Richard A. Silocka
American interest in Cuba was almost as old as the Republic itself. Before the Civil War that interest had been mostly on the part of slaveholders who viewed Cuba as a possible new slave state. After the war, American investment in Cuban sugar plantations, processing plants, and railways had grown steadily and by 1898 amounted to more than fifty million dollars. At the same time the United States had become the major market for the sugar upon which the economy of Cuba rested. In 1894, however, the American duty on foreign sugar was increased, a move which brought economic ruin to Cuba. The Cubans, who with the Puerto Ricans were the last of Spain’s subjects in the New World, were driven to desperation by this aggravation of their perennial poverty. Although the Cubans had been in chronic revolt against Spain since the 1860’s, the fresh outbreak of rebellion in 1895 led some Americans to fear that success for the rebels might mean occupation of the island by another European power, possibly France, which through its project to build a Panama Canal already had interests in that area.
Other factors combined to tempt American imperialists to think of intervening in the Cuban revolt. Cubans purposely damaged American property on the island, in the hope that the United States would intervene to protect its interests and ultimately help overthrow Spanish rule. Some American businessmen thought it would be well worthwhile to impress the Latin American countries with the new power of the United States. The idea of acquiring Cuba, or a naval station there, also fitted admirably into the ideas of Mahan’s followers. Finally, in attempting to put down the revolt the Spanish government resorted to a ruthless policy of repression. General “Butcher” Weyler and his 200,000 troops showed no mercy as they herded thousands of Cuban rebels into concentration camps. The sensational press in the United States covered the Cuban revolt in lurid detail, printing highly colored stories and drawings of Spanish atrocities. The Spanish press replied in kind: “Scoundrels by nature, the American jingoes believe that all men are made like themselves ... they are not even worth our contempt, or the saliva with which we might honor them in spitting at their faces.” As newspaper circulation soared, an increasing number of Americans demanded that their government take action to liberate the Cuban people.
For a time there seemed some chance of a peaceful solution to Cuba’s problems: the Spanish government in Madrid recalled Weyler and abandoned the “concentration camp” policy. Then, in February 1898, came a new crisis which made war with the United States almost inevitable. The great battleship, the U.S.S.
Maine
, had been blown up by “enemy” action. The big navy men in the government and the popular press clamored for war with Spain. A flood of letters and personal appeals urged President McKinley to send a war message to Congress.
The President was reluctant to yield to this pressure, for the American ambassador in Madrid had just informed him that the Spanish government had agreed to meet every American demand, including an immediate armistice with the rebels. Spain was willing to accept independence, autonomy, or American annexation as a future for Cuba. But the weak McKinley could not resist the popular clamor for war and finally accepted the arguments of close advisers like “Teddy” Roosevelt: the United States, he argued, needed a war to keep it from getting “flabby” and to advance its world mission. Other Republican leaders believed that a war would unite the nation and reduce the mounting demand for political reform as well as the demand for government regulation of business that had been stimulated by the economic depression of the 1890’s. On April 11, 1898, McKinley sent a message to Congress in which he said nothing of the latest reports of Spanish concessions and urged Congress to declare war against Spain.
The “splendid little war,” as Secretary of State John Hay described the Spanish-American War, found the United States generally ill-prepared. The Navy, however, was ready. Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, had anticipated the war and had ordered Commodore George Dewey, in charge of the Pacific fleet, to stand ready to seize Manila, the capital of the Spanish colony of the Philippines. Aided by the benevolent neutrality of the British naval force in the area, Dewey succeeded in his mission. In Cuba American military success owed more to Spanish incompetence than to United States skill. The Secretary of War was a Michigan politician who had been more interested in patronage than in proper maintenance of the Army. Thus American troops fought in heavy winter uniforms in the Cuban heat and far more died of disease than from enemy action. Nevertheless, several reputations were made in the Spanish-American War. The outstanding hero to emerge from the war was Teddy Roosevelt, who organized a troop of cavalry known as the Rough Riders, and who was present at the principal battle of the war, the capture of San Juan Hill. In reality, the dangerous positions on the hill had been taken by American Negro troops before Roosevelt’s famous charge was executed; but the charge caught the fancy of the people of the United States and did much to aid Roosevelt’s later political career.
The treaty with Spain, which ended the war in 1898, reflected the expansionist enthusiasm stimulated by the war itself. The United States took from Spain Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, and Guam and the Philippines in the Pacific. Cuba was given “independence” as an American protectorate. The United States paid twenty million dollars compensation to Spain for these acquisitions, and spent many more millions as well as hundreds of lives subduing a fierce three-year rebellion against American rule in the Philippines. An amendment to the Congressional declaration of war had specified that Cuba should not be annexed, and it was not; but a measure passed in 1901 seriously limited Cuban sovereignty by leaving control of Cuban foreign and financial policy in United States hands.
The Spanish-American War had achieved much of the program advocated by the imperialists, who immediately began to consolidate and expand their gains. One of the peace negotiators remarked that the acquisition of the Philippines made the Pacific an American lake, into which much commerce and investment was expected to flow. The success of the war, and general business prosperity, helped to bring about another Republican victory in 1900, in which McKinley was reelected, with Theodore Roosevelt, the hero of the Rough Rider charge at San Juan Hill, as his vice-president. Despite the founding of an Anti-Imperialist League, which gained the adherence of men in both parties, popular opinion supported the new aggressiveness of United States policy and, for good or ill, the United States was launched on an imperial course which would sweep her ever more surely into world politics.