US President Theodore Roosevelt convinced US Congress to take on the abandoned works in 1902, while Colombia was in the midst of the Thousand Days' War. During the war, there were at least three attempts by Panamanian Liberals to seize control of Panama and potentially achieve full autonomy, including one led by Liberal guerrillas like Belisario Porras and Victoriano Lorenzo, each of whom was suppressed by a collaboration of Conservative Colombian and US forces under the Mallarino–Bidlack Treaty which had been in effect since 1846. The Roosevelt administration proposed to Colombia that the US should control the canal in return for a $10 million payment and $250,000 annual payment that would begin in 1912. The negotiations initially went well for the US and it received everything it was asking for in the Hay–Herrán Treaty, but the Colombian government, upset by the US bias in the treaty, refused to ratify it and began demanding more money. By September 1903, negotiations had all but broken down. The US then changed tactics.