Two separate treaties signed by the United States and Great Britain that granted the United States the exclusive right to build, control, and fortify a canal across Central America.
American interest in an isthmian canal increased when the United States emerged from the Spanish-American War as a power in the Caribbean and the Pacific. A canal across Central America seemed necessary so that the U.S. fleet could participate easily in two-ocean operations and so Americans could take full advantage of trade opportunities in the Pacific. But the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) required a joint Anglo-American protectorate of any isthmian canal. In January 1900, a bill introduced into Congress called for the construction of a canal across Nicaragua despite the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. British officials, involved in the Boer War in South Africa and facing several unfriendly European nations, deemed it unwise to jeopardize Britain’s friendship with the United States. Thus on February 5, 1900, Secretary of State John Hay and British ambassador Sir Julian Pauncefote signed the first Hay-Pauncefote Treaty abrogating Clayton-Bulwer and giving the United States the sole right to build and control, but not fortify, a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York and Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts led the attack on the first treaty because it did not give the United States the right to fortify the canal. Before ratifying the treaty on December 20, 1900, the Senate amended it to allow for fortification of the canal. But on March 11, 1901, Pauncefote informed Hay that the British government would not accept the treaty. In the following months, much talk in the United States called for the unilateral abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty or even for going to war with Great Britain over the issue of the isthmian canal. British leaders, greatly disturbed by such talk, agreed to sign a second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in November and December 1901, and both the U.S. Congress and British Parliament ratified the agreement that allowed the United States to build, control, and fortify a canal across Central America.
