THE ISLAND POSSESSIONS AND THE PANAMA CANAL
In this era the old expansive movement became manifest in a new form by the Spanish-American War and the acquisition of land oversea. It was the recognition of the independence of Cuba〖H. C., xliii, 440.〗 by the United States in 1898 and the intervention to expel Spain which brought about the Spanish-American War; but once involved in that war, the naval exigencies led to the conquest of the Philippines, and Porto Rico as well as Cuba. Considerations of strategy also facilitated the annexation of Hawaii〖H. C., xliii, 437.〗 in 1898.
By the treaty of peace〖H. C., xliii, 442.〗 in 1898 Spain ceded the Philippines and Porto Rico and withdrew from Cuba, which obtained its autonomy by the recall of the American troops in 1902.
The events of the war, and especially the dramatic voyage of the Oregon around Cape Horn from the Pacific Coast to share in the fight off Santiago, gave an impetus to the long debated project of constructing the Isthmian Canal by the United States. With her vastly increased power in the Pacific, her new possessions in the Caribbean Sea, and the astonishing growth on the Pacific coast, the canal seemed a necessity, and almost a part of our coast line. By the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901, England withdrew the obstacles arising from the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850, and the United States acquired the rights of the French Company, which had failed in its undertaking to pierce the isthmus. When in 1903 Colombia rejected a treaty providing for the canal, a revolution broke out in Panama. President Roosevelt with extraordinary promptness recognized the Republic of Panama and secured a treaty〖H. C., xliii, 450.〗 from this republic which was ratified in 1904, granting the canal zone and various rights to the United States.
Thus at the beginning of the twentieth century the long process of attrition of the United States upon the Spanish Empire was brought to this striking climax. The feeble Atlantic colonies had won a land extending across the continent, they had acquired dependencies in the Caribbean, in the Pacific, and off the coast of Asia, and they had provided for connecting the two oceans by the Panama Canal.