Goethals - Genius of the Panama Canal - A Biography

GOETHALS- GENIUS OF THE PANAMA CANAL- A BIOGRAPHY by JOSEPH BUCKLIN BISHOP. Originally published in 1930. Contents include: Preface xi i. The Colonel 1 n. The Boy and the Book 12 in. West Point Has a Happy New Year 38 iv. Early Engineering Work 53 v. Assistant to the Chief of Engineers and Service in the Porto Rican Campaign 72 vi. West Point, Coast Fortifications, and the General Staff 83 vn. Panama from Goethe to Goethals 95 vin. Shadows Before 129 ix. ’ Til Get Along with the Men 143 x. Both Feet on the Ground 157 xi. The Chief Engineer 194 XIL The Benevolent Despot 227 xm. The End of the Big Job 250 xiv. Wood and Steel 271 xv. The Sinews of War 871 xvi. The Consulting Engineer 402 xvii. Final Honors 442 Appendix 461 Index 479 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Chairman and Chief Engineer, Isthmian Canal Commission Frontispiece Facing page George W. Goethals at the Age of Fourteen 32 George W. Goethals, Cadet, U. S. M. A. 48 General Brooke Receives the Armistice Dispatch 80 Surveying Under Difficulties in the Black Swamp 96 The First Railroad to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans 176 Colonel Goethals on One of the Intermediate Gates, Gatun Locks 192 Colonel Goethals on West Bank of Gaillard Cut, Gold Hill and Cucuracha Slide Opposite 208 Colonel Goethals at His Desk in Culebra, Headquarters of the Isthmian Canal Commission 224 The Famous Rogers Cartoon 320 Major-General Goethals as Assistant Chief of Staff and Director of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic 336. PREFACE: GENERAL GOETHALS would never sanction the writing of his biography, except in such brief summary as in the John Fritz Medal Book. In his later years he contemplated writing his mem oirs, but deferred too long. The task was then undertaken by Goethals’ close friend and Roosevelt’s biographer, my father, Joseph Bucklin Bishop. But he, Joseph Bishop, was already advanced in age. Eighty years old, he had marched at half - step behind the caisson and stood uncovered beside the open grave, in midwinter, on the day of Goethals’ funeral at West Point. His physician, Dr. Alexander Lam bert, dated his declining health from that hour. When my father died, after writing the opening pages of the fifth chapter of this book, history suffered a loss. No living man knows what he knew about Goethals and Roosevelt and the other actors, great and small, before and behind the scenes, where he himself played an important part. Had he lived to write of that great period of Goethals’ life, the build ing of the Panama Canal, my father would have been able to relate a more intimate story. I have taken the responsibility of publishing for the first time excerpts from my father’s confidential reports to President Roosevelt. For permission to quote from these reports I am indebted to Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt.