Photo by Underwood & Underwood
ENTRANCE TO MT. HOPE CEMETERY
Revolutions were annual occurrences, sometimes hard fought, for the people of Panama have plenty of courage in the field; sometimes ended with the first battle. The name of the parent state has been sometimes Colombia, sometimes New Granada; Panama has at times been independent, at others a state of the Federation of New Granada; at one time briefly allied with Ecuador and Venezuela. In 1846 the volume of North American travel across the Isthmus became so great that the United States entered into a treaty with New Granada in which we guaranteed to keep the Isthmus open for transit. That and the building, by American capital of the Panama Railroad, made us a directly interested party in all subsequent revolutions. Of these there were plenty. President Theodore Roosevelt, defending in 1903 the diplomatic methods by which he “took” Panama, enumerated no fewer than fifty-three revolutions in the fifty-seven years that had elapsed since the signing of the treaty. He summed up the situation thus:
“The above is only a partial list of the revolutions, rebellions, insurrections, riots, and other outbreaks that have occurred during the period in question; yet they number fifty-three for the last fifty-seven years. It will be noted that one of them lasted nearly three years before it was quelled; another for nearly a year. In short, the experience of nearly half a century has shown Colombia to be utterly incapable of keeping order on the Isthmus. Only the active interference of the United States has enabled her to preserve so much as a semblance of sovereignty. Had it not been for the exercise by the United States of the police power in her interest, her connection with the Isthmus would have been severed long ago.”
CATHEDRAL PLAZA, PANAMA
The building in the center was by turns the French and the American Administration Building
We are apt to think of these revolutions as mere riots, uprisings somewhat after the sort of Falstaff’s seven men in buckram, and savoring much of the opera bouffe. Such, to a great extent they were, and curiously enough none of them, except for its outcome, was less serious or dignified than the final one which won for Panama its freedom from Colombia, and for the United States the ten miles’ strip across the ocean called the Canal Zone. That was perhaps the only revolution in history by which was created a new and sovereign-state, and the issue of which was finally determined by the inability of a commanding general to pay the fares for his troops over forty-eight miles of railroad. Of that, however, more hereafter.
AVENIDA CENTRALE
The building with the rounded corner balcony is the American Consulate
Of course, during all the revolutions and counter revolutions the idea of the canal had steadily grown. England at one time took a mild interest in it and sent one Horatio Nelson to look over the land. The young naval officer’s health failed him and he returned to become in later years the hero of Trafalgar and the Nile. Later, the great German scientist, Baron von Humboldt, in the course of a famous voyage to South America, spent some time on the Isthmus, and wrote much of its natural features, enumerating nine routes for a canal including of course the one finally adopted. Louis Napoleon, though never on the Isthmus, dreamed out the possibilities of a canal when he was a prisoner in the fortress of Ham. Had he succeeded in maintaining Maximilian on the throne of Mexico he might have made the Isthmian history very different. Among our own people, De Witt Clinton, builder of the Erie Canal, and Henry Clay, were the first to plan for an American canal across the Isthmus, but without taking practical steps to accomplish it.