II
One topic that had been scarcely touched on, ironically, was that of “seismic disturbances.”
The commission had pretty well dismissed seismic action of any kind as a serious threat to canals in either location, but between volcanoes and earthquakes, earthquakes were regarded as a more serious danger. There had been fourteen recorded earthquakes along the Nicaragua line, the report noted, including one in 1844 that did damage four miles from the canal line. But, as the report explained, canals were underground structures; even the proposed dams would be so broadly based as to be virtually part of the ground itself; the locks would all be founded on rock.
Of the fourteen or so volcanoes in Nicaragua, only a few had shown any signs of life since the time of the Spanish, and all but one of these, Ometepe, which rises on an island in Lake Nicaragua, were a considerable distance from the proposed canal line. Even Ometepe was thirteen miles from where the ships would cross the lake, and from Ometepe to the site for the nearest lock was a distance of twenty miles.
Late in April, however, on the Caribbean island of Martinique, 1,500 miles from Nicaragua, an enormous, long-dormant volcano, Mount Pelée, began rumbling ominously and spewing up clouds of hot ash. Then on the night of May 2, the mountain trembled to the accompaniment of thunderous, terrifying subterranean explosions. The city of St. Pierre, the “little Paris,” was showered with volcanic dust and the sea for miles was littered with dead birds. After that the volcano was seldom still. At 7:52 on the morning of May 8, 1902, the whole mountain exploded. The city of St. Pierre was wiped out in approximately two minutes. It was one of the most appalling disasters of all time. Sailors on a cable ship anchored eight miles off shore felt the heat. A man watching from a distant mountainside said it looked “as if Martinique was sliding into the sea.” Nearly thirty thousand people had been killed, and above the island, blotting out the sky, was a tumultuous black cloud, perhaps fifty miles across. The sole survivor of St. Pierre was a prisoner locked in a windowless underground jail cell who had no idea what had happened until he was discovered by rescue workers.
At the White House, disregarding all red tape, Roosevelt ordered the cruiser Cincinnati to leave for Martinique at once under full steam and the Dixie, a converted freighter, followed, carrying Army rations, medical supplies, and doctors. Congress was asked for an immediate appropriation and Congress quickly granted $200,000. Pelée kept erupting in subdued fashion, meantime.
For Philippe Bunau-Varilla the news was heaven-sent. “What an unexpected turn of the wheel of fortune!” he would write. “If not the strongest of my arguments against Nicaragua, at least the most easily comprehensible of them was thus made a hundred times more striking . . .”
In the past months he had been chasing about seeing newspaper editors, talking to Hanna, talking to everyone who would listen, with such fanatical zeal that word had reached Paris that he had lost his mind. Now he swung into action as never before. A letter outlining the “terrible object lesson” of Pelée was rushed to the White House and a still more elaborate version went off to Senators Hanna and Spooner. There was an impassioned appeal on Waldorf stationery to John Tyler Morgan.
In New York the ancient and reliable John Bigelow was stirred into action still one more time. Through Bigelow a meeting was arranged with editor Edward P. Mitchell, of the Sun, the result of which was a vigorous editorial declaring that the “volcanic menace” in Nicaragua could no longer be dismissed as a remote issue.
On May 14, incredibly, came a dispatch from New Orleans describing the eruption of Momotombo, in Nicaragua itself. Now “even the mountains of Nicaragua are enlisted in the alleged conspiracy to defeat the great purpose of Senator Morgan’s life,” observed Mitchell in the Sun. Momotombo was said to be shooting great shafts of fire into the sky, and an accompanying earthquake had supposedly sent a government dock plunging into Lake Managua. On May 20, Pelée exploded a second time, leveling what little remained of St. Pierre, and on the island of St. Vincent, just to the south of Martinique, still another volcano erupted.
At the request of John Tyler Morgan, the Nicaraguan minister in Washington cabled Managua for verification of the Momotombo story. Morgan, meantime, had also obtained assurance from John Hay that the President would remain silent on the canal matter. “He greatly prefers, as did President McKinley,” Hay wrote assuringly, “that the question of the route be decided by Congress . . .” The Senate was to commence debate on June 4.
On June 3, the Nicaraguan minister reported back to Morgan with a copy of the reply from Managua, a cable signed by Jose Santos Zelaya, president of Nicaragua:
The NEWS PUBLISHED ABOUT RECENT ERUPTIONS OF VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES IN NICARAGUA EN TIRELY FALSE.
“I may add also,” wrote the Nicaraguan minister in a covering letter to Morgan, “that Nicaragua has not had any volcanic eruption since 1835, and at that time Coseguina discharged smoke and ashes, but no lava. No one was killed or injured and no property was destroyed by that occurrence.” Momotombo was a hundred miles from the proposed canal line.
The minister’s name was Luis Corea. Whether he actually received such a cable from President Zelaya or was responsible for the copy he passed on to Morgan is impossible to determine. In any event, Momotombo had definitely erupted; the cable accredited to President Zelaya was quite false.
It was Old Morgan who made the first speech when the debate on the Hepburn Bill began in the Senate, Wednesday, June 4, 1902.
“Mr. President, I do not care to approach the discussion of this important measure in a cloud of volcanic smoke and ashes which the opponents of the measure outside of the Senate have brought as a funeral pall to place over its bier, and I think it proper that I should try to clear the atmosphere. . . .”
He read Luis Corea’s letter, then two others from the American minister at Managua, his old friend William Merry, who emphasized that there had been no seismic disturbances along the proposed canal line. But mainly the speech was an attack on Panama for its political violence, “its mixed and turbulent people,” for its seismic disturbances. He read a vivid eyewitness account from the Panama Star & Herald of the destruction caused by the earthquake of 1882. If seismic disturbances were the only way to defeat the Nicaragua canal, then he was sorry to report that the argument would carry Panama down with it.
For quite a while the Senate was subjected to a lesson in geopolitics, as Morgan explained the peculiar relationship of Panama to the rest of Colombia because of geography. Taking Bancroft’s History of Central America as his text, he explained the Bidlack Treaty and the touchy nature of American involvement in Panama. The one possible solution to Panama’s political demoralization, the immortal Bancroft had said, was a strong government “provided from abroad.” Did this mean then, the historian had asked rhetorically, that the United States–“as the power most interested in preserving the independence” of a Panama waterway–would take upon itself “the whole control for the benefit of all nations?” Only time would tell, Bancroft had written. Only time would tell, repeated the frail, white-haired Senator from Alabama. That, he said, looking about the chamber, was what concerned him above all. Should the United States decide on a canal at Panama, it would be merely a matter of time before the United States would be compelled to take Panama by force. And he wanted no part in that. It would “poison the minds of people against us in every Spanish-American republic in the Western Hemisphere, and set their teeth on edge against us . . . it would tarnish our national honor to enter Panama under the pledge that our purpose is to build a canal and follow it with the annexation of Panama.” He was Jeremiah now, and the part came easily. “And no actual necessity for annexation, however imperative it may be, would ever excuse or palliate that result, in the opinion of the Spanish-American people. If this is to be . . . as a necessity for the protection of the canal, it would be the most dangerous national pitfall into which we could plunge.”
The place for the canal, as always, was Nicaragua, “where all
the people are anxiously awaiting the coming of the United States to their assistance, with eager hopes and warm welcome, to their fertile, healthy, and beautiful land.”
Morgan was not much of an orator. He paused often to frame his sentences and like all his speeches this one would read better than it sounded. He closed with an appeal for an act of kindness, as he said, for his beloved South. “. . . I would brighten that land with the bloom of prosperous industry, and bring back to my brethren the consciousness that they live and move in the current of human affairs. I hope to see the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea . . . as busy with commerce as the bay of San Francisco.”
He had spoken for some two and a half hours and he had made no mention of engineering considerations.
The following day, June 5, shortly before two in the afternoon, Marcus Alonzo Hanna limped down the aisle of the Senate to deliver the most important speech of his career. Behind him hurried a secretary carrying a stack of books, papers, and pamphlets.
The chamber was nearly full and all about were hung enormous maps and plans. One map of Central America and the Caribbean islands reached from the gallery railing to the floor. It showed the location of every principal volcano, active or extinct, the active ones being marked in red, the extinct in black, with the result that an almost solid band of red dots ran from the Mexican-Guatemalan border on the Pacific shore to about midway into Costa Rica. Eight of the red dots were in Nicaragua. In the Colombian province of Panama there were none. Also, as many observers were quick to note, Pelée, on Martinique, was indicated as extinct.
The maps and the plans were merely colossal enlargements of several from the report of the Walker Commission, copies of which had long since been made available to every member of the Senate and to the press. But Hanna, who had an instinct for promotion, knew the effect such a display would have. No graphic presentation of such scale had ever been seen before in the Senate.
“Ladies and diplomats, reporters, agents of the powers, all jammed the gallery’s aisles,” we are told. Telephones had been ringing across town all morning with the message that Hanna was to speak.
Largely misunderstood in his own day, largely forgotten by the time the last of his generation had passed from the scene, Marcus Alonzo Hanna was an original, the plain, plain-spoken, brilliant, eminently practical man who had made a business of politics and made himself the nearest thing there had ever been to a national political boss. Coal merchant, ironmonger, owner of ore boats and newspapers, he was burly, but seemingly bland, with a bald head and large brown eyes and a bad case of rheumatism. He had put his adored friend William Mc Kinley in the White House by amassing the biggest campaign fund on record and through keen political judgment, and when McKinley made Senator Sherman Secretary of State in 1897, Hanna was appointed to fill his place. He was still finishing out Sherman’s term and until now he had had comparatively little to say in the Senate. He thought political speeches “gas.”
But the talk now, increasingly, was of Hanna for President in 1904, which was a major reason for the stir over the speech he was about to make. For while he made light of any possible Presidential ambitions, the idea of big, able “Uncle Mark,” friend of business, friend of labor, host of sumptuous parties, holding forth in the White House in his own style appealed to many, and especially to Wall Street, where Roosevelt was thought “unsafe.” History, moreover, seemed to be on his side. Of the four Vice Presidents who had previously succeeded to the Presidency upon the death of a President not one had even been nominated by his party to run for the office in his own right.
“He has a mass of material,” Cromwell informed Bunau-Varilla the day before, “but he says he will use little of it and speak only in his own simple and direct way. . . .” Cromwell, who was sitting in the gallery as Hanna made his entrance, had been personally responsible for a volume of testimony, now in the hands of Hanna’s trailing secretary. Some eighty-three shipowners, shipmasters, officers, and pilots– those who would use the canal–had given their unanimous preference for the Panama route. The lawyer had prepared a businesslike questionnaire covering trade winds, weather conditions, canal curvature, towing, and nighttime navigation, and through his Wall Street connections he had seen that copies were sent to the ranking officers with the Cunard, White Star, American, and Red Star lines. Only two had said they would risk their ships through a Nicaragua canal at night. None thought the Nicaragua canal would offer a saving in time, because of its length, and without exception they agreed that the shorter the canal, the less time spent in the canal, the less risk to their ships, and so the better the canal.
Bunau-Varilla, no less busy than Cromwell, had contributed a number of clever diagrams of his own design, all based on the canal commission’s own statistics, each pointing up Panama’s essential engineering and navigational virtues. The diagrams were as simple as illustrations in a child’s primer, conveying their message at a glance and easy to remember. They were an inspiration, Hanna saw instantly. The inevitable problem with technical reports, with any arguments based on technical data, was that few would read them, and the only advantage that Panama could claim was its technical superiority. So it had been arranged that the pamphlets containing the diagrams be delivered to the Senate in quantity at the close of Hanna’s speech.
Hanna was even less an orator than John Tyler Morgan. He was also in poor health and would be forced to spread his remarks over two days, stopping suddenly, unexpectedly, on this first day after being on his feet little more than an hour. But he had a disarming manner of talking as though he had no intention of inflicting a speech on anybody. He made things sound easy and sensible. He had thought the subject through, as a business proposition. It was the voice of common sense speaking, of American enterprise, of the North, of power and “stubborn facts,” as he called them. “This plain old person in a dull gray suit,” wrote a biographer, “was doing something and a drama heaped itself in the warm chamber while he drawled along, explaining this investment without an eloquent phrase.”
We have passed the experimental stage, Hanna began. We have passed the sentimental stage, we want the best route, we want the best canal, we want a canal to serve the needs of the entire world, we will build not just for today or next year but for all time.
“It is the great, broad, liberal American policy for which we stand in the building of a world canal. I sympathize with all those who in other days, laboring for an isthmian canal, had but one star to guide them– Nicaragua–and who must now naturally feel like giving up an old friend to pass it by. But in this age of progress and development, Mr. President, the American people are looking to Congress to answer to them on this question without regard to sentiment. . . .”
De Lesseps had been no fool. At Panama there could be a sea-level canal, at Nicaragua there would be no chance for that, never ever. If Panama was unsettled politically, all Central America was unsettled. In any event, an American canal would be a great peacemaker.
It was then that his legs gave out. He was too tired to go on, he said suddenly, causing a commotion in the gallery, and at once he sat down. But the next day he was back again and took up as though nothing had happened.
Panama was the place to build the canal for the following reasons, Hanna began, as his secretary, who sat behind him, handed up a sheaf of papers. One: A Panama canal would be 134.57 miles shorter, terminal to terminal. Two: It would have considerably less curvature. Three: The time in transit, by steam, would be less than half that at Nicaragua–twelve hours against thirty-three. Four: Panama required fewer locks. Five: Panama had better harbors. Six: Panama was “a beaten track in civilization.” Seven: Panama had a railroad “perfect in every respect.” Eight: A Panama canal would cost less to run. Nine: “All engineering and practical questions involved in the construction of the Panama canal are satisfactorily settled and assured. . . .”
He wanted no one to underestimate the importance of reason nine. The engineers wanted a Panama canal and they w
ere the ones to listen to. “Why, Mr. President, there are now done a great many things which fifty years ago were unheard of, never dreamed of, never thought possible, as a product of human intelligence and ingenuity in engineering. It has become almost a byword today that in the hands of a skillful engineer nothing is impossible.”
Morgan had called for a boon to his native southland; Hanna said neither sentiment, sectionalism, nor personalities ought ever enter into so momentous a decision. Morgan had cited the preference of past canal commissions for Nicaragua; Hanna urged his colleagues to think not of the past but of the future.
When Senator Mitchell, an ardent Nicaragua man, tried to break in as Hanna read Cromwell’s survey of shipmasters, demanding to know who the author of this questionable document might be, Hanna had replied, “I do not want to be interrupted, for I am very tired . . .”
He ended on a warning. If the United States were to build a Nicaragua canal, what then was to prevent some other power–by which he meant Germany–from finishing the French canal? Our competitors then, he said, would have all the advantages.
“Mais, il est formidable!” the Russian envoy was heard to remark.
It was the finest speech Hanna ever made. There were no ringing phrases, but apparently it did something very rare in the Senate; it changed some votes. One Senator told Hanna that he had been undecided until then. He would vote now, he said, for the “Hannama Canal.”
Even so, the Hanna forces felt the tide was running against them as the debate continued in the days after. A Nicaragua speech by Senator Harris received blazing newspaper acclaim. More serious was the spreading belief that the volcano scare in Nicaragua was something Hanna and his cohorts had manufactured. The Nicaraguan embassy stuck by its denial of any serious disturbances, and a cartoon in the Washington Star showed Hanna at an easel slapping out Nicaraguan volcanoes by the yard to the delight of two onlookers, Philippe Bunau-Varilla and the head of the Great Northern railroad, James J. Hill. (In Minneapolis, Hill had sounded off to reporters about asinine congressmen and the “nasty, crooked” Nicaragua canal; only if a volcano were belching beneath the seat of his pants would any congressman ever take heed, said James J. Hill.) Hanna was enraged by the cartoon and he, Cromwell, and Bunau-Varilla tried desperately to think of some response.
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