The River of Doubt by Candice Millard Read Free Book Online Page B

plans did not change.

C HAPTER 4

On the Open Sea
    O N THE MORNING OF October 4, 1913, the day he was to set sail for South America, Roosevelt arrived at Pier 8 in Brooklyn, New York. As he stepped from his car, he could see the
Vandyck—
a two-year-old, ten-thousand-ton steamship—towering, tall and majestic, above the farewell party that had gathered on the dock to wish him bon voyage. It was a bright, crisp, blue-sky morning, the perfect day for slipping away.
    As soon as Roosevelt boarded the
Vandyck
, joking as he scaled the steep gangplank that “this is where I commence my mountaineering,” he went straight to his suite of rooms to put away the belongings he had packed for the roughly two-and-a-half-week-long sea voyage ahead of him. Among those waiting patiently to shake hands with Roosevelt were three South American ambassadors who had come to Pier 8 to wish him a successful and, they dared to hope, uncontroversial journey. For the ambassadors—from the so-called ABC Powers of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—Roosevelt’s visit to their countries was as much a subject of concern as of pride, and with good reason. As president, Roosevelt had provoked more controversy in SouthAmerica than in any other region of the world, and although four years had passed since he had left the White House, South Americans had not forgotten his policies or his unapologetic imperialism.
    Roosevelt was an avid proponent of the Monroe Doctrine, and he had even attached his own imperialistic twist to it. Enunciated by President James Monroe in 1823, the doctrine sent a clear message to any European powers with colonial ambitions in South America that the United States would not stand idly by and allow the oppression, control, or colonization of any country in its hemisphere. On the contrary, such an act would, by definition, be considered hostile to the United States. The doctrine was put to the test in 1904, when Germany threatened to use military force against the Dominican Republic in an effort to collect unpaid debts. The small Latin American country turned to Roosevelt, who was then in the last year of his first term in the White House, for protection. In response, the president not only upheld the doctrine but added to it, creating what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary.
    Whereas the Monroe Doctrine barred Europe from intervening in the affairs of any country in the Western Hemisphere, the Roosevelt Corollary asserted America’s right to intervene whenever it felt compelled. “If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States,” Roosevelt declared as he defined his corollary to Congress on December 6, 1904. “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society . . . may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.” Roosevelt went on to add that the colossus to the north would intervene “only in the last resort,” but that did little to reassure South Americans, or temper their outrage.
    Nearly a decade later, South America still bristled at the inherent condescension and implied threat of the doctrine and its corollary. A few weeks before his departure, Roosevelt had received a letter fromformer New York Congressman Lemuel Quigg—a longtime supporter of Roosevelt’s who had traveled through much of South America as a journalist—warning him that, if he planned to talk about the Monroe Doctrine on his trip, he could expect the political equivalent of being tarred, feathered, and ridden out of the continent on a rail.
    The controversy surrounding the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine had become even more acute in the months preceding Roosevelt’s departure for South America, because the