William Nelson Cromwell (January 17, 1854 – July 19, 1948) was an American attorney active in promotion of the
Panama CanalThe Panama Canal is a ship canal which joins the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific ocean. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, it had an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans, replacing the long and treacherous route via the Drake Passage and Cape Horn...
and other major ventures.
He was born in Brooklyn,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and raised there by his mother, Sarah M. Brokaw, a Civil-War widow. His father, John Nelson Cromwell, died in the
Battle of VicksburgThe Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C...
.
He worked as an accountant for the attorney
Algernon Sydney SullivanAlgernon Sydney Sullivan was a New York lawyer. Sullivan, together with William Nelson Cromwell, founded Sullivan & Cromwell in 1879He was the son of Jeremiah Sullivan, a justice of the Indiana Supreme Court...
, who paid for his education at
Columbia Law SchoolColumbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia is located in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. David Schizer is the dean....
and made him a partner in
Sullivan & CromwellSullivan & Cromwell LLP is an international law firm headquartered in New York. The firm has approximately 700 lawyers in 12 offices, located in financial centers in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States. Sullivan & Cromwell was founded by Algernon Sydney Sullivan and William Nelson...
in 1879.
According to
Stephen KinzerStephen Kinzer is a United States author and newspaper reporter. He is a veteran New York Times correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries on five continents. During the 1980s he covered revolution and social upheaval in Central America...
's 2006 book
OverthrowOverthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq is a book published in 2006 by award-winning New York Times foreign correspondent and author Stephen Kinzer about the United States's involvement in the overthrow of foreign governments from the late 19th century to the present...
, in 1898 the chief of the French Canal Syndicate (a group that owned large swathes of land across Panama), Philippe Bunau Varilla, hired him to lobby the US Congress to build a canal across
PanamaPanama, officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of both Central America and, in turn, North America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the...
, and not across
NicaraguaNicaragua officially the Republic of Nicaragua , is a representative democratic republic. It is the largest country in Central America with an area of 130,373 km
2. The country is bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west of...
, as logic and reason would have it.
In 1902, after having run into a 10-cent Nicaraguan postal stamp produced in the US by the
American Bank Note CompanyThe American Bank Note Company was a major worldwide engraver of national currency and postage stamps. Currently it engraves and prints stock and bond certificates.-History:Robert Scot, the first official engraver of the young U.S...
erroneously depicting a fuming Momotambo volcano (which was nearly dormant and lay more than 100 miles from the proposed Nicaraguan canal path), and taking advantage of a particularly volcanic year in the Caribbean, he planted a story in the New York
Sun reporting that the Momotambo volcano had erupted and caused a series of seismic shocks.
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William Nelson Cromwell (January 17, 1854 – July 19, 1948) was an American attorney active in promotion of the
Panama CanalThe Panama Canal is a ship canal which joins the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific ocean. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, it had an enormous impact on shipping between the two oceans, replacing the long and treacherous route via the Drake Passage and Cape Horn...
and other major ventures.
He was born in Brooklyn,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and raised there by his mother, Sarah M. Brokaw, a Civil-War widow. His father, John Nelson Cromwell, died in the
Battle of VicksburgThe Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C...
.
He worked as an accountant for the attorney
Algernon Sydney SullivanAlgernon Sydney Sullivan was a New York lawyer. Sullivan, together with William Nelson Cromwell, founded Sullivan & Cromwell in 1879He was the son of Jeremiah Sullivan, a justice of the Indiana Supreme Court...
, who paid for his education at
Columbia Law SchoolColumbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia is located in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. David Schizer is the dean....
and made him a partner in
Sullivan & CromwellSullivan & Cromwell LLP is an international law firm headquartered in New York. The firm has approximately 700 lawyers in 12 offices, located in financial centers in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States. Sullivan & Cromwell was founded by Algernon Sydney Sullivan and William Nelson...
in 1879.
According to
Stephen KinzerStephen Kinzer is a United States author and newspaper reporter. He is a veteran New York Times correspondent who has reported from more than fifty countries on five continents. During the 1980s he covered revolution and social upheaval in Central America...
's 2006 book
OverthrowOverthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq is a book published in 2006 by award-winning New York Times foreign correspondent and author Stephen Kinzer about the United States's involvement in the overthrow of foreign governments from the late 19th century to the present...
, in 1898 the chief of the French Canal Syndicate (a group that owned large swathes of land across Panama), Philippe Bunau Varilla, hired him to lobby the US Congress to build a canal across
PanamaPanama, officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of both Central America and, in turn, North America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the...
, and not across
NicaraguaNicaragua officially the Republic of Nicaragua , is a representative democratic republic. It is the largest country in Central America with an area of 130,373 km
2. The country is bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west of...
, as logic and reason would have it.
In 1902, after having run into a 10-cent Nicaraguan postal stamp produced in the US by the
American Bank Note CompanyThe American Bank Note Company was a major worldwide engraver of national currency and postage stamps. Currently it engraves and prints stock and bond certificates.-History:Robert Scot, the first official engraver of the young U.S...
erroneously depicting a fuming Momotambo volcano (which was nearly dormant and lay more than 100 miles from the proposed Nicaraguan canal path), and taking advantage of a particularly volcanic year in the Caribbean, he planted a story in the New York
Sun reporting that the Momotambo volcano had erupted and caused a series of seismic shocks. He thereafter sent leaflets with the above stamps pasted on them to all Senators as witness to the volcanic activity in Nicaragua.
On June 19, 1902, three days after senators received the stamps, they voted for the Panama route for the canal. For his lobbying efforts, he received the sum of $800,000.
One of his main pro bono activities was in the founding of "The Society of Friends of Roumania" in 1920 under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Marie of Roumania, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The New York-based Society under his tutelage promoted numerous exchanges between the two countries and published the distinguished "Roumania — A Quarterly Review".