From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (51 page)

Significantly, Richard Olney replaced Walter Gresham as secretary of state at this point. Not known for tact or finesse—as attorney general, Olney had just forcibly suppressed the Pullman strike—he quickly set the tone for U.S. intrusion. In what Cleveland called his "twenty-inch gun" (new Dreadnought battleships were equipped with twelve-inch guns), Olney's July 20, 1895, note insisted in prosecutor's language that the Monroe Doctrine justified U.S. intervention and pressed Britain to arbitrate. More important, it claimed hegemonic power. Today "the United States is practically sovereign on this continent," he proclaimed, "and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition." The
New York World
spoke excitedly of the "blaze" that swept the nation after Olney's message.
²⁷

Even more surprising than the fact of U.S. intrusion and the force of Olney's blast was Britain's eventual acquiescence. At first shocked that the United States should take such an extravagant stand on a "subject so comparatively small," Prime Minister Lord Salisbury delayed four months before replying. He then lectured an upstart nation on how to behave in a grown-up world, rejecting its claims and telling it to mind its
own business. Now "mad clean through," as he put it, Cleveland responded in kind. On both sides, as so often in the nineteenth century, talk of war abounded. Once again, U.S. timing was excellent. Britain was distracted by crises in the Middle East, East Asia, and especially South Africa, where war loomed with the Boers. As before, the threat of war evoked from both nations ties of kinship that grew stronger throughout the century. London proposed, then quickly dropped over U.S. objections, a conference to define the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine, a significant concession. It also tacitly conceded the U.S. definition of the Monroe Doctrine and its hegemony in the hemisphere.
²⁸

The larger principle more or less settled, the two nations, not surprisingly, resolved their differences at the expense of Venezuela. Neither Anglo-Saxon country had much respect for the third party, "a mongrel state," Thomas Bayard, then serving in London as the first U.S. ambassador, exclaimed dismissively. They were not about to leave questions of war and peace in its hands. Britain agreed to arbitrate once the United States accepted its conditions for arbitration. The two nations then imposed on an outraged Venezuela a treaty providing for arbitration and giving it no representation on the commission. Britain got much of what it wanted except for a strip of land controlling the Orinoco River, precisely what Washington sought to keep from it. Venezuela got very little. Despite Olney's bombast, the United States secured British recognition of its expanded interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine and a larger share of the trade of northern South America. Olney's blast further announced to the world and especially to Britain that the United States was prepared to establish its place among the great powers, whatever Europeans might think. It elevated the Monroe Doctrine to near holy writ at home and marked the end of British efforts to contest U.S. preeminence in the Caribbean.
²⁹

From 1895 to 1898, the expansionist program was clearly articulated and well publicized and gained numerous adherents. In the 1896 election campaign between Republican William McKinley of Ohio and Democrat William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, domestic issues, especially Bryan's pet program, the coinage of silver, held center stage. But the Republican platform set forth a full-fledged expansionist agenda: European withdrawal from the hemisphere; a voluntary union of English-speaking
peoples in North America, meaning Canada; construction of a U.S.-controlled isthmian canal; acquisition of the Virgin Islands; annexation of Hawaii; and independence for Cuba. The War of 1898 provided an opportunity to implement much of this agenda—and more.
³⁰

What was once called the Spanish-American War was the pivotal event of a pivotal decade, bringing the "large policy" to fruition and marking the United States as a world power. Few events in U.S. history have been as encrusted in myth and indeed trivialized. The very title is a misnomer, of course, since it omits Cuba and the Philippines, both key players in the conflict. Despite four decades of "revisionist" scholarship, popular writing continues to attribute the war to a sensationalist "yellow press," which allegedly whipped into martial frenzy an ignorant public that in turn drove weak leaders into an unnecessary war.
³¹
The war itself has been reduced to comic opera, its consequences dismissed as an aberration. Such treatment undermines the notion of war by design, allowing Americans to cling to the idea of their own noble purposes and sparing them responsibility for a war they came to see as unnecessary and imperialist results they came to regard as unsavory.
³²
Such interpretations also ignore the extent to which the war and its consequences represented a logical culmination of major trends in nineteenth-century U.S. foreign policy. It was less a case of the United States coming upon greatness almost inadvertently than of it pursuing its destiny deliberately and purposefully.
³³

The war grew out of a revolution in Cuba that was itself in many ways a product of the island's geographical proximity to and economic dependence on the United States. As with the Hawaiian revolution, U.S. tariff policies played a key role. The 1890 reciprocity treaty with Spain sparked an economic boom on the island. But the 1894 Wilson-Gorman tariff, by depriving Cuban sugar of its privileged position in the U.S. market, inflicted economic devastation and stirred widespread political
unrest. Revolutionary sentiment had long smoldered. In 1895, exiles such as the poet, novelist, and patriot leader José Martí returned from the United States to foment rebellion. Concerned about possible U.S. designs on Cuba, Martí, Máximo Gómez, and Antonio Maceo sought a quick victory through scorched earth policies—"abominable devastation," they called it—seeking to turn Cuba into a desert and by doing so drive Spain from the island. Spanish general Valeriano "Butcher" Weyler retaliated with his brutal "
reconcentrado
" policies, herding peasants into fortified areas where they could be controlled. The results were catastrophic: Ninety-five thousand people died from disease and malnutrition. On the other side, weather, disease, and Cuban arms took a fearsome toll on young and poorly prepared Spanish forces, an estimated thirty-five thousand of them killed each year. The rebels used the machete with especially terrifying effect, littering the sugar and pineapple fields with the heads of Spanish soldiers.
³⁴

From the outset, this brutal insurgent war had an enormous impact in the United States. Since Jefferson's day, Cuba's economic and strategic importance had made it an object of U.S. attention. Like Florida, Texas, and Hawaii, the island was Americanized in the late nineteenth century. The Cuban elite was increasingly educated in the United States. By the end of the century, the United States dominated Cuba economically. Exports to the United States increased from 42 percent of the total in 1859 to 87 percent in 1897. United States investments have been estimated at $50 million, trade at $100 million. The war threatened American-owned sugar estates, mines, and ranches and the safety of U.S. citizens. A junta located mainly in Florida and New York and led by Cuban expatriates, some of them U.S. citizens, lobbied tirelessly for
Cuba Libre,
sold war bonds in the United States, and smuggled weapons onto the island. Cubans naturalized as U.S. citizens returned to fight. Not surprisingly, Cubans had mixed feelings about U.S. assistance. Some conservative leaders lacked confidence in their peoples' ability to govern themselves and feared chaos if the African, former slave population took power. They were amenable to U.S. tutelage—even annexation—to maintain their positions and property. Others like Martí, Gómez, and Maceo, while eager for American backing, feared that military intervention might lead to U.S. domination. "To change masters is not to be free," Martí warned.
³⁵

The "yellow press" (so named for the "Yellow Kid," a popular cartoon character that appeared in its newly colored pages) helped make Cuba a cause célèbre in the United States. The mass-circulation newspaper came into its own in the 1890s. The New York dailies of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer engaged in a fierce, head-to-head competition with few restraints and fewer scruples about the truth. They eagerly disseminated stories furnished by the junta. Talented artists such as Frederic Remington and writers such as Richard Harding Davis portrayed the revolution as a simple morality play featuring the oppression of freedom-loving Cubans by evil Spaniards.
³⁶
The yellow press undoubtedly contributed to a war spirit, but Americans in areas where it did not circulate also strongly sympathized with Cuba. The Dubuque, Iowa,
Times,
for example, appealed to "men in whose breast the fire of patriotism burns" for the "annihilation of the Spanish dogs."
³⁷
The press did not create the differences between Cuba, Spain, and the United States that proved insoluble. War likely would have occurred without its agitation.

Sympathy for Cuba and outrage with Spain produced demands for intervention and war. Anxieties in the country at large fed a martial fever. Businessmen worried that the Cuban problem might delay recovery from the depression. Some Americans, like the Cuban Creoles, feared that an insurgent victory would threaten U.S. investments and trade. The rising furor quickly took on political ramifications. Divided Democrats sought to reunite their party over the Cuban issue and embarrass the Republicans; Republicans tried to head off the opposition. Elites increasingly agreed that the United States must act. National pride, a resurgent sense of destiny, and a conviction that the United States as a rising world power must take responsibility for world events in its area of influence gave an increasing urgency to the Cuban crisis.
³⁸

From the time he took office in 1897, President William McKinley was absorbed in the Cuban problem. Once caricatured as a weakling, the puppet of big business, McKinley has received his due in recent years. His retiring demeanor and refusal to promote himself concealed strength of character and resoluteness of purpose. A plain, down-home man of simple tastes, McKinley had extraordinary political skills. His greatest asset was his understanding of people and his ability to deal with them. Accessible, kindly, and a good listener, he was a master of the art of leading by indirection, letting others seem to persuade him of positions he had
already taken, appearing to follow while actually leading. "He had a way of handling men," his secretary of war Elihu Root observed, "so that they thought his ideas were their own."
³⁹
He entered the presidency with a clearly defined agenda, including the expansionist planks of the Republican platform. In many ways the first modern president, he used the instruments of his office as no one had since Lincoln, dominating his cabinet, controlling Congress, and skillfully employing the press to build political support for his policies.
⁴⁰

For two years, McKinley patiently negotiated with Spain while holding off domestic pressures for war. Reversing America's long-standing acceptance of Spanish sovereignty, he sought by steadily increasing diplomatic pressure to end Weyler's brutal measures and drive Spain from Cuba without war. For a time, he appeared to succeed. The Madrid government recalled Weyler and promised Cuban autonomy. But his success was illusory. By this time, Spain was willing to concede some measure of self-government. But the insurgents, having spent much blood and treasure, would accept nothing less than complete independence. Spanish officials feared that to abandon the "ever faithful isle," the last remnant of their once glorious American empire, would bring down the government and perhaps the monarchy. They tried to hold off the United States by a policy of "procrastination and dissimulation," deluding themselves that somehow things would work out.
⁴¹

Two incidents in early 1898 brought the two nations to the brink of war. On February 9, Hearst's
New York World
published a letter written by Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, Spanish minister in Washington, to friends in Cuba describing McKinley as weak and a bidder for the crowd and speaking cynically of Spain's promises of reforms in Cuba. It was a private letter, of course, and Americans themselves had publicly said much worse things about McKinley. But in the supercharged atmosphere of 1898, this "Worst Insult to the United States in Its History," as one newspaper hyperbolically headlined it, provoked popular outrage. More important, de Lôme's cynical comments about reforms caused McKinley to doubt Spain's good faith.
⁴²

Less than a week later, the battleship USS
Maine
mysteriously exploded in Havana harbor, killing 266 American sailors. The catastrophe almost certainly resulted from an internal explosion, but Americans pinned responsibility elsewhere. "Remember the
Maine,
to hell with Spain" became a popular rallying cry. Without bothering to examine the facts, the press blamed the explosion on Spain. Theater audiences wept, stamped their feet, and cheered when patriotic songs were played. Jingoes wrapped themselves in flags and demanded war. When McKinley pleaded for restraint, he was burned in effigy. Congress threatened to take matters into its own hands and recognize the Cuban rebels or even declare war.
⁴³

McKinley's last-ditch efforts to achieve his aims without war failed. Phrasing his demands in the language of diplomacy to leave room for maneuver, he insisted that Spain must get out of Cuba or face war. In Spain also, opposition to concessions grew. The Spanish resented being blamed for the
Maine
. The threat of U.S. intervention in Cuba provoked among students, middle-class urbanites, and even some working-class people a surge of patriotism not unlike that in the United States. A jingoist spirit marked bullfights and fiestas. Street demonstrations rocked major Iberian cities. In Málaga, angry mobs threw rocks at the U.S. consulate amidst shouts of "
Viva España! Muerte a los Yanques! Abajo el armisticio!
" As in the United States, the press incited popular outrage.
⁴⁴
Fearing for its survival and even for the monarchy, the government recognized that it could not win a war with the United States and feared disastrous consequences. In keeping with the spirit of the era, however, it preferred the honor of war to the ignominy of surrender. It offered last-minute concessions to buy time but refused to surrender on the fundamental issue.