At the end of the nineteeth century, some Americans sensed a restlessness in the air. The western frontier was rapidly becoming settled. Many people agreed with historian Frederick Jackson Turner when he predicted that "American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise." Turner believed that for the American spirit to thrive, it needed a frontier.
Influential leaders like Senator Henry Cabot Lodge from Massachusetts, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst took Turner's ideas one step further. They believed that America was in fact destined to expand beyond its borders. Expansion, as Roosevelt later explained, meant "not only the extension of liberty and order, and the bringing nearer by gigantic strides of the day when peace shall come to the whole earth."
An Opportunity for Expansion Cuba, only ninety miles off the coast of the United States, presented American espansionists with an opportune chance to end their country's isolation and assert its power in world affairs. Spanish control over the island had weakened considerably since the late 1860s, when Cuban rebels first began to agitate for their independence. In the 1870s a prolonged uprising took place against the Spanish; and in 1895, a revolution began.
In the United States, citizens sympathetic to the Cuban rebels were calling for war against Spain. Sensation reports such as this appeared in the "Yellow Press":
How long shall the sound of rifles in Castle Morro at sunrise proclaim that bound and helpless prisoners of war have been murdered in cold blood?The government found itself walking a tightrope between war and peace.
How long shall Cuban women be the victims of Spanish outrages and lie sobbing and bruised in loathsome prisons?
How long shall the Unted States sit idle and indifferent within sound and hearing of raping and murder?
How long?
President McKinley, newly elected 1896, was determined to do everything in his power to avoid what he called the "terrible calamity" of war with Spain. Patiently, he worked behind the scenes with the Spanish. In November 1897, McKinley persuaded Spain to grant Cuba limited self-government. But the Cuban rebels continued to fight for full independence. Then pro-Spanish mobs, opponents of the revels, rioted in Havana to protest against self-government. To protect Americans in Cuba from the violence, the battleship Maine steamed into Havana on January 25, 1898.
"Remember the Maine"
Twenty-one days after arriving in Havana Harbor, the Maine mysteriously exploded.
George Rea, a newspaper reporter for the New York Herald, arrived on the scene only minutes after the tragedy. He was shocked at what he saw: "great masses of twisted and bent iron plates and beams were thrown up in confusion amidships. The bow had disappeared; the foremast and smoke stacks had fallen; and to add to the horror and danger, the mass of wreckage amidships was on fire." Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was also in Javana when the Maine exploded. She rushed to the hospital where the wounded had been taken. "They had been crushed by timbers, cut by iron, scorched by fire, and blown sometimes high in the air, sometimes driven down through the red hot furnace room and out into the water," she wrote.
Going to War
Pro-war hysteria was also growing within the ranks of the United States government. Still, President McKinley refused to react hastily and give up hope of a peaceful solution to the Cuban problem. In March, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his sister: "McKinley is bent on peace, I fear." But there were forces at work against the President.
On April 11, 1898, McKinley went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Spain. By the end of the month, what came to be called "a splendid little war" had begun. The war was short. After only 113 days of fighting on land and sea, the United States claimed victory. Its troops occupied the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and part of the Philippines.
The New Imperialist
In December 1898, Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, by which Cuba was granted its independence and Gaum, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines were ceded to the United States. "We have risen to be one of the great world powers," Henry Cabot Lodge said after the war with Spain, "and I think we have made an impression upon Europe that will be lasting."
