The Colombian government promptly rejected these proposals and in reply demanded "arbitration of the whole question of Panama or a direct proposition on the part of the United States to give Colombia compensation for all the moral, physical, and financial losses which she sustained as a result of the separation of Panama." The Colombian minister declared:
Should Colombia grant any territorial privileges to the United States after the wrong that country has inflicted upon this republic, it would result in intense agitation and possible revolution. It seems as though your people have never fully realized the enormity of the wrong the United States has perpetrated against the Colombian people.
Mr. Du Bois then asked whether Colombia would accept $10,000,000, the good offices of the United States in settling the differences with Panama, arbitration of the reversionary rights in the Panama Railroad, and preferential rights in the canal, without granting to the United States any privileges or concessions whatever. Receiving a negative reply to this proposal, Mr. Du Bois, acting on his own responsibility, then inquired informally whether $25,000,000 without options of any kind would satisfy Colombia. The answer was that Colombia would accept nothing but the arbitration of the whole Panama question. Mr. Du Bois was instructed February 20, 1913, to stop negotiations. In reporting the matter to the President, Secretary Knox said that Colombia seemed determined to treat with the incoming Democratic administration.[266]
When the Wilson administration came in, Secretary Bryan took up the negotiations with Colombia where Knox dropped them, and concluded a treaty according to the terms of which the United States was to express "sincere regret that anything should have occurred to interrupt or to mar the relations of cordial friendship that had so long subsisted between the two nations," and to pay Colombia $25,000,000. The treaty further granted Colombia the same preferential rights in the use of the canal which the Taft administration had proposed, and in return Colombia agreed to recognize the independence of Panama and to accept a boundary line laid down in the treaty. This treaty was submitted to the Senate June 16, 1914. As soon as its terms were made public ex-President Roosevelt denounced it as blackmail, and wrote a letter to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs requesting to be heard before any action was taken on the treaty. During the first session of the Sixty-sixth Congress in 1919 the Colombian treaty was reported from the Committee on Foreign Relations with important amendments. Article I, containing expressions of regret on the part of the United States for the events that had taken place on the isthmus, was entirely stricken out. The clause giving Colombia the right to transport through the canal its troops, materials of war, and ships of war, "even in case of war between Colombia and another country," was amended by the elimination of the words in quotations. The sum of $25,000,000, instead of being paid in cash, was to be paid in five annual installments. The Senate refused, however, to give its consent to the ratification of the treaty even in this form, and it is understood that it was proposed to cut the payment to Colombia down to $15,000,000.