Panama fever (36 page)

With the signing of the second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty on November 18, 1901, which implicitly allowed the fortification of an American canal, the long rise of the United States to local preeminence was complete. As the president of Colombia noted, the treaty “ruptured the dikes placed against so-called American imperialism … It changed the face of the question and made the situation for the [Colombian] Government obscure, delicate and complex: action and inaction equally presented great problems and reason for anxiety.” Just how “delicate and complex” would soon be illustrated.

The signing of the treaty cleared a significant obstacle from the path toward an American canal. Its location, however, still looked like Nicaragua. The Panama lobby was heading in the wrong direction after the death of McKinley—Roosevelt had not even been considered as a target for their propaganda—and it was believed that the new president would be far less influenced by the carefully “converted” Mark Hanna. In October, Hutin in Paris at last gave Walker an estimate of the value of the New Company's property, set at just over $109 million, albeit open to arbitration. The next month Walker's Commission reported.

Bunau-Varilla and Cromwell had done their work well—the engineers clearly preferred Panama from a technical point of view: the route was much shorter, would need fewer locks, and was hindered by less curvature; a ship could pass through in twelve hours rather than thirty-three; it would also be cheaper to build and maintain. Walker estimated a Panama canal would cost just over $144 million, compared to $190 million for Nicaragua. But when the price of the New Company was factored in, Panama became much more expensive. Therefore the Commission, to the particular dismay of engineer George Morison, plumped for Nicaragua.

The following month the United States signed a canal convention with the Nicaraguan government, and on January 9, 1902, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly backed a new bill from Congressman Hepburn appropriating $180 million for the construction of a Nicaraguan canal and sent it on to the Senate. In Washington the Panama venture was now being described as “a worthless ditch.”

In Paris, these developments caused a panic. In December there had been angry scenes at a shareholders’ meeting, leading to the police being summoned. Attacks on the board of directors were led by Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who urged the shareholders to sell to the United States at whatever price they could get or see their investment become entirely lost. Hutin was forced to resign and was replaced by Maurice Bô, president of the Crédit Lyonnais bank, who, as a penalized shareholder was not strictly allowed direct involvement with the Company. But he was a friend of Bunau-Varilla and Cromwell, and was happy to take the drastic step now required. On January 4, Bô wired Walker a revised price of $40 million, the Commission's own valuation of the New Company's property.

This news changed everything and set the scene for a decisive intervention by the new president. On December 10, Roosevelt had received a letter from his fellow Harvard graduate George Morison, outlining the engineer's reasons for disagreeing with the majority of the Walker Commission's preference for Nicaragua. Roosevelt may have also been influenced by Mark Hanna, who remained a senior figure in the Republican Party, or by the fear that the unfinished Panama Canal would be completed by a European power if the United States pressed on in Nicaragua. Whatever the reason, Roosevelt now had a fixed idea: he wanted the Panama route. As soon as the news of the revised price came in from Paris, the president summoned the Walker Commission and interviewed them one by one to persuade them to change their verdict. Several protested, but as the price had been the sticking point for Panama, on January 18 they complied with Roosevelt and Morison's wishes and published a revised report recommending Panama. An amendment was drafted that authorized the president to purchase the French Company's Panama property and concessions for $40 million; to acquire from Colombia perpetual control of a Canal Zone at least six miles wide; and to build a Panama canal. If a clear title or a satisfactory agreement with Colombia could not be reached “within a reasonable time,” then the president was authorized to proceed with the Nicaragua route. John Coit Spooner, a past master at steering difficult legislation through the Senate, was chosen to introduce the amendment, and thus to face the full fury of Morgan and the Nicaragua party.

But the Panama lobby would be on hand to help. On January 27, Maurice Bô reinstated Cromwell as the New Company's U.S. representative, albeit with an order to stick to “legitimate means.” The same day Cromwell met with Bunau-Varilla (they both claim this is the first time they worked together), who had rushed to Washington to prepare for what would be the climax in the Senate of the long “Battle of the Routes.”

The astonishing, Roosevelt-led turnaround caused great confusion in the United States press, long accustomed to the American preference for a Nicaragua canal. Much of the concern about Panama was the prospect of dealing with Bogotá. “The Colombians … have negro blood enough to make them lazy, and Spanish blood sufficient to make them mean,” declared
Harpers Weekly.
Somewhat prophetically, the
New York World
commented, “Talk about buying a lawsuit—the purchase of the Panama Canal would be buying a revolution.”

ince the beginning of the year, the Hepburn Bill had been in the hands of Morgan's Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals. After extensive cross-examining of all available experts, the Committee, in spite of the Walker Commission's decision, voted seven to four in favor of Nicaragua. But Hanna, with Cromwell's help, produced a minority report in favor of Panama. The date of June 4 was set for the start of the debate in the Senate over which of these would be adopted.

In the meantime, Bunau-Varilla was as busy as ever, writing to newspapers and politicians, producing pamphlets, and pouring pro-Panama rhetoric into the ears of anyone who would listen. Then the Panama lobby had a stroke of luck. On May 8, the volcano Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique exploded with devastating effect. The town of Saint-Pierre in its shadow was utterly destroyed, and more than thirty thousand people were killed. Although Martinique was nowhere near either route, volcanoes were suddenly on everyone's mind. Then, just a week later, the news came in that a volcano in Nicaragua itself had erupted. Friends of Panama in the press had a field day.

Senator Morgan opened the debate in the Senate with a spirited counterattack on the “volcano scare,” brandishing a letter from the foreign minister of Nicaragua (who had somehow been persuaded to deny the eruption had taken place), and pointing out that Panama had itself recently experienced an earthquake. But the main thrust of his argument against Panama was political. Its people were “mixed and turbulent;” it was chronically unstable; to build a canal there, the United States would have to take the country by force, an action, predicted the Alabama senator, that would “poison the minds of people against us in every Spanish-American republic in the Western Hemisphere, and set their teeth on edge against us.”

The next day, Senator Mark Hanna replied in favor of his minority report. It was to be the greatest speech of his career. Shunning rhetorical flourishes, he spoke in a slow, businesslike way, illustrating his points with an impressive array of visual tools, including a huge map showing active volcanoes in Nicaragua. All this had been prepared for him by Cromwell and Bunau-Varilla. The Panama route was shorter, he pointed out, had less curvature, better ports, a railway, fewer locks, and “was a beaten track in civilization.” Furthermore, the engineers wanted Panama, and “there are now done a great many things which fifty years ago were unheard of, never dreamed of, never thought possible, as a product of human intelligence and ingenuity in engineering. It has become a byword today that in the hands of a skillful engineer nothing is impossible.”

The speech, over two days, certainly changed votes, although the Panama lobby was not home yet. Pro-Nicaragua senators suggested that the whole effort of the Hanna party was to delay any canal in order to serve the interests of the transcontinental railroads. There still persisted, too, a feeling that Panama was irrevocably stained by corruption and what was seen as the vice of the French years. “It is the certainty of moral defilement,” declared Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon. “Panama cannot be touched with safety by American people.”

The volcano argument was also foundering. The Nicaraguans were sticking by their story that there had been no recent eruption in their country, and the whole scare was starting to be seen as an invention of the Panama lobby. On June 6, a cartoon appeared in the influential
Washington Star
, showing Hanna slapping imaginary volcanoes on to a map of Nicaragua aided by a comical Frenchman, Bunau-Varilla, and James J. Hill, head of the Great Northern Railroad. As Bunau-Varilla wrote, “If the vote were to be taken under this impression Panama was done for ever…Fortunately I had a sudden inspiration.”

Over the next few days Bunau-Varilla scoured the philatelists of the capital looking for a certain 1900 one-centavo Nicaraguan stamp, which he had come across the year before. In the foreground of the stamp is pictured a busy wharf while in the background rises the magnificent bulk of Mount Momotombo. In an artistic flourish the illustrator had added smoke to the top of the volcano, which was actually more than a hundred miles from the proposed Nicaragua canal. Just before the vote, every senator was sent this “evidence” of the dangers of the Nicaragua route.

It was almost the last shot, but this went to Senator Morgan, who used his final speech before the vote on the minority report to launch a bitter attack against his enemy Cromwell. The “direct, constant, and offensive intrusion of the Panama Canal Company” into the workings of the U.S. government was, he said, “humiliating” and “repulsive.” “I can not neglect Mr. Cromwell,” he said. “I trace this man back … to the beginning of this whole business. He has not failed to appear anywhere in this whole affair.” The contagion of Panama, “death's nursery,” had through its agent Cromwell poisoned everything it touched.

Everyone knew that the vote on June 19 would be close, and the press and the country, which had followed the fourteen-day debate closely, waited with bated breath. When the result came, it could hardly have been narrower, with Hanna's minority report in favor of Panama winning by just eight votes. “The battle was won,” wrote Bunau-Varilla. “Truth at last triumphed.”

After this, the passage of the Spooner amendment was a formality, and the House of Representatives was persuaded to back the act as well. In part, the pro-Nicaragua faction assumed that either the French title would prove defective or an agreement with Colombia would not be forthcoming and they would get their preferred option after all. If they had lost a battle, they had not yet lost the war.

panish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa discovers the South Sea and that Panama is a tantalizingly narrow isthmus.