better yet, a Cuba annexed to the United States) would be very good for business. On February 9, Hearst scored a journalistic coup by publishing a purloined private letter in which the Spanish minister to the United States insulted President McKinley. Having for so long avoided “foreign entanglements,” America was now propelled to the brink of war.
On February 15, 1898, the nation held hands and leaped over that brink. An explosion rocked Havana Harbor, and the U.S.S. Maine blew up, killing 266 crewmen. The Hearst and Pulitzer papers vied with one another to affix blame on Spain, and cries of “Remember the Maine … to hell with Spain!” echoed throughout the nation.
President McKinley, himself still reluctant, waited until April to ask Congress to authorize an invasion of Cuba. Congress not only complied but voted a resolution recognizing Cuban independence from Spain. In response, Spain declared war on the United States on April 24. However, the first action took place in the Spanish-occupied Philippine Islands, not Cuba. U.S. Admiral George Dewey (1837-1917) sailed the Asiatic Squadron from Hong Kong to Manila Bay, where, on May 1, he attacked the Spanish fleet, sinking all 10 ships in the bay. This action was followed by a landing of 11,000 U.S. troops, who, acting in concert with the guerrilla forces of Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo, quickly defeated the Spanish army in the islands. In July, Spanish Guam also fell, and the U.S. gathered up previously unclaimed Wake Island. Most importantly, Congress passed a resolution annexing Hawaii.
Action on Cuba was equally swift and decisive. On May 29, the U.S. fleet blockaded the Spanish fleet at Santiago Harbor, and in June, 17,000 U.S. troops landed at Daiquiri and assaulted Santiago. The war’s make-or- break land battle, at San Juan Hill on July 1, included a magnificent charge by the volunteer Rough Riders, led by Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. In the meantime, Admiral Pasqual Cervera sailed into the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, where he was blockaded by the U.S. fleet. On July 3, after the U.S. victory at San Juan Hill, Cervera decided to run the blockade. Within four hours, his fleet was almost completely destroyed. The battle claimed 474 Spanish sailors and only two U.S. sailors. On July 17, 24,000 Spanish troops surrendered, and Madrid sued for peace nine days later. U.S. Secretary of State John Hay (1838-1905) summed it all up by dubbing the ten- week conflict a “splendid little war.”
Spain withdrew from Cuba and ceded to the United States Puerto Rico and Guam; it sold the Philippines to the U.S. for $20 million. The U.S. established a territorial government in Puerto ]Rico but temporized on Cuba, first establishing a military government there and then allowing Cuba to draft its own constitution, albeit with U.S. supervision and with provisos. The provisos included the right to establish American military bases on the island and to intervene in Cuban affairs “in order to preserve [Cuban] independence.” Until the revolution spearheaded by Fidel Castro in 1959, Cuba would exist as the often less than willing puppet of the United States.
Theodore Roosevelt, who assumed office after the September 5, 1901, assassination of McKinley and who was subsequently elected to a presidential term in his own right, promulgated the so-called “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. In effect, this policy made the United States a kind of international police force in the Western Hemisphere, The policy was a major step toward establishing the nation as a world power.
He Kept Us Out of War
After taking that step, however, Americans had second thoughts. Roosevelt handpicked his old friend William Howard Taft to succeed him as president, and Taft won handily. However, Taft soon proved far more conservative than Roosevelt-although he did continue some of TR’s Progressive reforms, including anti-trust prosecution and, most significantly, support for the proposed income-tax amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, Taft did not pursue Roosevelt’s aggressive foreign policy, for it was clear that most Americans wanted to return to a comfortable degree of isolationism. Taft failed to win reelection in 1912, finishing a poor third to Democrat Woodrow Wilson and TR himself (running as a third-party Progressive—” Bull Moose”—candidate).
Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), president of Princeton University and, afterward, zealously reform-minded governor of New Jersey, was elected U.S. president on a Progressive platform. During his first term, the income tax was introduced, protectionist tariffs were lowered, the Federal Reserve Act (1913) reformed currency and banking laws, and antitrust legislation was strengthened in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act. In 1915, Wilson supported legislation that federally regulated working conditions of sailors, and in 1916, he signed the Federal Farm Loan Act into law, providing low-interest credit to farmers. Labor reform came with the Adamson Act, granting an eight-hour day to interstate railroad workers, and the Child Labor Act, curtailing children’s working hours.
But Wilson faced staggering problems in foreign relations. He unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a Pan-American pact to guarantee the mutual integrity of the Western Hemisphere. Wilson also wrestled with revolutionary Mexico, at first seeking to promote self-government by refusing to recognize the military dictatorship of General Victoriano Huerta and instead supporting constitutionalist Venustiano Carranza. But in 1916, Wilson intervened against revolutionary guerrilla leader Pancho Villa after Villa raided the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing several American citizens. In 1915 and 1.916, Wilson also sent troops to rebellion-racked Haiti and Santo Domingo, where he established U.S. protectorates.
Despite these problems and conflicts, the majority of Americans were highly relieved that, under Wilson, the United States remained safely aloof from the cataclysm that had begun in Europe on June 28, 1914. On that pretty day in early summer, the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Grand Duchess Sophie, paid a state visit to what was then the remote and obscure Balkan capital city of Sarajevo. The couple was gunned down by a young Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princeps. AustriaHungary responded by accusing Serbia of having plotted the assassination. A tangled series of threats, ultimatums, and alliances was suddenly set into motion—mindlessly—as if some terrible machine had come to life. And between the great gears of that mindless machine, the people of Europe would be mangled.
At first, it looked as if the war would be a short one. The German armies made a spectacular drive through France, sweeping all resistance before them. Then, in a moment of strategic uncertainty, the German column turned and, about 30 miles outside Paris, dug in. For the next four years, Europe was doomed to the fruitless horrors of trench warfare. To the, grinding tattoo of machine-gun fire, the ceaseless pounding of artillery, and the strangled moans of asphyxiation by poison gas, the nations of Europe fought one another to a standstill. France, Britain, Russia, and lesser allies were on one side; Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their lesser allies were on the other.
Lusitania Lost
President Wilson adroitly managed to keep the American nation out of this charnel house.. Anxious to preserve the rights of American neutrality, he sternly warned Germany in February 1915, that the United States would hold it strictly accountable for the loss of American lives in the sinking of neutral or passenger ships. Just four months later, on May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,200 people, including 128 Americans.
Many in the United States—among them Theodore Roosevelt—clamored for immediate entry into the war. Wilson demurred, but he issued a strong protest to Germany, demanding reparations and the cessation of unrestricted submarine warfare. Although Germany protested that the Lusitania carried munitions (a truth that was vigorously denied by the British), officials were anxious to avoid having to face yet another enemy. Germany ordered its U-boats to give passenger ships ample warning before firing upon them. Wilson’s firmness with Germany so deeply disturbed isolationist Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan that he resigned in protest. But popular sentiment was on the side of Wilson, who had retained American honor without shedding American blood. He ran successfully for a second term, propelled by the slogan “He kept us out of war.”
Zimmermann Note
