A board of experts
sent to the Isthmus had reported that this route was better than the
Nicaragua route, and that it would be well to build the canal over it
provided we could purchase the rights of the French company for forty
million dollars; but that otherwise they would advise taking the
Nicaragua route. Ever since 1846 we had had a treaty with the power then
in control of the Isthmus, the Republic of New Granada, the predecessor
of the Republic of Colombia and of the present Republic of Panama, by
which treaty the United States was guaranteed free and open right of way
across the Isthmus of Panama by any mode of communication that might
be constructed, while in return our Government guaranteed the perfect
neutrality of the Isthmus with a view to the preservation of free
transit.
For nearly fifty years we had asserted the right to prevent the closing
of this highway of commerce. Secretary of State Cass in 1858 officially
stated the American position as follows:
"Sovereignty has its duties as well as its rights, and none of these
local governments, even if administered with more regard to the just
demands of other nations than they have been, would be permitted, in a
spirit of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of intercourse of the
great highways of the world, and justify the act by the pretension that
these avenues of trade and travel belong to them and that they choose
to shut them, or, what is almost equivalent, to encumber them with such
unjust relations as would prevent their general use.
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