Secretary of State Cass in 1858 officially stated the American position as follows: "Sovereignty has its duties as well as its 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 a spirit of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of intercourse of the great highways 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 almost equivalent, to encumber them with such unjust relations as would prevent their general use." We had again and again been forced to intervene to protect the transit across the Isthmus, and the intervention was frequently at the request of Colombia herself.

The effort to build a canal by private capital had been made under De Lesseps and had resulted in lamentable failure.

Every serious proposal to build the canal in such manner had been abandoned.
The United States had repeatedly announced that we would not permit it to be built or controlled by any old-world government.

Colombia was utterly impotent to build it herself.

Under these circumstances it had become a matter of imperative obligation that we should build it ourselves without further delay.
I took final action in 1903.