American newspapers had been discussing openly for a month, and had sent this force to put an end to it—which it did, but not in the way they expected.
The Panama Railroad officials, whose sympathies were all with the revolutionists, sternly refused to let the army ride without paying cash fare. So the generals and their staff went on alone to Panama, to take command of the troops there. The revolutionists, warned by telegraph, hastened their preparations and when the generals entered the barrack square, the soldiers, instead of presenting arms, seized them and locked them up. At once the flag of the new Republic of Panama was run up over the city, and on two of the three gunboats in the harbor. The third fired a few shells, killing one Chinaman, and then sailed back to Colombia.
- PANAMA
- NATIONAL
- FLAG.
Colonel Torres, who had been left in command of the Colombian troops at Colon, angrily declared that if the generals were not released and the new flags hauled down within an hour, he would kill every American in Colon. The women and children at once took refuge on two steamers, and the men gathered in the stone freight-house of the Panama Railroad, which had been strongly built for just such emergencies. But there was a small American gunboat, the Nashville, at Colon, and her captain landed forty-two sailors and marines. Torres then declared his great love for Americans, and a few days later he and his conscripts were bought up by the Panamanians for about twenty dollars apiece, and shipped back to where they came from.
