The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-12-13
The Isthmian Canal dn0
 The Republic Qf Panama

Right of Local Governments to Shut
 Gates of Intercourse Denied.
 In a letter of instructions to General Mirabeau B. Lamar in 1858 (July 25) then our Minister to Nicaragua, MT. Cass. Sec retary of State, announced the following very pertinent doctrine:
 The progress of events has rendered the inter-oceanic route across the mar row portions of Central America vastly Important to the commercial world, and especially to the United States, whose possessions extend along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and demand the speediest and easiest modes of communication. While the rights of sovereignty of the States occupying this region should always be respected, we shall expect that these rights viii be exercised in a spirit befitting the occasion and the wants and circumstances that have arisen. Sover- eighty has it's duties as well as It's 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 spirit of Eastern Isolation, to close the gates of intercourse on the great high ways 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 equivalent. to cucumber them with such unjust relations as would prevent their general use.'
 The great object to be attained at the time this letter vAas written was the anicable settlement of the Central American questions, which were in controversy between the United States and Great Britain growing out of their engagements by the Clayton-Bulwer treaty one of which was "to unite every State with which both or either had friendly intercourse to enter into stipula- tions with them similar to those which they had entered into with each other" and that "the good offices of either should be employed, when requested by either, in aiding and assisting the negotiations of euch treaty stipulations."
 Transit over the Nicaragua route had been interrupted and finally discontinued at this time. President Buchanan in view of the facts earnestly recommended to Congress. in his message of December. 1858, the passage of an act authorizing the President to employ the land and naval forces in preventing the transit from being interrupted or closed by law less violence and in protecting the lives and property of American citizens travel ing thereupon.
 III FeLerenC0 to tn0 FanQnA route, " he said, 'the United States by existing treaty with New Grenada, expressly guaranteed the neutrality of the Isthmus, with the view that the free transit from l one to the other sea may not be inter- rupted or embarrassed in any future time while this treaty exists" Presidents Message, U. s. P. 517
 The pending negotiations. finally result ed in q. program between France, Great Britain and the United States and Nicaragua and Costa Rica, upon every item of which there was common agreement. in keeping with the terms of the Clayton Bulwer treaty, In the construction of the Nicaragua can al 1t is proposed to utilize the natural waterway furnished by Lake Nicaragua and the San Juan River. Partial surveys Of this route were made by Americans as early as 1926. More complete ones were made Gin 1S72-70 by Commander E. p. Lull. and afterward Gin 1SS5) by A. G. Menocal. The Nicaragua government made concessions for constructing the canal to Americans in 1s49 and in 1880 and to a Frenchman in 1S58 but they all | lapsed without results
 In 1877 concessions were granted by Co.,