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Honors U.S. History 2009/2010
Mr. Irwin
Week 23
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LECTURE 18
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
In 1868, Cubans rose up against Spanish control of Cuba. Spain was able to put
down this rebellion, but anti-Spanish sentiment would simmer and grow over the
next several decades.
In 1895, Cubans once again, rose up against Spanish control. This time, Spain
sent military man, Valeriano Weyler to put down the rebellion. In an effort to
crush the Cuban revolt, he killed many people. He also developed a strategy
geared towards keeping civilians from giving aid and supplies to the rebels,
which involved the use of “reconcentration camps.”
Weyler rounded up large numbers of civilians and moved them into barbed wire
“reconcentration camps.”
It is estimated that over a two year period,
approximately 200,000 people died in these camps from starvation, disease and
other forms of maltreatment. As the result, Weyler received the nicknamed “The
Butcher” in the American press.
During this time, Yellow Journalism was thriving and two key newspaper barons
began to use the crisis in Cuba as a means to sell more newspapers. Joseph
Pulitzer was the owner of the well established, New York World. William
Randolph Hearst bought a paper called the New York Morning Journal and
began to build readership to rival Pulitzer’s publication.
Both newspapers printed sensationalistic stories about atrocities in Cuba,
sometimes using false information, in order to attract the New York public to buy
their papers. Around this same time, there were a number of Cuban exiles living
in the United States. One such exile was Jose Marti, a poet, who took up
residence in New York, where he began writing articles and organizing support
for the rebels in Cuba.
Between 1893 – 1998, U.S. Presidents Grover Cleveland and William McKinley
stayed out of the crisis in Cuba. In an effort to get the United States into the
fight, Cuban rebels destroyed American owned sugar plantations and processing
facilities, thinking that it would draw the U.S. military into protecting American
owned property in Cuba.
As the result of the destruction of American property in Cuba, U.S. businessmen
put pressure on the U.S. government to intervene in Cuba. Finally, when riots
broke out in Havana in 1898, President McKinley sent the U.S.S. Maine on a
mission to assess the situation, and to be in position to protect American lives
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and property in Cuba. On the evening of February 15, 1898, while anchored in
Havana Harbor, the Maine exploded and sank. Ultimately 266 Americans died
as the result of the explosion.
By the time of the Maine incident, American sympathy for Cuban independence
had grown through the many sensationalistic articles that had been printed in
magazines and newspapers, and the call for U.S. intervention hit its peak after a
stolen internal memo from Spanish ambassador to the United States, Dupuy de
Lome was published in U.S. newspapers. The de Lome letter was critical of U.S.
President McKinley, and it characterized him as weak. As a result, anti-Spanish
sentiment in America overflowed.
An enraged American public called for war against Spain but President McKinley
still resisted going to war. Around this same time, the people in the Philippine
Islands were getting their own rebellion going against Spain. Assistant Secretary
of War (at that time) Theodore Roosevelt put U.S. commanders in the Pacific on
high alert and instructed them to prepare for war against Spain.
President McKinley initially tried to avoid war with Spain be sending a list of
demands, which included compensation for the loss of the Maine, an end to the
reconcentration camps in Cuba, a truce in Cuba, and independence for the
people of Cuba. Spain agreed to all of the terms except for the independence of
the Cuban people.
Using the refusal to allow for the independence of Cuba as the basis for going to
war with Spain, President McKinley and the U.S. Congress finally gave the
American public what it wanted. In April 1898, Congress recognized the
independence of Cuba and authorized the U.S. Military to use force against
Spain in order to free Cuba.
Did the Spaniards really blow up the U.S.S. Maine? Today, most historians
believe that the explosion was caused by an extreme build up of pressure in the
engine room boiler, creating an explosion large enough to ignite the ship’s
ammunition storage area.
Surprisingly, the first shots of the Spanish-American War were not fired in Cuba,
but in the Philippines. On May 1, 1898, U.S. Admiral George Dewey launched a
surprise attack, and over the course of seven hours, he destroyed or disabled the
entire Spanish fleet that was anchored in Manila Bay.
- End of Lecture -
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