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Updated: June 22, 2025
As a result of that conflict the United States acquired Porto Rico and a protectorate over Cuba. The real turning-point in the recent history of the West Indies was the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901, under the terms of which Great Britain relinquished her claim to an equal voice with the United States in the control of an Isthmian canal on which she had insisted for half a century.
Late in 1901, newspapers in the United States began urging the purchase from Colombia of a land belt across the isthmus to be United States territory. Our Senate, December 16, 1901, by a vote of 72 to 6, ratified the Hay-Pauncefote treaty with Great Britain, in which it was agreed that we should build a canal, allowing all other nations to use it.
In discussing the New Jersey campaign, he told me of the use that had been made by "someone" in the Wilson ranks of his Senate speech on the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.
I had done everything possible, personally and through Secretary Hay, to persuade the Colombian Government to keep faith. Under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, it was explicitly provided that the United States should build the canal, should control, police and protect it, and keep it open to the vessels of all nations on equal terms.
Under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty signed shortly after I became President, and thanks to our negotiations with the French Panama Company, the United States at last acquired a possession, so far as Europe was concerned, which warranted her in immediately undertaking the task.
It was precisely in this spirit that Secretary Hay undertook in 1899 to negotiate a new treaty with England. The original draft of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, signed February 5, 1900, provided for a neutralized canal and drafted for its control rules substantially in accord with the Constantinople convention of 1888, providing for the regulation of the Suez canal.
Fortunately President Wilson took the same view, and in spite of strong opposition he persuaded Congress to repeal the exemption clause. This was an act of simple justice and it removed the only outstanding subject of dispute between the two countries. The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty was by no means the only evidence of a change of attitude on the part of Great Britain.
It was on considerations of this kind that she signed the Hay-Pauncefote treaty with the United States in 1901, and the defensive alliance with Japan in 1902. In view of the fact that the United States was bent on carrying out the long deferred canal scheme, Great Britain realized that a further insistence on her rights under the Clayton-Bulwer treaty would lead to friction and possible conflict.
Secretary Hay wrote me, and I replied at length, giving my views both as to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and what I thought should be inserted in the new treaty. Mr. Hay promptly renewed negotiations, which resulted in what is known as the second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. After a good deal of effort this agreement was ratified without amendment.
Seated in my office one day I recalled that years before I had read in the Congressional Record an account of a speech delivered in the United States Senate by James Smith, upholding in terms of highest praise the famous Hay-Pauncefote Treaty.
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