A Good Plan for the New Year, Uncle Sam

Published at the end of a year of U.S. territorial expansion, this 1898 cartoon shows Uncle Sam measuring the distance from Cuba to unspecified Pacific locations. Annexing Hawaii in July and taking possession of the Philippines in December increased the need for a short cut to the Pacific from the east coast commercial centers of the United States.

President William McKinley stressed this point to Congress a few days before signing the 1898 Treaty of Paris. In a message delivered on December 6, he declared that “the construction of a maritime highway is now more than ever...demanded by the annexation of the Hawaiian islands and the prospective expansion of our commerce in the Pacific.”

But, where should the canal be? A French company had begun an unsuccessful effort to dig a canal through Panama some years earlier. The French failure led Americans to push for a canal through Nicaragua instead. The cartoonist adds his support in this cartoon published the day after the Walker Commission, which had been created by Congress to determine the best route for a U.S. canal, endorsed the Nicaraguan route.

This cartoon was drawn by Clifford Berryman, one of Washington, DC's best-known cartoonists in the early to mid-1900s. Berryman drew for the Washington Post and Evening Star newspapers. His cartoons touched on a variety of subjects including politics, elections, and both World Wars.

This cartoon is featured in America and the World: Foreign Affairs in Political Cartoons, 1898–1940, a free PDF book from the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives.