The four-month Spanish-American War, fought primarily on the island of Cuba, marked the arrival of the United States as a world power and brought an end to Spain’s empire in the Americas. The immediate cause of the war was Spain’s brutal, yet failing, strategy to quell a revolt in Cuba, which along with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, some Pacific islands, and a few African possessions was all that remained of the Spanish empire. The revolution began in Cuba in 1895, and Americans viewed it as a fight by a ragtag army of insurrectionists for freedom from a bloated and corrupt monarchy and equated the struggle with their own fight a century earlier against England. Egged on by Cuban exiles living in the United States, Americans began to smuggle weapons to the Cubans.
Americans also had strong commercial interests in Cuba. The widespread devastation caused by Spain’s pacification strategy threatened American investments in Cuban railways and sugar plantations. In addition, with the frontier of continental North America effectively closed by the 1890s, expansionists preached the need for the United States to expand its economic power and export its surplus production into the Americas and the Pacific. Beyond Cuba’s economic value was its strategic usefulness in defending an envisioned Central American isthmian canal that would permit the eastern American ports to exploit allegedly rich markets of the Orient.
In 1873 the United States had almost intervened in an earlier Cuban Revolution following the Virginius AEEAIR, but by 1898 imperialism—driven by economic ambitions, strategic concerns, and humanitarian impulses heightened by a sensationalist press—made war far more likely. In February 1898 the New York Journal published the DE Lome letter in which the Spanish minister to the United States made disparaging remarks about President William McKinley. This insult was followed on February 15, 1898, by the explosion in Havana harbor that sank the American battleship Maine and killed 260 sailors and marines. The American press immediately blamed Spanish treachery and called for war, but a naval court of inquiry—while concluding that an underwater mine sank the Maine—could not determine responsibility. Although the Spanish government was the least likely culprit, it offered to have the questions of responsibility and reparations arbitrated and even agreed to an armistice (to last as long as the commanding general in Cuba thought prudent) in the war on the Cuban rebels. But the United States was in no mood for arbitration or for negotiations. McKinley, who had experienced the carnage of war, reluctantly gave in to pressure and on April 11, 1898, asked Congress for the authority to use the armed forces to intervene in Cuba. Congress debated for a week before agreeing on April 19 by joint resolution, which McKinley signed the following day, and the war began.
Lithograph of the naval battle in Manila Bay, 1898 (Library of Congress)
A few days after the declaration of war, Commodore George Dewey steamed with the American Asiatic Squadron to the Philippines to stop a decrepit Spanish fleet from voyaging halfway around the globe to reinforce Spanish naval forces at Cuba. Off Cavite in Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, the American fleet put the Spanish fleet of 10 ships out of action and forced its supporting shore batteries to surrender. While Dewey awaited troops, the Filipinos revolted for their independence and cooperated with the American army when it arrived to besiege Manila. American-Filipino relations deteriorated after Spanish authorities surrendered Manila on August 13, 1898, to American forces and the Filipino insurgents were frozen out. When it became apparent that the American goal was annexation of the Philippines and not independence, a bloody war called the Filipino insurrection broke out.
The campaign for Cuba, plagued by logistic and transportation problems, got underway on June 22 with the landing of soldiers and marines at Daiquiri. Only after five days would all the troops be deployed and the beachhead be secured. The American strategy in Cuba was for the navy to blockade the island and cut off supplies for the Spanish while the army stormed the port of Santiago from the land.
The navy soon had the Spanish fleet trapped at Santiago Bay. The army meanwhile fought its way through dense jungle from the coast to the San Juan Heights overlooking the city. At the Battle of San Juan Hill, Theodore Roosevelt drove the Spanish from their trenches atop Kettle Hill with his Rough Riders by brazenly charging up the slope in the face of heavy fire. With Santiago certain to be captured, the Spanish fleet on July 3 risked destruction in an attempt to escape. Led by Admiral Pascual Cervera’s flagship the Infawta Maria Theresa, the fleet steamed out the narrow mouth of the harbor to be destroyed by the American fleet. Faced with the probability of being shelled by land and sea, Governor General Ramon Blanco y Erenas surrendered his troops on July 17, 1898.
The peace treaty signed on December 10, 1898, gave the United States the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Cuba became independent, since the Teller Amendment to the declaration of war specifically forbade its annexation by the United States. Cuba’s independence, however, was nominal, since in 1901 it was forced to write into its constitution the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States the right to intervene in its affairs.
See also Maine, Remember the; yellow journalism.
Further reading: Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York: Harper & Row, 1961); Ivan Musicant, Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1998); G. J. A. O’Toole, The Spanish War: An American Epic, 1898 (New York: Norton, 1984); Thomas Schoonover, Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003).
—Timothy E. Vislocky
World History
