From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (52 page)

Since he left scant written record, it is difficult to determine why McKinley finally decided upon war. He was understandably sensitive to the mounting political pressures and stung by charges of spinelessness. But he appears to have found other, more compelling reasons to act. Historians disagree sharply on the state of the insurgency, some arguing that the rebels were close to victory, others that the war had ground into a bloody stalemate.
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McKinley found either prospect unacceptable. An insurgent triumph threatened American property and investments as well as ultimate U.S. control of Cuba. Memories of another Caribbean revolution a century earlier had not died, and in the eyes of some Americans Cuba raised the grim specter of a second Haiti. Continued stalemate risked more destruction on the island and an unsettled situation at home. It was therefore not so much the case of an aroused public forcing a weak president into an unnecessary war as of McKinley choosing war to defend vital U.S. interests and remove "a constant menace to our peace" in an area "right at our door."
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The ambiguous manner in which the administration went to war belied its steadfastness of purpose. True to form, the president did not ask Congress for a declaration. Rather, he let the legislators take the initiative, the only instance in U.S. history in which that has happened. He sought "a neutral intervention" that would leave him maximum freedom of action in Cuba. His supporters in Congress warned that it would be a "grave mistake" to recognize a "people of whom we know practically nothing." They affirmed that the president must be in a position to "insist upon such a government as will be of practical advantage to the United States." McKinley successfully headed off those zealots who sought to couple intervention with recognition of Cuban independence. But he could not thwart the so-called Teller Amendment providing that the United States would not annex Cuba once the war ended. The amendment derived from various forces, those who opposed annexing territory containing large numbers of blacks and Catholics, those who sincerely supported Cuban independence, and representatives of the domestic sugar business, including sponsor Senator Henry Teller of Colorado, who feared Cuban competition. McKinley did not like the amendment, but he acquiesced. Cubans remained suspicious, warning that the Americans were a "people who do not work for nothing."
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By modern military standards, the War of 1898 did not amount to much. On the U.S. side, the last vestiges of nineteenth-century voluntarism and amateurism collided with an incipient twentieth-century military professionalism, creating confusion, mismanagement, and indeed, at times, comic opera. Volunteers responded in such numbers that they could not be absorbed by a sclerotic military bureaucracy. Large numbers of troops languished in squalid camps where they fought each other and eventually

drifted home. Americans arrived in Cuba's tropical summer sun in woolen uniforms left over from the Civil War. They were fed a form of canned beef variously described as "embalmed" and "nauseating." The U.S. commander, Gen. William Shafter, weighed more than three hundred pounds and resembled a "floating tent." Mounting his horse required a complicated system of ropes and pulleys, a feat of real engineering ingenuity.

Despite ineptitude and mismanagement, victory came easily, causing journalist Richard Harding Davis to observe that God looked after drunkards, babies, and Americans. With McKinley's approval, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt had ordered Adm. George Dewey's fleet to steam to the Philippines. In a smashing victory that set the tone for and came to symbolize the war, Dewey's six new warships crushed the decrepit Spanish squadron in Manila Bay, setting off wild celebrations at home, sealing the doom of Spain's empire in the Philippines, and creating an opportunity for and enthusiasm about expansionism. Victory in Cuba did not come so easily. United States forces landed near Santiago without resistance, the result of luck as much as design. But they met stubborn Spanish resistance while advancing inland and in taking the city suffered heavy losses from Spanish fire and especially disease. Exhausted from three years of fighting Cubans, Spanish forces had no desire to take on fresh U.S. troops. Food shortages, mounting debt, political disarray, and a conspicuous lack of support from the European great powers sapped Spain's enthusiasm for war.
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It took less than four months for U.S. forces to conquer Cuba (just as disease began to decimate the invading force). Victory cost a mere 345 killed in action, 5,000 lost to illness, and an estimated $250 million.

The ease and decisiveness of the victory intoxicated Americans, stoking an already overheated chauvinism. "It was a splendid little war," Ambassador John Hay chortled from London (giving the conflict an enduring label), "begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave." "No war in history has accomplished so much in so short a time with so little loss," concurred the U.S. ambassador to France. The ease of victory confirmed the rising view that the nation stood on the brink of greatness.
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In the national mythology, the acquisition of empire from a war often dismissed with caricature has been viewed as accidental or aberrational, an ad hoc response to situations that had not been anticipated. In fact, the administration conducted the war with a clarity and resoluteness of purpose that belied its comic opera qualities. The first modern commander in chief, McKinley created a War Room on the second floor of the White House and used fifteen telephone lines and the telegraph to coordinate the Washington bureaucracy and maintain direct contact with U.S. forces in Cuba.
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More important, he used the war to advance America's status as a world power and achieve its expansionist objectives. He set out to remove Spain from the Western Hemisphere, completing a process begun one hundred years earlier. Moving with characteristic stealth, he kept rebel forces in Cuba and the Philippines at arm's length to ensure maximum U.S. control and freedom of choice. Until the war ended, he asserted, "we must keep all we get; when the war is over we must keep what we want."
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McKinley used the exigencies of war to fulfill the old aim of annexing Hawaii. Upon taking office, he had declared annexation but a matter of time—not a new departure, he correctly affirmed, but a "consummation."
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"We need Hawaii as much as in its day we needed California. It was Manifest Destiny," he stated on another occasion.
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A perceived threat from Japan underscored the urgency. Hawaii had encouraged the immigration of Japanese workers to meet a labor shortage, but by the mid-1890s an influx once welcomed had aroused concern. When the government sought to restrict further immigration, a Japan puffed up by victory over China vigorously protested and dispatched a warship to back up its words. McKinley sent a new treaty of annexation to the Senate in June 1897, provoking yet another Japanese protest and a mini war scare (one U.S. naval officer actually predicted a Japanese surprise attack on the Hawaiian Islands). Advocates of annexation insisted that the United States must "act NOW to preserve the results of its past policy, and to prevent the dominancy of Hawaii by a foreign people."
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The anti-imperialist opposition had the votes to forestall a two-thirds majority. The administration thus followed John Tyler's 1844 precedent by seeking a joint
resolution. In any event, by early 1898 the emerging crisis with Spain put a premium on caution.

What had once been a deterrent soon spurred action. Relentlessly pursuing annexation, Hawaii's pro-American government opened its ports and resources to the United States instead of proclaiming neutrality. The war made obvious Hawaii's strategic importance. Worries about German and Japanese expansion in the Pacific reinforced the point. Hawaii assumed a major role in supplying U.S. troops in the Philippines. McKinley even talked of annexing it under presidential war powers. Shortly after the outbreak of war, he submitted to Congress a resolution for annexation. Legislators declared Hawaii a "naval and military necessity," the "key to the Pacific"; not to annex would be "national folly," one exclaimed. The resolution passed in July by sizeable majorities. The
haole
(non-Hawaiian) ruling classes cheered. Some native Hawaiians lamented that "Annexation is Rotten Bananas." One group issued a futile protest against "annexation . . . without reference to the consent of the people of the Hawaiian Islands." The Women's Patriotic League sewed hatbands declaring "
Ku'u Hae Aloha
"(I Love My Flag).
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While fighting in Cuba, the United States also moved swiftly to take Puerto Rico before the war ended. Named "wealthy port" by its first Spanish governor, the island occupied a commanding position between the two ocean passages. It was called the "Malta of the Caribbean" because it could guard an isthmian canal and the Pacific coast as that Mediterranean island protected Egypt. In contrast to Cuba, the United States had little trade with and few investments in Puerto Rico. But Blaine had put it on his list of necessary acquisitions, mainly as a base to guard a canal. By preventing the United States from taking Cuba, the Teller Amendment probably increased the importance of Puerto Rico. Once the United States was at war with Spain, Puerto Rico provided another chance to remove European influence from the hemisphere. From his debarkation point in Texas, Rough Rider and ardent expansionist Theodore Roosevelt urged his imperialist cohort Senator Lodge to "prevent any talk of peace until we get Porto Rico and the Philippines as well as secure the independence of Cuba."
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Once war began, some businessmen recommended taking Puerto Rico for its commercial and strategic value. Protestant missionaries expressed interest in opening the island—
already heavily Roman Catholic—to the "Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."
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By late June, if not earlier, the administration was committed to its acquisition, ostensibly as payment for a costly intervention.

The main U.S. concern was to seize Puerto Rico before Spain sued for peace. On July 7, the White House ordered Gen. Nelson A. Miles to proceed to Puerto Rico as soon as victory in Cuba was secured. Miles landed at Guánica on July 25 without significant opposition—indeed, the invaders were greeted with shouts of "
viva
" and given provisions. Puerto Rico was relatively peaceful and prosperous. Its people enjoyed a large measure of autonomy under Spain. They looked favorably upon the United States; many were prepared to accept its tutelage. Thus even after the invaders made clear they intended to take possession of the island, they encountered only sporadic and scattered opposition and suffered few casualties. United States forces characterized the invasion as a "picnic." The only shortage was of American flags for the Puerto Ricans to wave.
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The occupation was completed just in time. On August 7, Spain asked for peace terms. It had hoped to hang on to Puerto Rico, but the United States insisted upon taking the island in lieu of "pecuniary indemnity."
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The island land grab extended to the Pacific. Increased great-power interest in East Asia heightened the importance of the numerous islands scattered along Pacific sea routes. Prior to 1898, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States were already engaged in a lively competition. To secure a coaling station for ships en route to the southwest Pacific, McKinley on June 3 ordered the navy to seize one of the Mariana Islands strategically positioned between Hawaii and the Philippines. Three U.S. ships subsequently stopped at Guam. In a scene worthy of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, they announced their arrival by firing their guns. Not knowing the two nations were at war, the Spanish garrison apologized for not being able to answer what they thought was an American salute because they had no ammunition. Spanish defenders were taken prisoner and the island seized. With Guam and the Philippines, the United States saw the need for a cable station to better communicate with its distant possessions. Wake Atoll, a tiny piece of uninhabited land in the central Pacific, seemed suitable. Although Germany had strong claims, U.S. naval officers seized Wake for the United States in January 1899. Mainly
eager to solidify its claims to Samoa, Germany did not contest the U.S. claim. As it turned out, Wake Island did not prove feasible for a cable relay station. The United States did nothing more to establish its sovereignty.
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McKinley moved with more circumspection on the Philippines. It remains unclear exactly when he decided to annex the islands. He first hinted they might be left in Spanish hands; the United States would settle for a port. He later suggested that the issue might be negotiated. Even before he received official confirmation of Dewey's victory, however, he dispatched twenty thousand soldiers to establish U.S. authority in the Philippines. Permitting missionary and business expansionists to persuade him of what he may already have believed, he apparently decided as early as the summer of 1898 to take all the islands. Moving with customary indirection, he helped shape the outcome he sought. He used extended speaking tours through the Middle West and South to mobilize public opinion. He stacked the peace commission with expansionists. He made a conscious decision appear the result of fate and destiny, proclaiming by the time negotiations began that he could see "but one plain path of duty—the acceptance of the archipelago." In December 1898, his negotiators thus imposed on a reluctant but hapless Spain the Treaty of Paris, calling for the cession of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The United States awarded Spain a booby prize of $20 million.
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