The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

The immediate response in the press was one of dire concern. Though a few papers suggested that it was now merely a question of finding somebody else, the majority saw the reputation of Roosevelt’s Administration suddenly at stake, not to mention that of the country, and found the outlook, in the words of the Louisville Courier-Journal, “not cheering.” In the London papers it was said that Roosevelt was paying the price for his rash “land-piracy” in Panama. Wallace, who ultimately became president and chairman of the board of Westinghouse, Church, Kerr & Company, as well as a board member of several other industrial firms, would spend the rest of his life trying to repair the damage done to his reputation. Monetary considerations, he would insist, had never entered into the decision to “disconnect” himself from Panama. He denied any personal fear of disease, claiming he had actually had a light attack of yellow fever while on the Isthmus and so thereafter had considered himself immune. Privately he said that he heartily disliked Shonts and knew they could not work together. And appearing before the Senate canal committee he would delight John Tyler Morgan with the further admission that it was really Cromwell whom he hated most of all. The tragedy, said Wallace again and again, was that Taft never gave him a chance to express his real reason for resigning, which was that he had “become convinced some other men in my place could render better service to the enterprise.”