138 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



tion of inviting other nations to join in a " guarantee for the 

 neutrality of that part of the isthmus/' Six years later, revo- 

 lutionary movements in Colombia again menaced the safety 

 of the railway, and the Government at Bogota called upon 

 the United States to lend aid in suppressing the rebellious 

 uprising that endangered the freedom of transit between 

 Colon and Panama. 



Mr. Seward, the new Secretary of State, felt that the burden 

 imposed upon the United States to maintain alone and single- 

 handed the integrity of the Panama route against the 

 numberless revolutions of a Latin- American state was unjust. 

 The route was open to the world's commerce, and the responsi- 

 bility of its protection, he believed, should rest equally upon 

 the shoulders of all beneficiaries. The interest of the United 

 States was in no manner " different from that of other mari- 

 time powers." He instructed Mr. Adams and Mr. Dayton, 

 Ministers to London and Paris respectively, to ascertain 

 whether Great Britain and France would u unite with the 

 United States in guaranteeing the safety of the transit route 

 and the authority of the new Granadian confederation." 



At the close of the Civil War, a more lively interest in a 

 ship canal was manifested, and steps were soon taken to 

 encourage more friendly relations with the Central American 

 states. American interests in Central America had been per- 

 mitted to decline, and they were greatly in need of the stimu- 

 lus which fresh treaties would give them. 



The United States emerged from its four years' conflict 

 with enlarged ideas of her position in the world ; the seeds of 

 a new and more agressive foreign policy had been sown. The 

 progress of those ideas is marked by the Alaskan purchase, 

 the attempts to secure naval bases in the West Indies, the ex- 

 pulsion of the French from Mexico, and by the evidences of 

 a belief, then gradually forming in the minds of the people, 

 that the United States should exercise sole political control 

 over any Central American canal that should ever be built. 



Mr. Seward first gave expression to this new canal policy 

 in 1866, when he directed Mr. Adams, the American Minister 

 in London, to broach the subject to Lord Clarendon of the 



