Panama fever (15 page)

e Lesseps's expedition to Panama and his imminent arrival in the United States had created a great deal of comment in the newspapers of that country. In general, they were cynical about the realistic prospects for the sea-level canal, concerned about the repercussions for the favored Nicaragua option, and hostile to the perceived international weakness of the United States that the European-led project revealed. It was the United States, said the
New York World
, who had “proper predominance over the seas to be united by any Isthmian or Central American ship-canal.” What was needed was massive and accelerated naval expansion, along with naval stations near the future canal. The
New York Times
thought that the sea-level canal was practicable and desirable, but that its cost would make it uneconomic. Nevertheless, it praised the energy and determination of de Lesseps compared to his rivals in the States: “While they protest and discuss and reflect and hesitate, he goes ahead.” The
New York Tribune
agreed: “All this looks like business.” The paper interviewed the Panama Railroad boss, Trenor Park, on his return from Panama in late January. Park, who must have been rubbing his hands together at the killing he knew he could make by selling the railroad to the French, announced that he had gone to the Isthmus with “grave doubts of the success of the project,” but returned reassured by de Lesseps: “He is certainly a great man, and his enthusiasm is contagious.”

As the day of de Lesseps's arrival neared, the
New York Tribune
urged decisive action: “Now is the time for the Government to make up its mind what to do … If it merely continues to make no sign, foreign capital will get committed, and then foreign Governments will be drawn in to protect the capital of their citizens, and the Monroe Doctrine will have disappeared like a morning fog… We are unwilling that the successors of Napoleon III, should attempt another foothold on the soil of the continent, even in the seductive guise of a peaceful triumph of engineering skill.” The answer, according to the
Tribune
, was to get the Nicaragua project up and running as soon as possible, and thereby see off the interlopers’ Panama scheme.

e Lesseps arrived in New York on February 24. On the journey from Colón he had completed the report of the Technical Commission, cutting the estimate to 658,600,000 francs ($131,720,000). Half this amount, he announced, was reserved for American subscribers.

De Lesseps never expected to raise this money in the United States. Before his trip he wrote to an American friend, who was busy setting up meetings, that he expected the Americans, and, to a lesser extent, the British, to fall for “inaccurate objections.” The capital for the project, de Lesseps believed, would come from France, “where one is used to working for the civilization of the world.”

He had never visited the United States before, and, as in Panama, de Lesseps enjoyed himself enormously. He set up court in the Windsor Hotel, which flew a tricolor from its mast in his honor. There, he was waited on by a committee from the American Society of Civil Engineers, who took him to see Hell's Gate and the East River Bridge. Later he visited the uncompleted Brooklyn Bridge, the Erie Railroad Station, and the docks and grain elevator in Jersey City. In the evening, there were receptions given by the Geographical Society, the French expatriate community, and on March 2 there was a great dinner in his honor at Delmonico's, which had been decorated with elaborate confectionary symbolizing the achievement of the Suez Canal—sphinxes, dredges, elephants, and bales of goods. One of the welcoming speakers was John Bigelow, the publisher and diplomat. Everywhere De Lesseps was honored as the builder of Suez, and the press were fascinated by his energy and charm.

But as de Lesseps had predicted, there was little interest in investing in the Panama project, and even at dinners with handpicked guests there were dark mutterings about the Monroe Doctrine, and predictions that a foreign government might take over the canal. In fact, while de Lesseps had been in Panama, the French government had sent a clear message to Secretary of State Evarts, formally notifying him that “the enterprise of M. Lesseps is of an entirely private nature and has no political color or protection at all,” as the Panama
Star and Herald
reported of the news. “This dumfounds the speculators, adventurers, contractors and others,” said the paper, “who have spread…rumors of war within six months, and of a tremendous European alliance against the United States.”

At Delmonico's, de Lesseps tried to answer the fears of his audiences: “He spoke rapidly in a distinct but quiet tone,” reported a journalist onlooker. “Occasionally when criticizing or indirectly ridiculing theories opposed to his own, he dropped into a sort of chuckle.” It had to be at Panama, rather than Nicaragua, because it had to be a sea-level canal; his project had nothing to do with any government, so the Monroe Doctrine did not apply, de Lesseps argued. The outfit would be based in Paris only because it was there that company laws gave the best protection to shareholders. “I have offered America 300,000 of the shares. If she takes that much she will have a controlling voice in the enterprise,” he told a
Tribune
reporter the following day. “But even though no shares are sold here, I shall still build my canal…”

From New York, de Lesseps traveled to Washington. There he met President Rutherford Hayes and Secretary Evarts and appeared before the House Interoceanic Canal Committee. He was received politely enough, but it was plain that his scheme infuriated everyone from the president down. On March 8, Hayes declared in a special message to Congress: “The policy of this country is a canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to any European power or to any combination of European powers.” So what if the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty committed the United States to share control with Great Britain? This should “by just and liberal negotiations” be altered. “The capital invested by corporations or citizens of other countries in such an enterprise must, in a great degree, look for protection to one or more of the great powers of the world,” Hayes continued. “No European power can intervene for such protection without adopting measures on this continent which the United States would deem wholly inadmissible. If the protection of the United States is relied upon, the United States must exercise such control as will enable this country to protect its national interests.” The canal, he proclaimed, will be “virtually a part of the coast line of the United States.”

“When M. de Lesseps gets ready to leave Washington tomorrow,” said the
New York Tribune
the following day, “he will have no reason to complain that he has been left in the dark as to the attitude of the Government of the United States toward the inter-oceanic canal project.”

But, as ever, de Lesseps was undaunted. Ignoring the threat of takeover implicit in Hayes's statement, he welcomed the interest shown by the American leadership in his project. Of course, as he had said time and again, no European governments would be invited to become involved in the canal. But if the United States, clearly the major power in the region, wanted to offer protection to the capital he was planning to raise, then that was to be celebrated. The next day he expressed “his delight with the President's message,” “because it would certainly be advantageous to have the protection of the United States during the work, and after the opening of the canal.” He had just sent a message to his son, which would be printed in the
Bulletin
, saying that the “President's message assured the political stability of the canal.” It was just what his home audience wanted to hear.

From Washington, de Lesseps traveled to Boston, Chicago, and nearly twenty other U.S. cities. However, everywhere he went, although there were flattering attentions, there was still a marked paucity of financial backing.

Back in Europe, de Lesseps threw himself into a new round of speeches and lectures in France, Britain, Holland, and Belgium. Everywhere there were reassurances that the United States was on board. “In these provincial tours,” reported one infuriated American critic, “he everywhere gave the impression that the governments of France and the United States were equally favourable to the enterprise; the flags of the two nations were everywhere united over his head when he spoke.”

De Lesseps was in Liverpool on May 29, specially invited to be present at a banquet in honor of the Queen's birthday. The 150 guests included foreign consuls and numerous naval officers in full uniform, as well as all the principal merchants of the city. At the town hall, “loyal toasts [were] enthusiastically drunk [and] a glee choir was in attendance.” American opposition to the scheme, de Lesseps announced, was “a phantom and a bugbear.” As he had for the United States, de Lesseps offered to keep back some shares especially for British investors.

In Britain, however, he found a cautious response. There was certainly support for the idea of a canal. In a leading article written in response to Hayes's statement to Congress,
The Times
drew a picture of the “few miles of oozy quagmire and jungle” separating the Atlantic and Pacific at Panama as “a heavier tax on the industry of mankind than a war or a famine.” The paper also strongly criticized the U.S. president's statement: “an inter-oceanic canal,” it wrote, “would form as much or as little a part of the European coastline as of that of the US… All that Europe wants is that a block of earth which it is growing to regard as it might a sunken ship in the Medway…should be cleared away, whether in the manner proposed by M. de Lesseps or in some other manner.” Interestingly, the president's claim of local hegemony was both resented and acknowledged. “That the US, by furnishing the money, should obtain a special right to watch over the safety and peaceable use of the new channel is what Europe, and particularly Great Britain, would most of all desire.”

For British investors, if de Lesseps's claims that the United States was now on side were widely believed, he was less successful in persuading them that the climate of Panama was “salubrious.” “It is a region,” wrote the
London Standard
, “endemic with tropical diseases and notoriously more pestilential than any part of the desert of Suez.” Also “In Panama [de Lesseps] has no gangs of Fellaheen forced to work for scant wages, no enthusiastic Khedive willing to command the resources of the state for the benefit of the undertaking.”