Blaine and the Pan-American Conference

In 1881 Secretary Blaine forcefully but fatileh asked the British to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, claiming that the United States "with respect to European states, will not consent to perpetuate any treaty that impeaches our right and longestablished claim to priority on the American continent.11104 Three years later, in overt violation of the treaty, the United States signed a canal treaty with Nicaragua, although President Cleveland withdrew the offending pact when he took office. The movement led by naval officers, business leaders, and diplomats for an exclusive U.S. canal had begun nonetheless. In Panama in 1873 and 1885, U.S. troops went ashore to protect American property threatened by civil war. In the latter year an American warship under the command of Alfred Thayer Mahan displayed U.S. power to Guatemala, whose invasion of El Salvador threatened Americanowned property, includingJames A. Scrymser's Central and South American Telegraph Company.

The convocation of the first Pan American Conference in Washington in 1889 bore further witness to the growing U.S. influence in Latin America. Secretary Blaine, hoping to expand American trade and boost his presidential aspirations, had first recommended such a conference in 1881, but his departure in that year from the cabinet left the question open until his return (1889-1892). The conference attracted representatives from seventeen countries. Six of the ten U.S. delegates were business people. After a grand tour of industrial sites in fortyone cities, the conferees assembled in Washington to hear Blaine's appeal for "enlightened and enlarged intercourse." 105 Unlike similar conferences in the twentieth century, the United States could not dictate the results of the conclave. Argentina stood as a tenacious opponent of hemispheric union; the Argentines saw Pan Americanism as a U.S. ruse to gain commercial domination. Although the Pan American conferees rejected Blaine's proposals for a low-tariff zone and for compulsory arbitration of political disputes, they did organize the International Bureau of American Republics (later called the Pan American Union) and encouraged reciprocity treaties to expand hemispheric trade. The conference also promoted inter-American steamship lines and railroads and established machinery to discuss commercial questions.

The Pan American Union amounted to little in its early days. It had its most conspicuous impact on the Washington landscape, where, with major financial help from the steel baron Andrew Carnegie, the Pan American Union put up an impressive building in the nation's capital. Pan Americanism did not mean hemispheric unity; rather it represented growing U.S. influence among neighbors to the south. For that reason European powers eyed the new organization with suspicion.