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Following the Senate approving the bill favoring the Panama route (by eight votes), the United States began negotiations with Colombia for a concession to build a canal through its province of Panama (the Hay-Herran Treaty). The treaty's rejection by the Colombian senate led Roosevelt, who was not inclined to continue negotiations, to support Panama's budding independence movement. To put forth a military show of force, he dispatched warships to both sides of the isthmus (the Atlanta, Maine, Mayflower, Prairie, and Nashville off Colon and the Boston, Marblehead, Concord, and Wyoming off Panama City) thus effectively blocking the sea approaches. Troops not only protected the Panama railroad but were also sent into the interior part of the country to block access from those areas. A land approach attempt by a Colombian force of 2,000 was defeated by the Darien jungle and fever and forced to turn back.
Roosevelt later boasted that "I took the isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me." Without the U.S. military presence it is doubtful that the Panama independence movement would have succeeded.
Following Panama's declaring its independence from Colombia on November 3, 1903, a new treaty was negotiated (similar to the earlier treaty rejected by Colombia but with more favorable terms to the United States). It was ratified in Panama on December 2, 1903, and in the United States on February 23, 1904. Roosevelt's audacious move had succeeded for the United States, but not without political repercussions in United States-Latin American relations for years since then.
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