United States Commercial Pressures for a Nicaragua Canal in the 1890’s

E-ISSN： 1533-6247|20|4|333-358

ISSN： 0003-1615

Source： The Americas, Vol.20, Iss.4, 1964-04, pp. : 333-358

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Abstract

There existed in the United States in the late nineteenth century a strong conviction that the Nicaragua route utilizing the San Juan River and Lake Nicaragua was the only satisfactory route for an interoceanic canal across the American Isthmus. Not only had Lesseps earlier favored this route for a lock canal, but the activity of the French interests in Panama, and then their failure there, had reinforced in the minds of many United States citizens their old desire for a canal across Nicaragua. But the United States interest in a Nicaragua canal had never been dependent upon what happened in Panama; in the early 1880’s, as the French began work in Panama, and later as well, sentiment in the United States favored a Nicaragua canal even though the French should ultimately succeed, for influential persons in the United States—President Hayes and General Grant among them—feared foreign monopoly of a single interoceanic waterway at a time when they had come to regard our free access to such a transit as vital to the national interest.