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If Capitol Walls Could Talk Essay Research (стр. 1 из 2)

If Capitol Walls Could Talk Essay, Research Paper

Militarily, the Spanish-American War (1898) was not a monumental war. The war was brief, included few battles, and the US generally had an easy time of it, with the war’s outcome never in much doubt. Secretary of State John Hay called it a “splendid little war.” Internationally, however, the war had major historical significance.

The Spanish-American War signaled the emergence of the US as a great power onto the world stage of international relations and diplomacy. The war did not make the US a great power: the rapid industrialization and economic growth of the previous decades had done that. However, the war did announce to the rest of the world that the US was now a major player. Lifting its head from a century of isolationism and flexing its muscles against the Spanish, the US now transitioned to a vigorous role in world affairs.

The war demonstrated a US move towards imperialism (the taking of colonies). In general, this shift in policy was quite surprising, since the US, once a colony itself, had generally opposed the European colonial habit. Before the Spanish-American War, Congress even passed the Teller Amendment promising that the US would leave Cuba independent. Yet during the war or just after, the US annexed Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to provide coaling stations for the US Navy throughout the world, as called for by the theories of strategist Alfred T. Mahan. There has been some debate among historians over whether 1898 was a rare moment of US imperialism or the beginning of a long period of informal imperialism accomplished through economic domination. The war also described a pattern extant through much of the 20th century: just as the Philippines and other annexed nations struggled against US rule, US interference in world affairs would not always be welcomed by the smaller nations that fell under Uncle Sam’s increasingly tall shadow. The most immediate effect of anger over US interference lay in the 1899-1901 war waged by Emilio Aguinaldo and the Filipinos against the US, which was actually bloodier than the Spanish-American War itself. American embroilment in a military quagmire with an Asian nationalist group over independence seems oddly familiar to later American involvement in Korea and Vietnam, again showing that the Spanish- American War was a sign of things to come.

The war also revealed the growing power of the media to control public opinion in the US. Around the turn of the century and most powerfully just before and during the war, newspapermen like Hearst and Pulitzer practiced yellow journalism, sensationalizing stories and whipping the public into a frenzy for the simple purpose of increasing circulation. There is a great deal of historical proof that the “yellow journalists” tried to instigate the Spanish- American war because they knew war would help sell more newspapers. The role of the newspapers in this war foreshadowed the increasing importance of the media in shaping public opinion regarding wars, as would be seen increasingly in all successive US wars, culminating with the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. In this way, the Spanish-American War was very modern, arguably the first “media war” in American history.

Finally, the Spanish-American War revealed that industrialization in the late 19th century had made the US a great power. Now, as the frontier in the American West disappeared, the nation sought new room to grow: world markets, protected by a worldwide Navy based on island territories throughout the world. Furthermore, new ideas of “Social Darwinism” in the period suggested to many Americans that international relations were a nasty contest in which the “fittest” nations would do what they had to in order to survive. Regardless of the reasons behind annexation, the Spanish-American War and the colonies it brought to the US marked, for good and for ill, the beginning of the modern era of US intervention in world affairs. And the emergence of the US onto the international stage as a power also symbolized to many that the US had finally emerged, whole and healthy, from the era of the Civil Wat.

Cuba had long been a colony of Spain, with almost its entire economy based on sugar production. As the second half of the 19th century wore on, many people in Cuba, which had been a Spanish colony, became dissatisfied with the ruling Spanish regime. The Spanish government was riddled with corruption, inefficient, and unwilling to grant the Cuban population any concessions.

Despite obvious Cuban dissatisfaction, the Spanish authorities refused to grant any amount of self-government to the Cubans. As a result, Cuban Nationalists, who wanted to end Spanish rule, fought the Ten Years’ War against the Spaniards from 1868-1878. The rebellion finally petered out, though the dissatisfaction motivating the fighting did not disappear. After the war, the Spanish promised reforms, but the Nationalists considered this too little, too late.

When a Nationalist-initiated conflict broke out again in Cuba in 1895, the Spanish, remembering the lengthy Ten Years’ War, sent 200,000 troops to Cuba. The Cuban insurrectos responded by wrecking Spanish property in hopes that the Spanish would leave, or at least hoping for US intervention (since the US had significant economic investment in Cuba). The insurrectos directed their destructive rampage at both sugar mills and sugar fields.

In 1896, the Spanish sent the infamous General Weyler, known as “The Butcher,” to Cuba to put down the insurrection. Weyler lived up to his name. To prevent the insurrectos from leading the population against Spanish rule, Weyler built concentration camps in which he imprisoned a large portion of the population. Under the harsh and unsanitary conditions in the concentration camps, Cuban prisoners died rapidly, especially from disease.

Segments of the US public, outraged by reports of atrocities in Cuba, immediately cried out for action. President Grover Cleveland (1893-1897), however, was dead set against going to war. He issued an ultimatum: even if Congress passed a declaration of war, he vowed as commander-in-chief of the army to never send the military to Cuba.

Commentary

The Cuban Nationalists moved against Spain partly because they thought the US likely to come to their aid. The US was investing increasing amounts of money into Cuban sugar production ($50 million by 1895) and conducted a trade with Cuba worth $100 million annually. From the 1860s on, the US had even tried to purchase Cuba from Spain several times.

Other causes underlying the 1895 Cuban revolt include a general opposition to a long history of Spanish control, and the more immediate effects of the American Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894. The tariff, which raised prices on sugar imported from Cuba in order to protect US sugar growers, ended up hurting the Cuban economy significantly. Hard times in Cuba led to public unrest and conflict with the Spanish regime. However, it should be noted that although Spanish atrocities against the Cubans are often emphasized, both sides in the Cuban conflict beginning in 1895 killed civilians and destroyed private property.

The US was alarmed by developments in Cuba and had sympathies with the insurrectos from the beginning. First and foremost, the US was always concerned about having a strong European power just offshore the Florida coast. The Spanish, who were considered (wrongly) to have a powerful Navy at the time, posed a potential threat to US trade in the Caribbean. With the Panama Canal on the collective US drawing boards, US policymakers were particularly concerned with the future of maritime shipping in the Caribbean. And of course, the US had financial reasons for wanting to stop the conflict. As mills and plantations went up in flames, American leaders and businessmen increasingly feared that American investments in Cuba might be harmed, not to mention American citizens currently in Cuba.Less specific to the region, the US had long held a position of anti-colonial tradition, originating fromt he fact that the US had once been a set of colonies that had themselves #revolted against their British overlords#{history/american/revolution}#. Americans quickly drew parallels between themselves and the Cubans, seeing the Cubans as facing a similar situation to the one the 13 colonies had faced. For all these reasons, the US was happy to have an excuse to oppose the Spanish.

None of the above events or commentary seem to suggest that the after the Spanish-American War in 1898 the US would annex several territories (taking colonies). However, in many ways, the early 1890s were the perfect incubator for imperialist expansion at the end of the decade. The Depression of 1893-1897 and the continuing switch from a predominately agricultural export economy to one in which manufactured goods were the primary export combined to fuel the search for foreign markets. The actions of the US during and just after the Spanish-American War can thus be seen as a redefinition of values, or as an illumination of the separate values simultaneously animating American policy and public debate.

The atrocities General Weyler committed in Cuba were massively hyped and sensationalized in the US newspapers, then engaged in a practice known as “yellow journalism”. The two kingpins of the press at the time were William R. Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who were embroiled in a vicious circulation war, in which Hearst even “stole” Pulitzer’s most popular writers by convincing them to defect through promises of money and positions. Hearst’s major publication was the New York Journal and Pulitzer’s publication was the New York World. In order to grow their circulations, both men were willing to go so far as to make up stories.

In response to the rumors of Weyler’s abuses emerging from Cuba around 1896, Hearst sent artists to Cuba to paint and draw the atrocities, in hopes that the pictures would sell more papers. Foremost among Hearst’s artists was Frederic Remington. After arriving in Cuba, Remington reported back to Hearst that the rumors were overblown. To this, Hearst famously replied, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Although Hearst’s statement was egomaniacal and boastful, it was not all that far from the truth. Remington’s pictures in Hearst’s magazines did a great deal to arouse mass concern for Cuba in the US.

Though American yellow journalism exaggerated Weyler’s activities, those exaggeration were nonetheless based in some measure of fact. Realizing that Weyler had gotten out of hand in Cuba, Spain recalled him in 1897, hoping to quiet the yellow presses. Back in Spain, some citizens and legislators started discussing Cuban independence from Spain. The Spaniards in Cuba, who were afraid their property and their lives might be in danger if Cuba got independence, immediately started rioting.

Commentary

Hearst upped his circulation by producing a new kind of paper, one with mass- market appeal. His papers used lots of pictures and illustrations, large headlines, and the like. Reducing the cost of a paper to as little as a single cent a copy, Hearst made his newspapers accessible to nearly everyone. Because he controlled so much of the market for newspapers, a market that was rapidly growing because of his newspapers, Hearst could practically dictate what the country would think the next day.

The whole point of yellow journalism was to produce exciting, sensational stories, even if the truth had to be stretched or a story had to be made up. These stories would boost sales, something very important in this period, when newspapers and magazines were battling for circulation numbers. In regard to the situation in Cuba in the mid-1890s, yellow journalism sought to exploit the atrocities in Cuba to sell more magazines and newspapers. The papers depicted Spanish behavior as exaggeratedly bad, and political cartoons depicted “Spain” as a nearly subhuman and brutal monster, while “Cuba” was usually depicted as a pretty white girl being pushed around by the Spanish monster. Once US opinions were inflamed over Cuba, Hearst in particular tried to do everything he could to whip the public into such a frenzy that a war would start. Once the country was at war, Hearst had little doubt his papers would have no end of interesting and sensational articles to publish.

In keeping with the philosophy of yellow journalism, Remington, actually did paint a one or two patently false pictures. For instance, he drew some pictures of an American woman being brutally searched by Spanish male security forces. This apparently never happened, as only female officials searched American females coming into the country. In addition, Remington’s famous painting of the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill was based not on the actual charge, but on a reenactment performed by the Rough Riders. That a military force would “redo” part of a battle for the sake of the media shows just serious a matter American leaders took the yellow press to be. Yellow journalism did not, ultimately, start the war on its own; it was the sinking of the USS Maine that provided the trigger, not some fabricated story created by Hearst of Pulitzer. Nonetheless, Hearst always referred to the Spanish- American War as “the Journal’s war.” In support of Hearst’s boastful term, many historians argue that the Spanish-American War was probably the first true “media war”.

The Spanish-American War was not the height of Hearst’s power. Afterwards, he continued to grow his media empire for several decades, and even successfully ran for a seat in Congress. Only in the 1930s did his business start to collapse. A controversial figure in American history, Hearst was the rough basis for the wealthy journalist-baron in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

Concerned with the situation in Cuba, in January 1897 the US sent a warship, the USS Maine, to Cuba under captain Charles D. Sigsbee. The Maine’s mission was purportedly friendly, its job to investigate the situation and provide an escape for American should things get out of hand. Shortly after the Maine set out, Hearst’s newspaper intercepted a letter from Spain’s minister in Washington, Dupuy du Lome. The letter spoke rudely of President McKinley. Of course, Hearst did not refrain from publishing the scandalous Lome letter. The letter appeared in the February 9, 1898 of the New York Journal. The letter outraged Americans and embarrassed Spain. Dupuy du Lome was forced to resign over the matter, and tensions between the US and Spain increased.

Six days after Hearst published the Lome letter, the USS Maine sailed into Havana harbor. The surprised Spanish, who had only been given a few hours notice that the Maine was coming, were quite upset. Although the Maine claimed to be on a friendly mission, it was a powerful warship. The Spanish authorities felt that the US was trying to intimidate them and was interfering with Spanish sovereignty by trying to affect Spanish policy toward the Cuban insurrectos.

On February 15, 1898, in an event that still remains a mystery, the Maine suddenly exploded as it sailed around Havana harbor. This was a tragedy for the United States, as 260 out of 350 American sailors and officers died in the explosion. Hearst’s newspaper immediately published a story with the headline, “The Warship Maine Was Split In Two By An Enemy’s Secret Infernal Machine!” The destruction of the Maine created an uproar in America, which, influenced by Hearst, immediately held Spain responsible. In fact, the details of the explosion were still not clear. Investigations by both the US and Spain began, and not surprisingly, they disagreed. While the Spanish investigation team claimed that the explosion was only an accident caused by some internal problem on the ship, the American investigation said the explosion must have been caused by a Spanish mine in the harbor. The yellow press exploited this story, whipping the US into an anti-Spanish frenzy. Newspaper circulation soared as the public demanded war with Spain. War would come, and when it did, the cry of “Remember the Maine” would be heard frequently.

Commentary

Why did the US send the Maine to Cuba? Officially the claim was that it was simply a normal patrol, more of a friendly fact-finding mission than anything else. The real mission of the Maine was probably geared towards protecting US interests. Should a crisis approximating the 1897 riots by insurrectos break out, the US wanted a warship in the vicinity ready to evacuate American citizens in Cuba. And of course, the US had long been interested in increasing American influence in Cuba. Perhaps the Maine was a first step in this direction.

The true nature of the USS Maine explosion has long been one of the great mysteries of American history. At the time, Americans already had a negative view of Spain and almost instantaneously concluded that the explosion was caused by Spanish treachery. For a while after the Spanish-American War, most people accepted the answer that the American investigative commission gave: that a Spanish torpedo or mine blew up the Maine. The Spanish investigative commission, which was never allowed very close to the Maine’s wreck anyway, disagreed. According to the Spanish side of the story, some internal problem with the ship caused the explosion. Perhaps a boiler or a combustion engine exploded, they said. It turns out that they Spanish interpretation may well have been correct. In the 1970s, Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy took another look at the Maine. According to Rickover’s investigation, it appeared most likely that an internal mechanical problem had caused a stockpile of ammunition and gunpowder stored nearby to explode. Rickover’s conclusion was almost identical to the Spanish claims. A third possibility, that the US intentionally exploded the Maine in order to give the nation a reason for going to war, seems to be an unlikely conspiracy theory with little supporting evidence. Nonetheless, some in Cuba hold this theory today. And despite Rickover’s study in the 1970s, the case is still not settled. A later investigation by the Smithsonian turned up numerous plots against the Maine, suggesting a mine or some type of sabotage. Computer modeling studies financed by National Geographic have demonstrated that, based on the wreckage, the explosion could have been caused by either a mine or an internal mechanical accident. Most likely, the causes behind the explosion of the USS Maine will never be known with complete certainty. But whatever the reason for the explosion, the event played directly into the hands of pro-war hawks, jingoists, and yellow journalists like Hearst.