Mexico, throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, had been a land of opportunity for American businessmen, so long as the dictator Porfirio Díaz remained in power. For decades, Díaz, supported by the Catholic Church, a few hundred immensely wealthy land owners, and the U.S. State Department, ruled the country with an iron fist, until finally, in 1911, he was driven into exile by an insurgency made up of Mexico’s tiny middle class backed by millions of land-hungry peons, rallying behind the revolutionary leader Francisco Madero.
The American government, and the military in particular, grew increasingly nervous as the Mexican revolution threw the country into bloody confusion, with one warring faction after another competing for dominance, making Mexico an increasingly tempting target for any ambitious power that might want to take advantage of the chaos to gain control of America’s most strategically vulnerable neighbor.
In February 1913, just weeks before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, General Victoriano Huerta, with the active support of Henry Lane Wilson, American ambassador to Mexico, drove President Madero from office, proclaimed himself provisional president, and then, just days later, arranged to have Madero murdered in cold blood. American business interests in Mexico looked on, unconcerned. At the time, they owned 78% of Mexico’s mines, 68% of its rubber plantations, 68% of its railroads, 72% of its smelters, and 58% of its oil, and, as long as they were allowed to operate with a free hand, they were content to let the revolution take any course it had a mind to. But Woodrow Wilson, the Calvinist idealist, was incensed, and was determined to remove Huerta from office. He began a passionate but ineffective campaign to force his resignation, using every tool he could muster—diplomatic, commercial, and military. The United States Navy was central to his anti-Huerta campaign, and both Josephus Daniels and Franklin Roosevelt were deeply involved. But all of Wilson’s attempts at intimidation proved ineffective, and the Mexican leader remained defiant.
By 1914, Wilson had established powerful naval squadrons off Mexico’s east coast, at both Tampico and Veracruz. Ostensibly, they were on station solely to protect American lives and property. Wilson characterized their presence as “watchful waiting.” But all those American warships were also an unsubtle reminder of American power and a constant irritant to the local officials of both ports. A sense of smoldering resentment permeated the dockside atmosphere.
On April 9, 1914, the USS Dolphin, a 240-foot Navy dispatch boat which lay at anchor in the Pánuco River at Tampico, sent in a whaleboat bearing the paymaster and seven crew members to pick up supplies at a warehouse dock. At the dock, the paymaster and two of the crewmen were arrested on the orders of a Mexican Army colonel acting on his own initiative. When the colonel’s superiors learned of his action, they recognized the potential diplomatic problem, and the Americans were immediately released. The Mexicans apologized profusely to the Navy men and the local American consul, and requested that their apologies by relayed to Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo, the American commander off Tampico.
But Mayo was in no mood to be conciliatory. As he saw it, a simple apology was nowhere near an adequate response to make up for such a grave breach of national honor. He insisted that the colonel responsible for the arrest be severely punished, that officers of the Mexican Navy be dispatched to the Dolphin to present formal apologies, and that the local Mexican army commander, within twenty-four hours, “publicly hoist the American flag in a prominent position on shore and salute it with twenty-one guns.”
When the news of Admiral Mayo’s demands reached Washington, both Secretary of State Bryan and Josephus Daniels were furious. They considered Mayo’s reaction excessive, and, given the fact that he was within easy reach of Washington by radio and telegraph, they felt that he should have checked with Daniels before issuing such humiliating demands. But President Wilson’s reaction to the news was quite the opposite. Obsessed as he was in his determination to unseat Huerta, he saw the Tampico Affair as an opportunity to further that aim. He upped the ante by personally issuing a demand to Huerta that Mayo’s orders were to be immediately obeyed, warning of “the gravest consequences” if they were not.
Huerta’s reply was guarded but apologetic enough to satisfy Bryan and Daniels, but not the president, who insisted that Mayo’s demand for a flag-raising and 21-gun salute be carried out immediately and to the letter. This was too much for Huerta, who angrily refused, whereupon Wilson ordered the North American battleship fleet to sail for Tampico and the Pacific fleet to sail for Mexico’s west coast, and petitioned Congress for a resolution justifying the use of armed force against the Huerta government. Congress immediately complied by a vote of 337 to 37, and Wilson ordered the Navy to plan for a blockade of Mexico and the Army to prepare to seize Tampico and Veracruz and to march on Mexico City.
Throughout this sequence of high-tension confrontations, Franklin Roosevelt was out of Washington on an inspection tour of West Coast naval facilities, and had to rely on Louis Howe for details of the events. “I understand the State Department is yelling blue murder because Mayo on his own initiative commanded a salute,” Howe reported. “I am afraid Mayo is not a good ‘watchful waiter.’”
As the tensions escalated, sparked by Wilson’s determination to force Huerta’s abdication, Roosevelt, who was undoubtedly reminded of Uncle Ted’s meteoric political rise under similar circumstances, feverishly monitored the Navy’s West Coast activities and gave bellicose interviews to the press. At Portland, he told reporters: “We’re not looking for trouble, but we’re ready for anything.”
On April 21, Washington learned that a German cargo ship, the Ypiranga, had reached Veracruz with two hundred machine guns and fifteen million rounds of ammunition for Huerta’s army. Secretary Daniels, on Wilson’s order, wired Admiral Frank F. Fletcher to SEIZE CUSTOM HOUSE. DO NOT PERMIT WAR SUPPLIES TO BE DELIVERED TO HUERTA GOVERNMENT OR TO ANY OTHER PARTY. American sailors and Marines were immediately landed and seized the custom house, while other naval units impounded the German ship. But it was not to be a neat, antiseptic incursion. The Mexican troops fought back, and before Fletcher finally secured Veracruz the next day, 19 Americans had been killed and 71 wounded, while the Mexicans had lost 126 dead and 195 wounded.
Roosevelt was thrilled by the news and anticipated further hostilities, but Wilson, shocked by the results of his own recklessness, started looking for a way out of the situation he had brought on, and Admiral Fletcher, acting on the orders of State Department lawyers, was forced to apologize to the Ypiranga’s captain, and to permit the vessel to sail with her cargo intact. She eventually docked at Puerto Mexico, where her cargo was delivered into Mexican hands, presumably those loyal to Huerta, but possibly those allied with the insurgent army in the north, led by General Venustiano Carranza and his chief lieutenant, Pancho Villa.
Roosevelt, still only vaguely aware of the dramatic shift in Wilson’s thinking, boarded a train for the East, prepared to rattle his saber at every stop along the way. Asked by a reporter in Minneapolis what the crisis meant, he answered, “War! And we’re ready!” The next morning in Milwaukee, he said, “I do not want war, but I do not see how we can avoid it. Sooner or later, it seems, the United States must go down there and clean up the Mexican political mess. I believe that the best time is right now.”
By the time his train reached Chicago, he had become fully aware of Wilson’s change of heart, and knew that the president had gratefully accepted the offer of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to mediate the situation. The likelihood of an armed conflict was now remote, but Franklin was still in a very Theodore Roosevelt mood and was spoiling for a fight. He told a reporter almost wistfully, “The war spirit is sweeping the West like a prairie fire. The general opinion is that since the United States has finally started military activities they should be carried through to a finish with no compromise. Many persons and newspapers are openly advocating annexation as the only solution of the Mexican problem. This sentiment seems to be growing.”
When he finally got back to his office in Washington and had a chance to talk with Josephus Daniels, he could see clearly that whatever war spirit might be sweeping the West, it was not igniting the White House, and his comments to reporters on the Mexican situation abruptly stopped.
It was not lost on Franklin Roosevelt that those members of the Wilson cabinet more inclined to finding a peaceful resolution could at times see things more clearly than those who favored confrontation. The other, more complex lesson related to the limits of presidential power. Woodrow Wilson’s determination to depose Huerta might be morally sound and politically rational—after all, an unpredictable and untrustworthy leader just south of the border posed a legitimate threat to America’s defense—but any attempt to address that threat had to be carefully calculated. The president’s precipitous response to the events of April 1914 had brought on a needless loss of life, aroused worldwide outrage, and sparked angry anti-American demonstrations throughout Latin America.
Reverberations from the incident would directly shape President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor Policy,” a quarter century later.