The Panama Canal and United States Interests
Linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans Was a Long Term US Goal
Feb 13, 2009
During the first session of the 58th Congress in 1893, Alabama Senator John Morgan declared that the building of a canal in Central America represented “the proudest mission of our government and people, under a providence this is as peculiar to them as the founding of the Kingdom of the Messiah was to the seed of Abraham.” The canal, built during the Teddy Roosevelt administration in the early twentieth century, had been a foreign policy goal since the early nineteenth century. It was a motivation for President Polk in recommending the annexation of all of Central America to Nicaragua, including Mexico, in 1848.
19th Century Endeavors to Build a Canal
The desire to build a canal in Central America linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was rooted in many motivations that included utility, national interest and honor, and what Albert Weinberg identifies as the doctrine of Paramount Interest. This “doctrine” was founded on notions of “spheres of influence” and national interest. As Teddy Roosevelt declared, “our interests in this hemisphere are greater than those of any European power can possibly be.”
Following the defeat of Mexico and the drafting of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, President James Polk seriously considered annexing all of Mexico as well as most of Central America in order to build a canal in Nicaragua. Nicaragua was always the favorite potential site of a canal until 1900. But the Congress and the American people in 1848 rejected these proposals, leaving the question of a canal to future administrations.
The 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty between the United States and Great Britain emphasized the neutral aspect of a canal in Nicaragua, denying exclusive control to either nation. This would be the US position into the post Civil War years when the notion of paramount interest began to entrench itself. Post Civil War foreign policy featured a new national confidence that United States interests in the hemisphere could be enforced.
Toward Building the Panama Canal
The 1878 French concession to build the canal in the Colombian province of Panama undermined decades of U.S. efforts. President Hayes in 1880 called for a canal under U.S. control. During his 1898 annual message, President William McKinley challenged the Congress to take action regarding the building of a canal that would be controlled by the United States. By 1901, Secretary of State John Hay negotiated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain giving the U.S. exclusive rights but upholding the principle of neutrality, in essence following the same policies that applied to the Suez Canal. Over the objections of Senators Hanna and Hoar, the canal would be built in Panama rather than Nicaragua.
The 1903 Hay-Herran Treaty offered Colombia $10 million for the concession with an annual bonus of $250,000. Despite the promise of further compensation, the offer was rejected by the Colombian Senate. A subsequent coup in Panama, supported by the United States, brought to power an independent government that was recognized by the U.S. As President Roosevelt stated afterward, “I took the canal zone.” Future President William Taft would declare, “We own the canal and it was our money that built it.” The canal represented, as Senator Clarke declared to the Congress in 1893, “…the inevitable march to a manifest destiny.”
Sources:
David McCullough The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 (Bookspan in arrangement with Simon & Schuster, 2002).
Page Smith, America Enters the World: A People’s History of the Progressive Era and World War I Vol. 7(McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1985).
Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansion in American History (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958).
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