20.6:

The Spanish-American War

A. The United States and Cuba

1. A movement to gain independence from Spain began in the 1860s.

2. Americans sympathized with Cuban revolutionaries.a. The Spanish were imposing harsh taxes.b. By 1895, public interest in Cuban affairs grew, spurred on

by grisly horror stories of Spanish treatment of revolutionaries.

3. McKinley had held off intervention, but public clamor grew following an explosion on the USS Maine.

4. Humphrey and George Wallace.

This illustration from the popular press depicts the explosion of the battleship “Maine” in the Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. War-mongering newspaper editors and journalists immediately charged the Spaniards with mining the harbor or torpedoing the ship. A U.S. commission created to investigate the explosion agreed, thereby paving the way to war with Spain, which Congress declared on April 25, 1898. In 1976, another team of experts investigated the explosion and concluded that it resulted not from an attack but from a coal bunker fire within the battleship. SOURCE:Chigago Historical Society.

B. A “Splendid Little War” in Cuba

1. The United States smashed Spanish power in what John Hay called “a splendid little war.”

2. The Platt Amendment protected U. S. interests and acknowledged its unilateral right to intervene in Cuban affairs.

This amendment paved the way for U.S. domination of Cuba’s sugar industry and provoked anti-American sentiments among Cuban nationals.

3. The United States also annexed a number of other Caribbean and Pacific islands including the Philippines.

MAP 20.4 The Spanish-American War In two theaters of action, the United States used its naval power adeptly against a weak foe.

C. War in the Philippines

1. Initially, Filipino rebels welcomed American troops in their fight against Spain.

2. After the United States intended to annex their country, they turned against their former allies.

3. Between 1899 and 1902, Americans fought a war that led to the death of one in every five Filipinos.

a. Supporters defended the war as bringing civilization to the Filipinos.

b. Critics saw the abandonment of traditional support for self-determination and warned against bringing in dark-skinned people.

“Uncle Sam Teaches the Art of Self-Government,” editorial cartoon, 1898. Expressing a popular sentiment of the time, a newspaper cartoonist shows the rebels as raucous children who constantly fight among themselves and need to be brought into line by Uncle Sam. The Filipino leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, appears as a dunce for failing to learn properly from the teacher. The two major islands where no uprising took place, Puerto Rico and Hawai’i, appear as passive but exotically dressed women, ready to learn their lessons. SOURCE:Library of Congress.

D. Critics of Empire

1. The Filipino war stimulated the founding of an Anti-Imperialist League that denounced the war and territorial annexation in no uncertain terms.

2. Critics cited democratic and racists reasons for anti-imperialism.

3. Most Americans put aside their doubts and welcomed the new era of aggressive nationalism.