Then the President, the American Congress, and the American people awoke to the fact that if the safety of the cities of the seaboards of the Atlantic and the Pacific depended upon naval protection, and that if such a long voyage would have to be taken by ships stationed upon the opposite coast, it might mean the destruction of incalculable wealth.
The entire Nation began to realize that if the “Oregon” could have sailed from San Francisco to Panama and passed through the isthmus by means of a canal such as we are now constructing, she could have made the voyage from San Francisco to the coasts of Cuba, consuming three days at Colon or Panama to take on stores and ammunition, and still could have been at her station on the coasts of Cuba in sixteen days’ time. The people of the country began to realize that the difference between sixteen and sixty-five days might mean the safety of the Nation, and especially so if we were at war with a maritime power such as Great Britain, Germany and Japan.
This startling demonstration of the absolute necessity for a Panama Canal from the standpoint of American national safety, at once swept aside all opposition at Washington to canal construction. Immediately a universal wave of sentiment in favor of a national American Isthmian Canal swept over the land and found its expression in instructions by every constituency in the Union to Congressmen and to Senators to do all in their power to assist in bringing canal legislation to a successful termination.
The Canal Commission
Immediately thereafter President William McKinley was authorized by Congress to send a commission to Panama and Nicaragua to examine those two routes and to receive offers from the different companies as to the amounts the different projects could be purchased for.
The result of the investigations of the commission was that the Panamanian Company offered their uncompleted canal, their franchises, their plans and specifications, the Panama Railroad, which was worth about $12,000,000, and a line of steamships from Colon to New York, consisting of five medium-sized steel vessels of modern construction, for the sum of $110,000,000. The Nicaraguan Company offered their concessions from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, in addition to all their other property, for $6,000,000. They simply desired to be reimbursed for the amounts spent in securing their concessions and making their preliminary surveys.
After careful consideration the commission recommended the purchase of the Nicaraguan proposition. It was at this critical state of the negotiations that President McKinley was removed by the bloody hand of the assassin, and as a result Vice-President Roosevelt took his place as the head of the American Government. President Roosevelt decided on the Nicaraguan proposition; but before the matter was closed the French Panama Company came fully to the realization that if the United States purchased the concessions of the Maritime Canal Company and began the construction of a canal through the Nicaraguan territory, without any question that project would be completed in a reasonably short space of time, as it would have the power of the entire American Government behind it.
BONEYARD OF THE OLD FRENCH MACHINERY.