The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

He had the nonscientific, nontechnical man’s faith that science and technology would “find a way.”

He was the first President to call his official residence the White House (rather than the Executive Mansion),

The canal was to be the first step to American supremacy at sea.

he had arrived at the extremely simple theory that national greatness and commercial supremacy were directly related to supremacy at sea.

Roosevelt was thirty-one years old at the time Mahan’s book appeared

in 1897, Roosevelt told Mahan that the Nicaragua canal should be built “at once”

In all the United States he had never met an imperialist,

Expansion was different; it was growth, it was progress,

“If that canal is open to the war ships of an enemy it is a menace to us in time of war;

Theodore Roosevelt had been operating on the assumption that the canal was to be built in Nicaragua.

Nicaragua, in the popular phrase, remained “the American route”

Nicaragua offered the lowest pass anywhere on the Cordilleras from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego;

Nicaragua was clean, fertile, relatively free of disease;

the Walker Commission had again declared Nicaragua the preferred choice.

but the exceedingly strong case being made for Panama.

The gist of the speeches had been to get the United States to buy the canal at any price.

So the total estimated value came to $40,000,000, which, interestingly, was the precise figure the French were now offering to sell for.

they had cut it by more than 60 percent.

On January 9, the House voted all but unanimously—308 to 2—to proceed with the Nicaragua canal.

Roosevelt wanted the French offer to be accepted. The conclusion of the commission, he said, was to be unanimous.

By Saturday the papers were saying that Roosevelt had a new canal report in his hands.

On the motion of George S. Morison, the commission had reversed its decision: Panama was now declared the unanimous choice for the canal.

Roosevelt had made up his mind that it must be a Panama canal.

by the start of 1902 not a single politician of importance had ever declared himself in favor of a Panama canal.

C. P. Huntington and the Southern Pacific, which by then virtually controlled the Panama Railroad

Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.

it is clear that his fundamental objective was to sell the French company to the United States government,

a Panama canal would be a third the length of a canal at Nicaragua;

Panama had no volcanoes.

It was the volcano part of the speech, however, that had the greatest impact.

While Nicaragua was undoubtedly an area of volcanic activity, Morison did not believe that would have any serious effect on canal structures. From the engineering point of view, the issue was a phony.

he hammered away at his volcano story. Let those inclined to dismiss his warnings take note:

Walker’s reply was that the Frenchman was making too much of the volcano matter.

Yet somewhere along the line he had become an extremely wealthy man.

the French company’s price tag was all that had kept the commission from naming Panama as the most advantageous route—Bunau-Varilla

Which the French quickly reduced to $40,000,000. Page 266.

The price now must be $40,000,000 and they must accept that figure.

His one shortcoming was a lack of engineering background or experience, which until now nobody had made an issue of.

The commission’s decision had been to abandon the sea-level concept, as de Lesseps’ engineers had finally done, and to build a lock canal much along the lines of the proposal made by Godin de Lépinay in 1879.

The Isthmus was not to be severed by a vast trench, but bridged by an artificial lake,

the largest artificial lake in the world.

Yes, replied Walker. Everything depended on the Bohio dam,

The great cut through the spine of the Cordilleras would be more momentous still. It alone might take as much as eight years.

So far as what is ordinarily called surveying, topographical work, we did enough of it to convince ourselves that the French work was good and that we could accept their work as our own.”

“If the reports are correct,” Morison said, “we can get rid of yellow fever by killing the mosquitoes.”

the committee wanted a Nicaragua canal. The vote was seven to four, exactly what it would have been had it been taken before the hearings began.

the “volcanic menace” in Nicaragua could no longer be dismissed as a remote issue.

And it was then that he remembered the postage stamp.

What have the Nicaraguans chosen to characterize their country on their coat of arms, on their postage stamps? Volcanoes!”

the afternoon of the nineteenth. The vote was 42 to 34. Panama had won by eight votes.

Panama was the superior choice from the strictly objective technical standpoint.

the sort of men who would have to build the canal assured him that Panama was the place to put it.