Prior to the year 1900 little thought was given by the American people to any project for building an Isthmian Canal anywhere else than through Nicaragua. It is true that in 1897 the New Panama Canal Company became active in its efforts to induce the United States to adopt the Panama route, but these activities made little impression upon public sentiment before the outbreak of the Spanish American War. During that war interest in the question of an Isthmian Canal waned in America, and immediately after it the sympathy which France had given to Spain made it advisable for the Canal Company to postpone its propaganda. In his annual message to Congress in December, 1898, President McKinley recommended the building of the Nicaragua Canal. Two days later Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama, made a vigorous speech in the Senate, in which he charged that the transcontinental railroads of the United States were making efforts to defeat the canal project. This charge was made repeatedly thereafter, and it was asserted that the railroads espoused the cause of the Panama Canal upon the ground of choosing the lesser of two evils, judged from their standpoint. Prior to 1900 both Republican and Democratic parties had repeatedly favored the construction of the Nicaragua Canal in their national platforms, and both branches of Congress had voted for the canal at different times. In the early part of 1899 the Senate passed a bill authorizing the construction of a Nicaraguan Canal. The House refused to act on the bill, and, at the instance of Senator Morgan, the Senate attached a rider to the rivers and harbors bill, appropriating $10,000,000 to begin the building of the canal. This passed the Senate by a vote of 54 to 3. The amendment was defeated in the House and the matter went to conference. If the House conferees stood pat in their opposition to the Senate amendment, the whole rivers and harbors bill would be defeated unless the Senate conferees yielded. The House conferees remained unshaken in their opposition to the Nicaragua Canal provision, and were willing to wreck the whole rivers and harbors bill rather than to authorize the beginning of operations in the construction of the Nicaragua Canal under the plan framed by the Senate.