Spanish-American War - background

This subject is divided into sections in order to deal with the large amount of content:

• Spanish-American War - background
• Spanish-American War in the Pacific and Caribbean

The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States. Some recent historians prefer a broader title to encompass the fighting in Cuba and the Philippine Islands. Here "Spanish-American War" refers to the war between Spain and the U.S in 1898. Revolts against Spanish rule had been endemic for decades in Cuba and were closely watched by Americans; there had been war scares before, as in the Virginius Affair in 1873. By 1897–98 American public opinion grew angrier at reports of Spanish atrocities, magnified by the "yellow journalism". After the mysterious sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor, political pressures from the Democratic Party pushed the government headed by President William McKinley, a Republican, into a war McKinley had wished to avoid. Compromise proved impossible, resulting in an ultimatum sent to Madrid, which was not accepted. First Madrid, then Washington, formally declared war.

Although the main issue was Cuban independence, the ten-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. A series of one-sided American naval and military victories followed on all fronts, owing to their numerical superiority in most of the battles and despite the good performance of some of the Spanish infantry units. The outcome was the 1898 Treaty of Paris—which was favorable to the U.S.—followed by temporary American control of Cuba and indefinite colonial authority over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. The defeat and subsequent end of the Spanish Empire was a profound shock for Spain's national psyche. The victor gained several island possessions spanning the globe and a rancorous new debate over the wisdom of imperialism.

Historical background

Spain's colonial retrenchment

The combined traumas of the Peninsular War, the loss of most of its colonies in the Americas in the early 19th century Spanish American wars of independence, and two disastrous Carlist wars effected a new interpretation of Spain’s remaining empire. Liberal Spanish elites like Cánovas del Castillo and Emilio Castelar attempted to redefine "empire" to more neatly dovetail with the emerging concept of Spanish nationalism. As Cánovas made clear in an address to the University of Madrid in 1882, The Spanish nation was a cultural and linguistic concept that tied Spain’s colonies to the metropole notwithstanding the oceans that separated them. Cánovas argued Spain was markedly different from rival empires like Britain and France. Unlike these empires, the dissemination of civilization was Spain’s unique contribution to the New World. This popular reimagining of the Spanish empire had the effect of imbuing special significance to Cuba as an integral part of the Spanish nation. The new importance invested in maintaining the empire would have disastrous consequences for Spain’s sense of national identity in the aftermath of the war.

American interest in Caribbean

In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine stated that further efforts by European governments to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would not be accepted by the U.S., but Spain's colony in Cuba was exempted. In 1890 Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote The Influence of Sea Power upon History, which credits the rise of Britain to world power to the Royal Navy. Mahan’s ideas on projecting strength through a strong navy had a powerful worldwide influence. Theodore Roosevelt, later Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President McKinley and an aggressive supporter of a war with Spain over Cuba, was also strongly influenced by Mahan’s conclusions. Americans had long been interested in Cuba (and Hawaii), since several U.S. presidents offered to purchase it from Spain (James Polk, Franklin Pierce and Ulysses S. Grant), and others expressed their hopes of future annexation. However, there was still very little attention paid to the Philippines, Guam or Puerto Rico.

Historians debate how much Americans were interested in obtaining an empire, while noting that the European powers had in recent decades dramatically expanded their empires, especially in Africa and Asia.

The path to war

Cuban struggle for independence

See Wikipedia:Cuban War of Independence

The first serious bid for Cuban independence erupted in 1868. The Ten Years War, as it was called, was eventually put down by the Spanish colonial authorities in 1878. Unfortunately for the Spanish, neither the brutal fighting nor the application of reforms in the Pact of Zanjón (Feb. 1878) were able to quell the desire for independence in some revolutionaries. One such revolutionary, José Martí, continued to advocate Cuban financial and political autonomy even in exile.

In early 1895, after years of organizing, Martí launched a three-pronged invasion of the island. The plan called for one group from Santo Domingo led by Máximo Gómez, one group from Costa Rica led by Antonio Maceo Grajales, and another from the United States (preemptively thwarted by U.S. officials in Florida) to land in different places on the island and provoke a nationalist revolution. While the grito de Baíre (as their call for revolution continues to be called) was successful, the expected revolution was not the grand show of force Martí had anticipated. With a quick victory effectively lost, the revolutionaries settled in to fight a protracted guerilla campaign.

Cánovas del Castillo, the architect of Spain’s Restoration constitution and the prime minister at the time, ordered General Arsenio Martínez de Campos, a distinguished veteran of the war against the previous insurrection in Cuba, to quell the revolt. Campos’s reluctance to accept his new assignment and his method of containing the revolt to the province of Oriente earned him ridicule in the Spanish press. The mounting political pressure thus forced Cánovas to replace General Campos with General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, a soldier who had proven himself able to quash rebellions in the colonies and the Spanish metropole. Weyler’s strategy was to deprive the insurgency of weaponry, supplies and assistance by ordering the residents of some Cuban districts to relocate near the military headquarters in what were termed reconcentration camps. While the application of this strategy was brutally effective at slowing the spread of rebellion, it had the unwelcome effect of stirring indignation in the United States. The Spanish reconcentrados placed nearly all of Cuba’s native population into camps, causing McKinley to remark that this “was not civilized warfare" but "extermination.”

Spanish attitude

Spanish (Catalan) satirical drawing published at "la Campana de Gràcia" (1896), criticizing the United States behavior regarding Cuba.

Cuba was regarded as a province of Spain rather than a colony, for it had been an integral part of the country for almost four centuries. The island was not only a matter of prestige for Spain, but it was one of the most prosperous territories. The trade in the capital city, Havana, was comparable to that registered in Barcelona (the most trade-active city in Spain) at that time. To lose Cuba would mean an enormous disaster for the economy and political stability of the country. In fact, Spain needed several decades to recover economically from the shock, while the emotional wounds still remain. The Spanish public opinion was inclined to stay away from conflicts, but day by day the attitude of the U.S. became more pressing, taking advantage of Spain's weak position, and politicians were forced to respond in an inflexible manner to face the U.S. threats. Cánovas del Castillo announced that “the Spanish nation is disposed to sacrifice to the last peseta of its treasure and to the last drop of blood of the last Spaniard before consenting that anyone snatch from it even one piece of its territory.” However, the population was far from feeling the same.

U.S. response

The eruption of Cuban revolt, Weyler’s disliked measures, and the popular fury these events whipped up proved to be a boon to the newspaper industry in New York City, where Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal recognized the potential for great headlines and stories that would sell copies. Both covered Spain’s actions and Weyler’s tactics in a way that confirmed the extant popular disparaging attitude toward Spain in the U.S. In the minds, schoolbooks and scholarship of the mostly Protestant U.S. public, the Catholic Spanish Empire was a backward, immoral union built on the backs of enslaved natives and funded with stolen gold.

The indignation—stirred up by feuding newspapers and predicated on a popular prejudice against Spain—did not alone move the U.S. closer to war. The U.S. had important economic interests that were being harmed by the prolonged conflict. Shipping firms that relied heavily on trade with Cuba suffered huge losses as the conflict continued unresolved. These firms pressed Congress and McKinley to seek an end to the revolt. Other U.S. business concerns, specifically those who had invested in Cuban sugar, looked to the Spanish to restore order to the situation. Stability, not war, was the ultimate goal of both interests. How stability would be achieved would depend largely on the ability of Spain and the U.S. to work out their issues diplomatically.

President William McKinley, well aware of the political complexity surrounding the conflict, was predisposed to end the revolt peacefully. Threatening to consider recognizing Cuba’s belligerent status, and thus allowing the legal rearming of Cuban insurgents by U.S. firms, he sent Stewart L. Woodford to Madrid to negotiate an end to the conflict. With Práxedes Sagasta, an open advocate of Cuban autonomy, now Prime Minister of Spain (the more hard-line Cánovas del Castillo having been assassinated before Woodford arrived), negotiations went fairly smoothly. Cuban autonomy was set to begin on January 1, 1898.

USS Maine

See Wikipedia:USS Maine (ACR-1)

The sunken USS Maine

Eleven days after the Cuban autonomous government took power, a small riot erupted in Havana. The riot was thought to be ignited by Spanish officers who were offended by the persistent newspaper criticism of General Valeriano Weyler’s policies. McKinley sent the USS Maine to Havana to ensure the safety of American citizens and interests. The need for the U.S. to send the Maine to Havana had been anticipated for months, but the Spanish government was notified just 18 hours before its arrival, which was contrary to diplomatic convention. Preparations for the possible conflict started in October 1897, when President McKinley made arrangements for the USS Maine to be deployed to Key West, Florida, as a part of a larger, global deployment of US naval power to be able to attack simultaneously on several fronts if the war was not avoided. As the Maine left Florida a large part of the North Atlantic Squadron was moved to Key West and the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, others were moved just off shore of Lisbon. And still others were moved to Hong Kong.

At 9:40 pm on February 15 the USS Maine sank in the harbor after suffering a massive explosion. While McKinley preached patience, the news of the explosion and the death of 266 sailors stirred popular American opinion into demanding a swift belligerent response. McKinley requested that Congress appropriate 50 million dollars for defense, and Congress unanimously obliged. Most American leaders took the position that the cause of the explosion was unknown, but public attention was now riveted on the situation and Spain was unable to find a diplomatic solution to avoid war. It appealed to the European powers; all of whom advised Spain to back down and avoid war.

The U.S. Navy’s investigation, made public on March 28, concluded that the ship’s powder magazines were ignited when an external explosion was set off under the ship’s hull. This report poured fuel on popular indignation in the United States, making the war inevitable. Spain’s investigation came to the opposite conclusion: that the explosion originated within the ship. Other investigations in later years came to various contradictory conclusions, but had no bearing on the coming of the war. In 1974 Navy Admiral Hyman George Rickover had his staff look at the documents and concluded there was an internal explosion. A study commissioned by the National Geographic magazine in 1999, using AME computer modelling, stated that the explosion could have been caused by a mine, but no definitive evidence was found.

Declaring war

United States Army officer Charles A. Wikoff was the most senior U.S. military officer killed in the Spanish-American War.

See Wikipedia:Propaganda of the Spanish–American War

Upon the destruction of the Maine, newspaper publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer came to the conclusion that the Spanish were to blame, and they publicized this theory as fact in their New York City papers using sensationalistic and astonishing accounts of "atrocities" committed by Spain in Cuba. A common myth states that Hearst responded to the opinion of his illustrator Frederic Remington that conditions in Cuba were not bad enough to warrant hostilities with: "You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." This so-called "yellow journalism" was, however, uncommon outside of New York City, and historians no longer consider it the major force shaping the national mood. Public opinion nationwide did demand immediate action, overwhelming the efforts of President McKinley, Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed and the business community to find a negotiated solution.

Senator Redfield Proctor's speech, delivered on March 17, 1898 thoroughly analyzed the situation, concluding that war was the only answer. The speech helped provide one final push for the United States to declare war.Template:rp Many in the business and religious communities, which had heretofore opposed war, switched sides, leaving McKinley and Speaker Reed almost alone in their resistance to a war. On April 11, McKinley ended his resistance and asked Congress for authority to send American troops to Cuba to end the civil war there, knowing that Congress would force a war.

On April 19, while Congress was considering joint resolutions supporting Cuban independence, Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado proposed the Teller amendment to ensure that the United States would not establish permanent control over Cuba after the war. The amendment, disclaiming any intention to annex Cuba, passed the Senate 42 to 35; the House concurred the same day, 311 to 6. The amended resolution demanded Spanish withdrawal and authorized the President to use as much military force as he thought necessary to help Cuba gain independence from Spain. President McKinley signed the joint resolution on April 20, 1898, and the ultimatum was forwarded to Spain. In response, Spain broke off diplomatic relations with the United States on April 21. On the same day, the U.S. navy began a blockade of Cuba. Spain declared war on April 23. On April 25, Congress declared that a state of war between the United States and Spain had existed since April 21, the day the blockade of Cuba had begun.

The Navy was ready, but the Army was not well-prepared for the war and made radical changes in plans and hurried purchases of supplies. In the spring of 1898, the strength of the U.S. Army was just 28,000 men. The Army wanted 50,000 new men but received over 220,000, through volunteers and the mobilization of state National Guard units.