The Choice of Panama.

The Panama Canal was one of the great engineering triumphs of its era. For decades shipping interests had dreamed of shortening the trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which until the canal was completed required an arduous journey around South America's Cape Horn. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the United States contemplated building a canal across Nicaragua but after much debate settled on the Isthmus of Panama as the best site. A railroad constructed by a New York firm had been completed there in 1855, and its existence and profitability were major factors in the choice of Panama. A French firm that had begun digging a canal at the site in 1881 had abandoned its efforts in 1889 — in large part because of the horrendous death toll to its workers caused by malaria.

Political Maneuvering.

On 22 January...