Columbia’s Negotiations Regarding the Panama Canal

Then occurred to him an idea of high finance which ought to make the most imaginative and audacious of our promoters blush at their incapacity.

Continuing USA Acquires Rights to Build the Panama Canal,
our selection from Speech to the US Senate by Chauncey M. Depew delivered on January 14, 1904. The selection is presented in 5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in USA Acquires Rights to Build the Panama Canal.

Time: 1903

After many revolts against his authority, in a final revolution he defeated the Liberals in a great battle, and they fled from the field, leaving upon it seven-thousand of their dead. Marroquin was now absolute master of the constitution, the laws, the lives, and the property of the people of Colombia. He evidently proposed this treaty to secure ten million dollars from the United States Government. He wanted money, and ten millions in gold, reckoned by the value of Colombian currency, would be about fifty millions in that Republic. But the speed and alacrity with which his offer was accepted opened his mind to visions of bound less wealth. He certainly developed, in his effort to compass these riches, Machiavellian statesmanship of a high order.

He declared the constitution operative, ordered an election, and summoned a congress. He had the army and absolute power; he controlled the machinery of elections, and brought to the capital his own representatives. He was in a position at any moment again to suspend the constitution, prorogue Congress, or send them to jail. But he said: “This is my treaty, which I sent up to Washington when I was the Government, which the United States has agreed to, and there must be some excuse which will appeal to the powers at Washington for more money. I must create an opposition to my Government.” So he granted for the first time in three years a restricted liberty to the press, he liberated the editors and permitted the confiscated newspapers to resume. The cue given to them was to assail the treaty and the United States. This was to create the impression that there was a violent opposition, in a country where only five per cent. of the people can read, against the Hay-Herran settlement. Next he created in Congress an opposition to the Government.

The orators to whom this role was assigned, with all the tropical luxuriance of Latin eloquence, denounced this infamous agreement, this frightful surrender of the rights and interests of Colombia. Marroquin, as Vice-President, presiding over the Senate, listened with pleasure to these fusillades upon his own statesmanship prearranged by himself. Every citizen of Colombia who had any intelligence, and every member of either House of that Congress, knew that Marroquin had but to lift his finger and the vote for the treaty would be unanimous. This drama, accurately reported by our Minister Beaupré to the Secretary of State, closed with Vice-President Marroquin saying to us substantially:

You see the trouble I have in this uncontrollable opposition. Of course I want to carry out my treaty, but unless concessions are made, not to me, but to the pride and sentiments of my country, I am helpless. But if the United States will give ten million dollars more, I think I can satisfy this opposition; at least I will risk my popularity and power in the effort.”

The answer of the United States was an unmistakable and emphatic No. That answer has the unanimous approval of the public sentiment of our country. The Vice-President then said to the French company, “If you will pay that ten million dollars extra out of your forty million dollars we will ratify the treaty.” The French company rejected the proposition. Then both the Minister of Great Britain and the Minister of Germany were approached to see whether a “dicker” could be arranged and a sort of auction set up, with Great Britain, Germany, and the United States as the bidders. The folly of this proposition was in its violation of the Monroe Doctrine by a Republic which had been many times its beneficiary, a Republic which now has quarrels upon its hands with Great Britain and France because of outrages committed upon the citizens of those countries, which would lead to summary and drastic measures of reprisal except for the Monroe Doctrine.

No better illustration of the understanding by the European governments of the sanctity of this article of American international law has been shown of late than the action of the representatives of these Powers. No stronger proofs have been given of the interest of every great commercial nation in the construction of this canal in the interest of commerce and civilization and its construction and control by the United States. These patriotic efforts of the Vice-President and dictator to secure more money by many methods of hold-up were discouraging, but he did not despair. He had received an emphatic negative from the United States, had been refused by the French Panama Canal Company and turned down by Great Britain and Germany. But he had been trained in many revolutions where money had to be raised by other processes than the orderly ones of assessments and taxation upon all the people and properties of the country upon an equal basis. His resourceful genius was equal to the occasion.

He had called together his Congress, to carry out his program of exploiting this asset of Colombia for many times more than the price at which he had agreed to sell it. Then occurred to him an idea of high finance which ought to make the most imaginative and audacious of our promoters blush at their incapacity. The Panama Canal Company had received from him while dictator, upon the payment of a million dollars and five million francs at par of stock in the new company, a concession which ran until 1910. The old concession expired in October, 1904, and for this the French company had paid Colombia twelve million francs. With every concession, where vast amounts of money have been expended in good faith and large sums paid for the franchise, there are always equities to the defaulting party, but the new scheme dismissed the equities, the extension of the charter, and the million dollars paid, which had been spent.

The Congress, to the tearful regret and over the wishes of the dictator and Vice-President, rejected the treaty by an almost unanimous vote and then adjourned. But Congressmen talk after adjournment. It is their habit in all countries, and the Senators and Representatives who participated in this picturesque drama of national aggrandizement said that the object of the adjournment was to wait until the old concession of the Panama Canal Company had expired in October, then to recall Congress in extraordinary session in November, declare the concession cancelled, and seize upon the property of the French canal company. Then, they said, we will offer to the United States the properties of the French canal company for the forty million dollars which are to be paid that corporation and the ten million which are coming to us. “Of course,” they argued, “the United States will be quite willing to enter upon an agreement of this kind, because the sum which they pay will be the same in amount as they have agreed upon under the terms of the Hay-Herran Treaty and the contract with the French canal company. ”

A. Maurice Low began here. Chauncey M. Depew began here.

More information here and here, and below.

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