A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (96 page)

It might have ended at that—with Americans expressing their support for the rebels from afar—if not for the efforts of two newspapermen, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Pulitzer, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant, had worked as a mule driver before being recruited by Carl Schurz to write for a German-language daily. A Radical Missouri Republican, Pulitzer had purchased the St. Louis
Post
and
Dispatch
newspapers, using them as a base for the reformist agenda that included issues of prohibition, tax fraud, and gambling. His most important acquisition, however, the New York
World,
emphasized sensation, scandal, and human interest stories. For all of its innovation and success, the New York
World
remains best known for a color supplement it started to run in 1896 on cheap yellow paper featuring a cartoon character known as
The Yellow Kid,
which led to the phrase, “yellow press.”
²⁸

Hearst, born to California millionaire rancher George Hearst, obtained the San Francisco
Examiner
to satisfy a gambling debt. He admired Pulitzer and tailored the
Examiner
to resemble Pulitzer’s paper. Emphasizing investigative reporting combined with reformism and sensationalism, Hearst employed the best writers he could find, including Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, and Jack London. Purchasing the New York
Journal
in 1895, Hearst became Pulitzer’s competitor. The two men had much in common, though. Both saw the chaos and tragedy of Cuba purely in terms of expanded circulation. Cuban suffering advanced sales, but a war would be even better. Hearst assigned the brilliant artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to provide battle sketches, well before any hostilities were announced. When Remington arrived in Cuba, he cabled back to Hearst that there was no war to illustrate. “You furnish the pictures,” Hearst wired. “I’ll furnish the war.”
²⁹

Each publisher sought to outdo the other with Spanish horror stories, giving Weyler his nickname and referring to Cuba as a prison. (Ironically, eighty years later, when Castro’s Cuba genuinely became such a prison, no national newspaper dared call it as much.)

Nevertheless, the influence of the press in fomenting war has been overemphasized. Cuban expatriates had already circulated in major U.S. cities attempting to raise awareness and money. Moreover, mainstream papers, such as the New York
Times
, supported McKinley’s caution. The role of business in beating the drums for war has also been exaggerated, since as many businesses opposed any support for the revolution as supported it. Prosperity had only recently returned to the nation, and industrialists wished to avoid any disruption of markets that war might bring. Certainly an intellectual case for war, embraced by Alfred Thayer Mahan, John Hay, and Roosevelt, needed no support from the yellow press. Their arguments combined the need for humanitarian relief for the suffering Cubans with the necessity for naval bases and eviction of Old World powers from the Caribbean, as well as good old-fashioned expansionism.

If the yellow press needed any help in “furnishing” the war, Spanish minister to Washington Dupuy de Lome provided it with a letter he wrote in February 1897. De Lome’s letter ended up on a desk at the New York
Journal
, thanks to the Cuban rebels and their contacts in New York, and of course the paper gleefully printed its contents with the headline
worst insult to the united states in its history
. The minister called McKinley “weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd” who played both sides of the war issue.
³⁰
He further announced his intention to propagandize among American senators and “others in opposition to the junta.”
³¹
McKinley demanded a formal apology, and even though Spain generally agreed with American conditions, the Spanish delay in issuing the apology made them look belligerent. Nevertheless, it appeared relations might be restored, and as part of the reconciliation, McKinley dispatched the battleship USS
Maine
to make a courtesy call to Havana.

At anchor in Havana, the
Maine
’s presence seemed uncontroversial. Sailors routinely walked the streets, fraternizing with sailors of the Spanish navy and purchasing Cuban goods to take home. On the evening of February 15, 1898, however, a massive explosion rocked the vessel, which slowly sank, killing 260 crewmen. News reached McKinley at three o’clock in the morning. Coming on the heels of the de Lome letter—which had actually been written many months earlier—McKinley assumed that the two were linked, but he hoped to avoid a rush to war. He ordered an investigation of the explosion, knowing that a conclusion showing the blast had originated from the outside would tend to implicate Spain (although certainly the rebels had a stake in trying to involve the United States). Americans, however, already seemed convinced of Spain’s complicity, and increasingly McKinley was viewed as blocking a necessary war.

Although no proof was offered of Spain’s culpability (and not until 1910 did an official inquiry on the remains of the ship seem to confirm that the explosion was caused by a mine), on April 20, 1898, Congress handed McKinley a war resolution, along with the Teller Amendment to liberate Cuba within five years of occupation. For those historians who claimed the United States desired an empire, American behavior was odd: what other empires legally bind themselves to abandoning conquered lands the instant they acquire them? Spain’s sudden conciliatory attitude notwithstanding, the pieces fit too conveniently for many Americans to arrive at any other conclusion than that the Spanish were responsible for the sinking of the
Maine.
From Spain it was much too little, too late, and for the United States it was another opportunity to teach the pompous European state a lesson. On April twenty-first, the Spanish severed diplomatic ties. Four days later, Congress declared war.

Just as the world powers had fully expected Mexico to easily defeat the United States in the Mexican War, Europeans again overestimated the decrepit Spanish empire’s strengths and virtually ignored American technology and resolve. The U.S. Army was small and largely untrained. Many units were volunteers; those who had fighting experience came from the frontier, where the Sioux and the Apache presented much different challenges than the more conventional Spanish foe.

McKinley made plans to gather the forces at Tampa and other Florida ports, then land at several points in Cuba. He called for 200,000 volunteers to expand the small 28,000-man army, and by the end of November 1898, 223,000 volunteers had swelled the ranks. These volunteers included the famous Theodore Roosevelt (who had resigned his position as assistant secretary of the navy) and his Rough Riders, an assortment of Indians and scouts, miners and marauders, and even the famous Prescott, Arizona, lawman Bucky O’Neill. But the regiment also included James Robb Church, a star football player at Princeton; New York socialite Hamilton Fish; and the cream of Harvard and Yale. Everyone wanted to join, including the creator of the famous
Tarzan
series, Edgar Rice Burroughs, whom Roosevelt rejected.
³²

Equipping and transporting this army of volunteers was a difficult matter. A new Krag .308 rifle that fired smokeless shells was available, but few units had it; troops called the poor food they received “embalmed beef”; and the atrocious state of medical facilities contributed to the deaths of 2,565 men from disease—more than seven times the 345 men who died in combat.
³³
The Rough Riders found they could not even take their horses to Cuba. For good or ill, though, one thing was certain: the press would cover this war. Hearst had seen to that. In addition to Remington with his sketchbooks, author Stephen Crane, whose Civil War tale,
The Red Badge of Courage
(1895), had already become a classic, traveled with the troops to Cuba.

America may have trailed Spain in rifle quality and even the training of her ground forces, but the United States had a decided advantage at sea. There the white cruisers
Olympia, Boston, Raleigh, Concord,
and
Baltimore
outranged and outgunned all of the Spanish vessels. Deploying the fleet to Hong Kong, however, was entirely Roosevelt’s doing; he had given the order when the secretary of the navy had gone out of the office for a doctor’s appointment. European observers, as always, underestimated Yankee capabilities. Commodore George Dewey, who headed the U.S. Asiatic squadron, reported strong betting at the Hong Kong Club against the Americans, even at considerable odds.

The American battle plan was sound, however. First, Roosevelt ordered Dewey’s squadron to Hong Kong even before a declaration of war, in case hostilities broke out. In April, Dewey headed to sea, where he prepared for battle. Spain had seven vessels to Dewey’s six in Manila Bay, but they were inferior, and their commander, Rear Admiral Patricio Passaron, knew it. Lined up in Manila Bay, Passaron, in a state of gloom, resigned himself to going down with guns blazing. After the declaration of war, Dewey had sailed for Manila Bay. Spanish guns fired first, prompting shouts of “Remember the Maine” from the American decks, but Dewey uttered his classic line, repeated afterward in countless cartoons, when he told the
Olympia
’s captain, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” At a range of more than five thousand yards—outside the Spaniards’ range—U.S. guns shattered the helpless Spanish ships.
³⁴
Dewey did not lose a single man.
³⁵

A two-pronged assault on Cuba was the second piece of the U.S. strategy, and it was aimed at forcing the Spanish Caribbean fleet to exit its port while American troops advanced overland to Havana. The grand assault was led by the three-hundred-pound General William Shafter, whose forces landed on June twenty-second at Daquiri, unopposed and unscathed. The only U.S. casualties were five drowned horses.

Ex-Rebel General Joseph Wheeler, in his first encounter with Spanish troops, shouted, “We’ve got the damned Yankees on the run!”
³⁶
But his men knew what he meant, and they proceeded to link up with Shafter’s forces. By that time, Shafter had fallen ill, to the point where he was unable to ride. After driving the Spaniards out of several positions, American troops converged on the main target, San Juan Heights.

Faced with two hills, San Juan and Kettle, Leonard Wood’s regiments—including the Rough Riders (whose horses were still back in Tampa) and Lieutenant John J. Pershing’s 10th Cavalry buffalo soldiers—crossed the river in front of Kettle Hill. Organizing both the regiments, Teddy Roosevelt, a mounted sitting target, spurred his horse Little Texas in front of his men charging on foot. The units storming Kettle Hill raised a cheer from the American forces still pinned under fire below San Juan Heights.

Spanish positions on San Juan Heights still proved impenetrable until a courageous captain, G. S. Grimes, drove three batteries of Gatling guns to within six hundred yards of the Spanish lines and poured fire at them. (Remington captured the moment in a memorable painting). That was enough to spark the actual “charge up San Juan Hill.” Roosevelt had already led his men up
Kettle Hill
and was not among those advancing on San Juan’s positions, and the “charge” was an orderly, steady advance into heavy fire.

At the same time, Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, pouring machine gun fire into the Spanish flank, charged down the mild slope of Kettle Hill directly into the Spanish positions. Spanish resistance disintegrated. Later, Pershing wrote his recollections of the attack: “White regiments, black regiments, regulars and Rough Riders, representing the young manhood of the North and the South, fought shoulder to shoulder, unmindful of race or color, unmindful of whether commanded by ex-Confederate or not, and mindful of only their common duty as Americans.”
³⁷
The Spanish general Joaquin Vara del Rey had the gross misfortune of being shot through both legs; then, as his men carried him on a stretcher to safety, he was hit again, through the head. Roosevelt, recommended for a Medal of Honor for his actions by both commanding officers, Shafter and Wood, was denied the recognition by political enemies until January 2001, when Congress finally awarded it to him posthumously.

Shafter, still battling gout and heat, now surrounded Santiago and squeezed Admiral Pascual Cervera’s fleet out of the harbor, where it had to run the gauntlet of Admiral William Sampson’s American vessels. On July 3, 1898, Cervera’s fleet sailed out, much to the surprise of Sampson. The Spanish knew what awaited them. “Poor Spain,” said a captain aboard the
Theresa
to Admiral Cervera. The sound of the ship bugles meant that Spain had become “a nation of the fourth class.”
³⁸
After a brief running battle with the far superior American ships, in which the U.S. Navy badly damaged all of Cervera’s vessels, the Spanish fleet hauled down its colors. “The fleet under my command,” telegraphed Admiral Sampson to Washington, “offers the nation, as a Fourth of July present, the whole of Cervera’s fleet.”
³⁹
Spain quickly capitulated. Despite the loss of only 400 men in combat, the Spanish-American War had proven costly. The government had mobilized thousands of soldiers who never saw action, but who ultimately would draw pensions valued at $5 billion. At the end of sixty years, the pensions from the Spanish-American War still cost the United States $160 million annually.

Final negotiations left the United States in control of the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. The Senate had insisted that Cuba be free and not a U.S. possession, but the United States paid $20 million for Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. The disposition of these other territories, however, was not so clear. Two other nations, in addition to the Filipinos themselves, had an interest in the Philippines. Filipino freedom fighters, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, had been brought by Dewey from Hong Kong to help liberate the Philippines. Aguinaldo’s ten thousand insurgents had helped to capture Manila. Under other circumstances, it is highly likely the United States would have washed its hands of the Philippines and hastily departed.