under Bogota rule. The Colombians did not respect them or value them or even consider them real countrymen – they simply tolerated their Panamanian cousins, the way a landlord tolerates a tenant. Just pay your rent, be quiet, and keep requests to a minimum, please.

And so, by 1903, after 82 years of this, the Panamanians were itching for independence. But illegally seceding from a sovereign nation is not as easy as sending a breakup text. Just ask the Confederate States of America. Colombia, the Panamanians knew, would never willingly grant them their independence. Not in an era when national prestige was measured in territorial possessions. Canal or no canal, the isthmus was too valuable a piece of land to ever let go of.

And if Panamanians did somehow manage to secede and declare independence, that freedom would be short-lived. Colombia would just send a military expedition to recapture the isthmus, tear up the new Constitution, and hang their leaders like horse thieves.  

No, the Panamanians realized, they needed to build support. Both at home, and abroad. In hushed drawing rooms, sipping brandy by lamplight, a small circle of conspirators hatched a plan. A daring scheme to pry Panama from the Colombian vise-grip. And a linchpin of their hypothetical scheme was the aforementioned Generalissimo, the military man gone native, 27-year-old Esteban Huertas.

Approaching Huertas was a huge risk for the conspirators, of course. By all accounts, the General was a brave, dedicated and loyal servant of the Colombian government. Anyone who doubted his patriotism need only be referred to the wooden prosthesis he wore on the stump of his right arm. Many years ago, while fighting rebels in the jungle, the lower part of Huerta’s arm had been blown off by an overheated cannon, and gangrene had taken the rest up the shoulder. In short, Esteban Huertas had lost a limb for Colombia, so it was assumed by many that he would never betray his country.

But the conspirators had a hunch about Huertas. That maybe, for the right price and the right promises, he would throw his lot in on a crazy scheme. And so, they rolled the dice, knowing very well that Huertas could have them arrested and hanged for treason if he wanted to. In hushed tones and careful language, they told Huertas about their plan to liberate Panama.  

The origins of the plot, they whispered/explained, could be traced back 18 months ago, to when the United States Senate had passed the bill to construct a canal through Panama.

TEDDY AND REGIME CHANGE

On that fine day in June of 1902, Teddy Roosevelt gathered his cabinet like vassals to a victorious warlord. The President was a man who could smile with his molars, and he was grinning ear-to-ear as they discussed next steps for an American Panama Canal.

All that’s left to do now, Mr. President, said Secretary of State John Hay, is to draw up a treaty. A little paperwork for the Colombians to apply their Juan Hancock to. As Elias Marlowe writes:

The diplomatic machinery moved quickly. On January 22, 1903, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and the Colombian chargé d'affaires in Washington, Dr. Tomás Herrán, signed the Hay-Herrán Treaty.

It granted the United States a 99-year lease on a six-mile-wide canal zone in exchange for a one-time payment of $10 million and an annual payment of $250,000. The U.S. Senate ratified it swiftly. The fate of the canal, and of Panama, now rested with the Colombian Senate in Bogotá. The view from the high Andes, however, was very different from the view from Washington. The treaty was deeply unpopular in Bogotá. It was seen as a national humiliation, an infringement on Colombian sovereignty that gave away a vital national asset for a pittance.

[…] On August 12, 1903, the Colombian Senate unanimously rejected the treaty. They hoped to negotiate a better deal, perhaps waiting for the French concession to expire in 1904 so they could sell the rights themselves.”

On the floor of the Colombian congress, the rejection of America’s treaty was seen as an act of righteous defiance against a regional bully. We may be small, the Colombians were saying, we may be poor, but we are not pawns. Who are you to tell us what we should and should not do with our sovereign territory? Look, we want a canal, same as everyone but if you think you’re going to get it for a song, you can take that big stick and shove it. As Ovidio Diaz Espinio writes:

“Colombia’s best course of action would be to delay negotiations for a year. At that time, Colombia would take control of the $200 million French investment, only two—fifths completed, and sell the concessions to the United States for $25 million (compared to the 10 America was offering). The country needed money badly, but the government decided to hold out for more.”

> 

Some Colombian diplomats, however, were wary of provoking the United States, and understandably anxious about where this game of chicken might lead. No less a power than Spain had very recently discovered that crossing swords with Uncle Sam was a dangerous thing indeed. As the Colombian ambassador to Washington wrote at the time:

This uncle of ours can settle it all with a single crunch of his jaws. The desire to make themselves appear as the nation most respectful of the rights of others, forces these gentlemen to toy a little with their prey before devouring it....”

Well, as you can imagine, the diplomatic rebuff from Bogota did not sit well with President Teddy Roosevelt. Who were they, he shouted, to reject our treaty, offered in good faith? To stand in the way of progress? The Colombians were selfish, short-term thinkers, Roosevelt raged. And for what? So they can squeeze a little more money out us? As Marlowe continues:

The news of the rejection sent President Roosevelt into a fury. He saw the Colombians not as sovereign legislators but as corrupt obstructionists trying to blackmail the United States. He famously railed against the "contemptible little creatures in Bogotá," and the "homicidal corruptionists" who stood in the way of civilization's progress. Roosevelt was not a man to be deterred by diplomatic niceties.”

As Roosevelt told hold his Secretary of State:

“… It seems that the great bulk of the best engineers are agreed that that route is the best; and I do not think that the Bogotá lot of jack rabbits should be allowed permanently to bar one of the future highways of civilization… what we do now will be of consequence, not merely decades, but centuries hence, and we must be sure that we are taking the right step before we act.”

Peering down at the great wooden globe in his office, Roosevelt weighed /contemplated his options. There’s more than one way to skin a jack rabbit, he knew, but some are messier than others.

The first and most obvious option was the time-honored American tradition of gunboat diplomacy. We sail down there, fire off a few shells, and scare them into lifting up their skirts. The Colombian military wouldn’t last 72 hours against the full might of the American navy, but even for a direct man like Roosevelt, it seemed like a somewhat clumsy solution. Besides, the press would rake him over the coals for it.

The second option was to call the whole thing off. To put Panama out to pasture and revert back to Plan B: Nicaragua. But for the President, that simply would not do. Bending to a bunch of Third World extortionists would be seen as a retreat. – and Teddy Roosevelt never, ever retreated. Not unless there was a good photo op in it for him.

Well, for Roosevelt, the choice between a diplomatic slog and a splendid little war was no choice at all, and so the President cheerfully informed his Cabinet to begin drawing up war plans for an invasion of the Panamanian isthmus. We tried being nice, he said, we tried doing it the easy way, but if they’re going to be difficult, we’ll do it the hard way.

However, on October 10^th, 1903, a third option knocked on the door of the Presidential office. Rising to his feet, Roosevelt smiled, stuck out his hand and placed it into the perfumed grip of everyone’s favorite lobbyist – Phillipe Bunau-Varilla. Impressing a man’s man like Teddy Roosevelt was no easy feat, but Bunau-Varilla instantly struck the President as a stone-cold killer. A bullet shrimp in a three-piece suit. Later in life, Roosevelt recalled that the notorious Frenchman had “the eyes of a duelist”.

TRIGONOMOTRY

Since his spectacular public relations victory over the Nicaragua faction in the Senate the previous year, Bunau-Vanilla had been riding high. In a stroke, he had ensured the creation of the Panama Canal, salvaged the dignity of France, and secured his own tenuous financial position. Once the Syndicate’s assets were sold to the United States, the lobbyist and all his friends stood to make a fortune from the proceeds and shed their cumbersome status as a “penalty shareholders”.

But now, with Colombia’s rejection of the treaty, all that was in danger of unraveling. As Elias Marlow writes:

Bunau-Varilla was the one man who had everything to lose if the Panama project died […] The Frenchman, seeing his $40 million sale about to evaporate, seized control of the situation.”

As he released the Roosvelt’s hand in the Presidential office, the waxed tips of Bunau-Varilla’s gravity-defying mustache raised in a well-practiced smile.

Mr. President, Bunau-Varilla said, I understand you have a problem. Those wretched little Colombians are being stubborn and greedy, I hear. Endangering all the good work, into which we have poured so many years and tears. I have no doubt that a man as robust as you - a President as powerful as you - is surely preparing to put American boots on Panamanian soil, and swiftly take what is rightfully yours. A splendid idea, Mr. President.

But, if I may sir, I be remiss not to bring an alternate option to your attention. A cleaner option, you might say. What if I told you that Panama was ripe for revolution? A rotten tree that needs only the softest push. If Panama were to make a clean break with Colombia, the isthmus would be infinitely easier for you to control, and the canal project would face very few diplomatic obstacles.

According to the Bunau-Varilla’s self-lionizing memoirs, the “features of the President manifested profound surprise.” “A revolution?” murmured Roosevelt “Would it be possible?”

The Lobbyist nodded with grave seriousness and explained to the President that for years, revolutionary elements had been simmering down in Panama – a disgruntled circle of landowners and politicians who were tired of paying homage to the Colombians. But they are faint of heart and light of purse, Mr. President. They have no money, no guns, no assurances that their revolutionary careers would not end with a short drop and a sudden stop. To launch their little coup, they would need to feel confident that they have friends in high places, someone to protect them against the inevitable retribution from Bogota.

Perhaps if a…. US warship were to make an appearance off Panama’s coast, on the right day at the right time, the freedom fighters might finally find their courage…

Of course, I would never presume to ask you to commit to such a course of action. A statesman as wise and august as yourself would never want to be construed as advising, instigating, suggesting, or encouraging a revolutionary movement.

But, if you will permit me, Mr. President, to develop this situation for you, I am confident that in less than a year, we can be breaking ground on an American Panama Canal under the flag of an independent isthmus.

Well, that all sounded ‘bully’ to Teddy Roosevelt. To preserve his plausible deniability, the President didn’t say anything definitive, but he did not need to say anything definitive. Phillipe Bunau-Varilla left the White House that day with a very clear understanding of the Roosevelt’s wishes: Will no one rid me of these meddlesome Colombians?

“While Roosevelt carefully avoided any explicit promises,” writes Marlow, “Bunau-Varilla came away with the clear impression that if a revolution were to occur, the United States would not allow it to be crushed.”

If the lobbyist had any hesitations about what he was about to do, he quickly swept them aside. As he later wrote:

“Had I the moral right to take part in a revolution and to encourage its development?” Yes, because Colombia was obviously prosecuting a policy of piracy aiming at the destruction of the precious work of Frenchmen.”

Over the next six weeks, Bunau-Varilla established contact with the leaders of the revolutionary junta in Panama City. He brought them to New York, wined them and dined them, and assured them that their budding revolution had the full backing of the United States of America. To safely and secretly communicate with the conspirators over long distances, Bunau-Varilla even devised an elaborate vocabulary of 30 distinct code-phrases, each conveying a unique meaning.

For example, if the revolutionaries wanted to tell Bunau-Varilla that everything was okay and going well, they need only send him a telegram with the number 7. If the plan faced a sudden lack of support from the White House, it would be signified by the number 15. And if Bunau-Varilla wanted to tell them that he had left Washington and could only be reached in New York, he would cable them ‘29’.

To the Panamanians, all this complicated spycraft might’ve seemed a tad much, but the French lobbyist was nothing if not excessive.

And so, the plan for the revolutionary secession of Panama from Colombia moved forward at blistering speed. On November 4^th, 1903, the conspirators agreed, Panama would officially break away from the Republic of Colombia and declare its independence. If and when Bogota sent troops to reclaim the isthmus, gunboats from the American Navy would be waiting in the harbor, ready to protect the embryonic sovereignty of its newest client state.

There was, however, one last, critical piece of the puzzle.

To succeed, the revolution had to have the cooperation of the local military garrison in Panama City. As with any revolution, the men with the guns are the most important people to recruit. And so, with a deep breath and a little prayer, the revolutionary leaders approached General Esteban Huertas, the one-armed war hero who had sworn a sacred oath to never betray his country.

We need you, the conspirators told Huertas by the flicker of lamplight, and your men. You have always been a patriot, Esteban, but now, be a patriot for Panama. Help us secure freedom and autonomy for the place you have made your home. As one man said to Huertas:

“American boats will come to support us and the United States government will recognize us. But what we need is you, for you are the one man who can follow this thing through. We are awaiting your reply in order that we may achieve independence. Think of your future, your wife, your son, and your friends. You are already a Panamanian. Remember, in Colombia we are not loved. General, your decision is urgent.”

As he sat across from the revolutionary leaders, holding a full glass of brandy with his one good arm, Huertas had to admit the offer was tempting. It was true, he had sworn loyalty to Bogota, but that loyalty had not been adequately reciprocated. In fact, the Colombian government held the Panama garrison in so little regard, they had not been paid in over three months.

Sensing the General’s resolve eroding, the conspirators made one final appeal:

“If you will aid us, we shall reach immortality in the history of the new republic. You and your battalion can accomplish nothing against the superior force of the American cruisers, which have their orders. Choose here, glory and riches; in Bogotá, misery and ingratitude.”

And to sweeten the deal, the Revolutionaries put something else on the table. As one historian wrote:

“Huertas was to be compensated for his revolutionary fervor with $65,000, an absolute fortune in Panama in the year 1903.”

Young General Huertas was a man of few words, and after a long, interminable pause, he stuck his (left) hand out and said: “I accept.”

Any doubts the revolutionaries and the newest member of their conspiracy had about Teddy Roosevelt’s commitment to their cause were assuaged when, on November 2^nd, 1903 - two days before the planned revolution - an American warship, the USS Nashville, was sighted off the Panamanian coast, stars and stripes fluttering in the breeze. Phillipe Bunau-Varilla had delivered on his promises, and the Americans had come through. This was actually going to happen. After 80 years of licking the Colombian boot, the isthmus was not only going to be free, but ground zero for one of the greatest engineering projects in human history.

But then, on the morning of November 3^rd, one day before the planned revolution, another warship appeared on the horizon. It was called the Cartagena, and the flag it flew was a yellow, red, and blue. Word had gotten back to Bogota that something fishy was happening on the isthmus, and the Army had dispatched 500 elite riflemen to investigate the situation.

For General Huertas and the rest of the conspirators, it was now or never. One way or another, the future of Panama would be decided in the next 24 hours.

--- MUSIC BREAK---

It’s the morning of November 3^rd, 1903.

We’re just off the coast of Panama, standing on the wooden deck of the USS Nashville, the American warship sent to protect US interests in Panama. Now, what those interests are exactly, Commander John Hubbard doesn’t quite know / isn’t quite sure.

As the captain of this vessel, Commander Hubbard knows everything about it, down to the shade of the paint, the number of rivets, even where the sailors hide their contraband liquor. He knows that this warship is 233 feet long, 1371 tons, and equipped with 14 artillery pieces capable of turning any foe of America into a bundle of driftwood. Yes, out here on the waves, the USS Nashville is a self-contained world for the 200 sailors aboard, and Commander John Hubbard is God Almighty.

And yet for all his nautical omniscience, the Captain still doesn’t know exactly why he is parked off the coast of Panama today. The orders from his superiors in Washington had been urgent and laced with import, but also incredibly vague. Set out from Kingston, Jamaica immediately, they said, and make absolutely sure that you arrive in Panama by November 4^th.

And so, as the USS Nashville caught sight of the emerald green coast of Panama on November 2nd, Captain Hubbard told his men to take the warship close to Colon Harbor, set the anchor, and await further orders.

As he stands on the deck, sipping his coffee and enjoying the breeze, Captain Hubbard notices that they have company in the harbor this morning. A Colombian gunboat, the Cartagena, has also just arrived at Colon. After a brief bit of ship-to-ship communication, Hubbard comes to understand that the Cartagena is carrying 500 Colombian troops, led by not one, not two, but three Generals from Bogota. And as the sun rises higher in the sky, a flurry of landing craft and smaller boats dislodge from the Cartagena and begin ferrying soldiers to the Colon docks. Even at a distance, they were impressive troops. “Resplendent,” writes Matthew Parker, “in unforms of yellow, blue and gold.”

And as he watches the Colombian soldiers leap onto the docks, Hubbard hears a sharp salute behind him. The ship’s communications officer has a fresh telegram for him. Straight from Washington, sir. With a pang of annoyance, Hubbard notices that the cable bears yesterday’s date; Which means he was supposed to receive it on the 2^nd, but clearly there had been some delay in its transit. And as he reads the content of the cable, Hubbard nearly drops his coffee. The telegram says:

SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL. PREVENT LANDING OF ANY ARMED GOVERNMENT FORCE WITH HOSTILE INTENT, EITHER AT COLÓN, PORTO BELLO, OR OTHER POINT. COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT FORCE REPORTED APPROACHING THE ISTHMUS IN VESSELS. PREVENT THEIR LANDING, IF IN YOUR JUDGMENT THIS WOULD PRECIPITATE CONFLICT.

Captain Hubbard looks up from the telegram, and squints toward the harbor at the 500 Colombian soldiers currently filing into little rows on the Colon docks. With the poker-face calm of a man who knows better than to panic in front of subordinates, Hubbard tells the communications officer to prepare a cable to Washington. We will be needing some additional guidance.

THE TRAP

Across the cobalt blue waves, on the Panama shore, three Colombian generals prowl down the docks, their leather boots clicking, bronze medals jangling. Their names are Tovar, Amayo and Castro – three senior Colombian officers united in a single purpose: To find out what the fuck is going on in Panama, to ascertain whether the rumors of unrest are actually true; and if they are, to use those 500 rifles to dispense a little Bogota justice.

But to get the answers to those questions, they need to travel to Panama City, fifty miles across the jungle, on the other/Pacific side of the isthmus. Thankfully, the days of trekking through swamps in the tradition of old Balboa are long gone. In 1903, getting from Colon to Panama City is as simple as taking a three-hour train ride on the local railroad, operated by those perpetually unwelcome guests, the Americans.

And so, the triumvirate of Generals bark for their men to line up, stand at attention and prepare to board a train bound for Panama City.

In the years to come, many people would take credit for the outcome of events that day. President Teddy Roosevelt would claim that his sheer force of will had freed Panama from the Colombian yolk. Phillipe Bunau-Varilla would write a memoir valorizing his own shadowy contributions. Even the one-armed turncoat General Esteban Huertas would have a few statues built in his honor. All the great men, and their great deeds.

And yet, oddly enough, the events of November 3^rd were ultimately decided by a split-second decision by an American civilian, the superintendent of the local railroad, James Shaler, charged with welcoming the Colombian troops ashore.

Spreading his arms wide and mangling his Spanish, Superintendent James Shaler bid bienvenidos to the Generals. With a smile that could melt glass, the railroad man said he was honored to receive such esteemed guests – and so unexpectedly. Nevertheless, he would be thrilled to transport them to their destination of Panama City – at no cost, of course.

The Generals nodded curtly, but beneath the superintendent’s courtesy was a more deceitful purpose. Little did they know, James Shaler was yet another member of the revolutionary conspiracy in Panama. As an employee of an American company, Thaler stood to profit greatly from the revolution’s success. So, when faced with the unexpected appearance of a Colombian battalion, he decided to improvise. As Matthew Parker writes:

“Unfortunately, said the Panama Railroad's superintendent, there were at the moment insufficient cars to transport the troops. However, there was a special luxury carriage available which could ferry the generals and their aides across to Panama. The Colombians protested but were reassured that their men would be on the very next train. Once on board the car, Amaya (one of the Generals) suddenly became jumpy and announced that he was going to stay with the men, but at that moment Shaler pulled the signal cord, jumped off the train, and waved cheerfully at the generals as they steamed out of the station.”

With the Generals separated from their battalion and the chain of command effectively severed, the quick-thinking railroad employee had bought the Panamanians a little more time. All he could hope for was that Esteban Huertas and the rest of the revolutionaries wouldn’t lose their nerve. Otherwise, all he had done was delay the inevitable.

Several hours later, at about 11:30 AM, the luxury train car carrying the Colombian commanders hissed to a stop in the Panama City station. Waiting on the platform to greet them, with full military honors, was the local garrison commander, General Estaban Huertas, who, just hours ago, had joined the conspiracy to betray them.

As a brass band played and seagulls cackled on the breeze, Panama City did not appear to be a hotbed of revolution. To the three visiting Generals, things seemed entirely normal. As one of them, Tobar, recalled / told his angry superiors months later:

“There was nothing that did not show the greatest cordiality and give me the most complete assurance that peace reigned throughout the department.”

And yet, as they were given a guided tour of Panama City, the Colombian generals could not help but feel that something was…off. The people here were too cordial, too normal, too friendly. Everything, down to the children waiving little Colombian flags, felt like an eerie, uncanny performance. They were guests of honor at a banquet that don’t yet realize they are, in fact, the main course.

But what really raised their suspicions and set the little hairs on their necks standing at attention, was the fact that their 500 troops had still not arrived by train from Colon. It had been hours, and yet the American railroad had not budged. By all accounts, the soldiers were still kicking rocks on the docks. And every time the Generals asked when the rest of their men would arrive, their hosts in Panama City plied them with the excuses. Just a small delay, General. One more hour. A slight mechanical failure, and on and on.

Finally, at around 5 o’clock, it came to a head. The Colombian commanders demanded to be taken to the city barracks to assume control of the local garrison. Placing his one hand respectfully over his heart, General Huertas obliged and escorted them to the barracks. But once they arrived, the Generals did not receive the welcome they expected. As David McCullough writes:

“A company of soldiers marched out with fixed bayonets. The soldiers wheeled to the right of the seawall gate, as if to pass in front of the generals, but then suddenly opened into two files, one going in front of the Generals, the other behind. At a command the soldiers stopped and swung about with bayonets lowered at the astonished generals. “Generals, you are my prisoners,” said the officer in command.”

For the first few seconds, the Colombian commanders were shocked and confused, but as the realization of what was happening dawned on them, they turned hateful eyes toward General Esteban Huertas. The man only had one arm, and yet he’d managed to stab them all in the back simultaneously. In that moment, so many words rushed through their heads – traitor, turncoat, snake…. But in the end, there was nothing left to say. The wall of bayonets shining in the sun said it all.   

With the Colombian generals captured, Panama City took off its deferential mask, and all at once, the town erupted in a spontaneous display of celebration. A huge crowd gathered in the city square, firing shots into the air, singing songs, and raising shouts of “Viva Huertas”, “Viva Istmo Libre” or (Long Live a Free Isthmus)

Traditionally, revolutions are very bloody affairs, full of reprisals, mass executions and kangaroo courts. But the secession of Panama from Columbia was as clean a break as one could hope for. There were no battles or beheadings; Even the 500 Colombian troops on the other side of the isthmus, after a tense, but brief standoff, agreed to pack it up and go home. With a sizable bribe in their pockets, of course.

Afterwards, the leaders of the revolutionary conspiracy, now leaders of a new country, drafted a cable back to Washington, informing the American government that: “Panama has severed her bonds with Colombia and a provisional government will be formed at once.”

After obtaining assurances that Colombian troops had in fact departed the isthmus, and Panama City was no longer under “occupation”, Washington cabled back its congratulatory recognition:

“The people of Panama having by an apparently unanimous movement dissolved their political connections with the Republic of Colombia and resumed their independence, and having adopted a government of their own, republican in form with which the Government of the United States has entered into relations, the President of the United States, in accordance with the ties of friendship which have so long and so happily existed between the respective nations, most earnestly commends to the Governments of Colombia and Panama the peaceful and equitable settlement of all questions at issue between them. He holds that he is bound not merely by treaty obligation, but by the interest of civilization, to see that the peaceful traffic of the world across the Isthmus of Panama.”

And so, on November 6^th, 1903, a5 12:51pm, the Republic of Panama was recognized by the United States of America as a free and independent nation. The Panamanians, understandably, were very grateful. As one diplomat said at the time:

“Yesterday we were but the slaves of Colombia; today we are free…. President Roosevelt has made good…. Long live President Roosevelt! Long live the American Government!” 

The Panamanians were free, but their diplomatic legitimacy was still very precarious / wobbling like a top. As Elias Marlowe writes:

“The infant Republic of Panama drew its first breaths in a state of euphoric celebration and profound uncertainty. The umbilical cord to Colombia had been severed with surprising ease, but the new nation was fragile, with an empty treasury, no army to speak of, and a government whose authority barely extended beyond the railroad line. Its very existence depended on the goodwill of the United States and, more immediately, on the swift finalization of a canal treaty. The revolutionary junta in Panama City understood this dynamic perfectly. They owed their success to Washington's timely naval intervention and to the machinations of one man in particular:

Philippe Bunau-Varilla.”

THE TRAITOR

In his posh suite at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, the French lobbyist greeted the news of Panama’s successful revolution with no small amount of self-congratulation.

For more than a decade now, he had been working tirelessly for the liberation of Panama and the resurrection of the Canal Project, and now that tenacity had been rewarded. The Panamanians, he was proud to say, owed their independence almost entirely to him. So, it was no surprise when, shortly after US recognition of the junta, Bunau-Varilla received a cable from Panama City appointing him as the “Envoy Extraordinaire” of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Panama […] with full powers for political and financial negotiation”

Essentially, the Panamanians had just made him their ambassador to the United States, with the ability to broker a treaty on their behalf.

To some, it seemed odd that the Panamanians would choose as their primary representative an eccentric French lobbyist who hadn’t visited the isthmus in 17 years, but Bunau-Varilla had very skillfully framed himself as the only person savvy enough to navigate the diplomatic maze that lay ahead. After all, had he not defeated the Nicaragua Lobby? Had he not charmed Teddy Roosevelt? Had he not secured military support for their little coup? Who better than he, Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, to take the infant nation by the hand and guide it like a loving parent toward a canal treaty with the Americans?

And so, in those critical weeks after the revolution, the Panamanians put their complete trust in Phillipe Bunau-Varilla to get them a fair and equitable deal with the United States. As they would soon find out, it was the most foolish thing they ever did.

The Panamanians were painfully aware that the long-term security of their republic rested entirely on the sponsorship of the United States - the dozen or so American warships anchored in the harbor were a keen reminder of that. But at the same time, the junta did not want to become a glorified colony of America. They wanted the construction of a new canal, sure, but not at the expense of their sovereignty or dignity.

Unfortunately, their newly appointed liaison had other plans. 

Phillipe Bunau-Varilla was not interested in getting the best possible deal for the Panamanians. He only cared about two things: wiping away his debts as a penalty shareholder of the French Canal company, and realizing the dream of his dear departed hero, Ferdinand de Lesseps. Everything else was secondary.

So when the lobbyist received word that a delegation from Panama would be traveling to Washington to assist him in hammering out the details of a Canal treaty with the United States, Bunau-Varilla rankled. Once they arrived in DC, those Panama primitives would haggle and barter and bog things down. They’d ask for revisions and concessions and amendments – the entire process could take weeks, if not months. It might even jeopardize the Canal project itself.

Bunau-Varilla calculated that he only had about 9 days before the Panamanian delegation arrived, but that was all the head start he needed. Speaking to Roosevelt’s Secretary of State John Hay, the Frenchman said that the time to sign a treaty was now, while the iron was hot. As he urged:

“For two years you have had difficulties in negotiating with the Colombians. Remember that ten days ago the Panamanians were still Colombians … You have now before you a Frenchman. If you wish to take advantage of a period of clearness in Panaman diplomacy, do it now! When I leave the spirit of Bogota will return.”

“So long as I am here, Mr. Secretary, you will have to deal exclusively with me.”

The next few days were a feverish period of ink-spattered negotiation. Of writing, rewriting, and writing again. As he stayed up until the wee hours of the night, hunched over a draft of the treaty, Bunau-Varilla was sustained by memories of all the friends he had lost during the French Canal project:

“I thought of all those heroes, my comrades in the deadly battle, worthy grandsons of those Gauls who conquered the Ancient World, worthy sons of those Frenchmen who conquered the Modern World, who fell in the struggle against Nature, a smile on their lips, happy to sacrifice their lives to this work which was to render still more dazzling the glory of French genius.”

The next day, when Bunau-Varilla presented his version of a Canal treaty to the US government, the Americans were legitimately shocked. As one politician commented: “We have never had a concession so extraordinary in its character as this. In fact, it sounds very much as if we wrote it ourselves.”

Instead of authoring the best possible deal for the Panamanians, Bunau-Varilla had crafted a treaty that gave away the isthmus for a song, with lopsided terms that completely favored the interests of the United States.

“He believed,” writes Elias Marlowe, “that the only way to secure the canal for Panama, and his company's payment, was to present the United States with a treaty so overwhelmingly favorable that it could not possibly be rejected.”

The resulting document, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, was a masterpiece of political expediency. Its terms were sweeping.

Article I contained the clause that was the linchpin of the entire arrangement: "The United States guarantees and will maintain the independence of the Republic of Panama." This was the promise that secured the revolution, turning the new republic into a de facto protectorate of the United States. Article II granted the United States "in perpetuity the use, occupation and control" of a zone of land for the construction and operation of a canal. Where earlier drafts had specified a zone of six miles, Bunau-Varilla unilaterally widened it to ten miles. This territory would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, bisecting the country. The most onerous and enduringly controversial clause was contained in Article III. It granted the United States all the rights, power, and authority within the newly created Canal Zone "which the United States would possess and exercise if it were the sovereign of the territory ... to the entire exclusion of the exercise by the Republic of Panama of any such sovereign rights, power or authority."

This seemingly innocuous phrase effectively turned the ten-mile strip into a foreign colony, a piece of America transplanted into the heart of Panama. It was a grant of rights so complete that it would become the central grievance in U.S.-Panamanian relations for the next seven decades.”

On Friday November 18^th, 1903, just hours before the Panamanian delegation arrived in Washington, Bunau-Varilla and US Secretary of State John Hay signed the treaty, affixed their seals in wax, and shook hands. It was over.

“Not one word of Spanish had been spoken,” writes Ovidio Diaz Espinio, “not one Panamanian was present or even invited.”

When Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, Envoy Extraordinaire met the Panamanian delegation at the train station that evening, he spread his arms and told them the good news:

“The Republic of Panama is henceforth under protection of the United States. I have just signed the Canal Treaty!”

When they realized what he had done, how he had betrayed their trust and poisoned their future, one of the Panamanian representatives almost fainted. Another slapped him across the cheek. The third supposedly spit in the Frenchman’s face. But as he wiped the gob of saliva from his burning red cheek, the Bunau-Varilla’s self-satisfaction remained undimmed. As he later wrote:

“I had fulfilled my mission… I had safeguarded the work of the French genius; I had avenged its honor; I had served France.”

In the days that followed, the Panamanian delegation desperately tried to undo the damage Bunau-Varilla had done, but that diplomatic toothpaste could not go back in its tube. The ink, the Americans were sad to say, was quite literally dry. Privately, of course, the Americans were fully aware of just how good a deal they’d got, and how bad a deal the Panamanians had got.

As Secretary of State John Hay said at the time, the treaty was “very satisfactory, vastly advantageous to the United States, and we must confess, with what face we can muster, not so advantageous to Panama…. There are many points in this treaty to which a Panamanian patriot could object.”

And they most certainly did object. As one Panamanian complained at the time: “They have taken all the meat and left the bone.”

Down in Panama, the flames of revolutionary euphoria had been smothered by the wet blanket of the Bunau-Varilla treaty, but in his office at the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, President Teddy Roosevelt was all grinning from ear to ear.

Striding over to his wooden globe, he placed a forefinger on the tiny ribbon of land he had just conquered in the name of progress. Another head for his hunting lodge. In the years to come, Teddy Roosevelt’s role in this geopolitical drama would exponentially expand within his own mind, elbowing out peripheral contributors. Less than a decade later, TR was effectively that the Panama secession was entirely of his making. As he told a crowd in 1911:

“The Panama Canal would not have been started if I had not taken hold of it, because if I had followed the traditional or conservative method I should have submitted an admirable state paper occupying a couple of hundred pages detailing all of the facts to Congress and asking Congress’ consideration of it. In that case there would have been a number of excellent speeches made on the subject in Congress; the debate would be proceeding at this moment with great spirit and the beginning of work on the canal would be fifty years in the future. Fortunately the crisis came at a period when I could act unhampered. Accordingly I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me.”

“I took the isthmus,” Teddy said. It was a breathtaking statement of historical revision, overlooking the efforts of the middling men of history. But that didn’t mean Roosevelt was self-deluding. The chest-thumping, the bravado, that was all for the cameras. In private, Roosevelt knew exactly how the isthmus had come under American control. As he confided in one friend, away from the flashbulbs and the newspapers:

“I took Panama because Bunau-Varilla brought it to me on a silver platter.”

OUTRO

Well folks, that is all the time we have for today.

Next time, in Part 3, the Americans will roll up their sleeves, grab their shovels and try to accomplish the impossible.

In the jungles of Central America, one of the greatest feats of civil engineering in human history will begin in earnest, testing both the wills and the immune systems of the adventurous Americans. In the process, they will face tropical heat, deadly pathogens, intractable terrain – all while sitting atop a powder keg of labor problems and racial grievances ticking like a time bomb.

All that to say, we have quite the ride ahead of us.

So, goodbye for now. Thank you for listening, and have an awesome day.

This has been Conflicted. I’ll see you next time

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