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The Treaty of Paris established the independence
of Cuba, ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States,
and allowed the victorious power to purchase the Philippines
Islands from Spain for $20 million. The war had cost
the United States $250 million and 3,000 lives, although
ninety percent of the fallen had died from infectious
diseases. The war had lasted only four months. Ambassador
(later Secretary of State) John Hay, writing from London
to his friend Theodore Roosevelt declared that from
start to finish it had been “a splendid little
war.” |
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With the end of the war, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt
mustered out of the U.S. Army after the required
30 day quarantine period at Montauk, Long Island,
in 1898. The battle of San Juan Hill launched
Roosevelt into national fame along with his regiment
of "Rough Riders". Roosevelt had a hand
in this, first by employing a reporter to issue
battle reports on the scene from Cuba, and later
through his own writings. Roosevelt's memoir of
Cuba so emphasized his own role that Mr. Dooley,
the barroom pundit created by humorist Peter Finley
Dunne, said the book should have been called "Alone
in Cuba." Roosevelt was a national hero. He was quickly elected Governor of New York, and and he
became Vice President three years later. Roosevelt
along with 23 other participants were awarded
the Medal of Honor. |
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Roosevelt from receiving his award during his
lifetime, but in 2001 President Bill Clinton presented
the award to Tweed Roosevelt, great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. |
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The Spanish-American War was a significant
moment for black Americans. The black American community
strongly supported the rebels in Cuba and American
entry into the war, as thirty-three black American
sailors died in the Maine explosion. The most influential
black leader, Booker T. Washington, argued that his
race was ready to fight. War offered them a chance
"to render service to our country that no other
race can", because, unlike whites, they were
"accustomed" to the "peculiar and dangerous
climate" of Cuba. In March 1898, Washington promised
the Secretary of the Navy that war would be answered
by "at least ten thousand loyal, brave, strong
black men in the south who crave an opportunity to
show their loyalty to our land and would gladly take
this method of showing their gratitude for the lives
laid down and the sacrifices made that Blacks might
have their freedom and rights." Black units gained
prestige from their wartime performance in Cuba (and
later in the Philippines). One prejuiced white lieutenant
serving in the black Ninth Infantry confessed to a
change of heart after witnessing the 24th Infantry's
charge up San Juan Hill:
Do you know, I shouldn't want anything better
than to have a company in a Negro regiment? I am
from Virginia,
and have always had the usual feeling about commanding
colored troops. But after seeing that charge of
the Twenty-
Fourth up the San Juan Hill, I should like the best
in the world to have a Negro company. They went
up that incline
yelling and shouting just as I used to hear when
they were hunting rabbits in Virginia. The Spanish
bullets only made
them wilder to reach the trenches.
Other White officers and news reports offered similar
praise. A Lieutenant Roberts, shot in the abdomen,
later said:
The heroic charge of the Tenth Cavalry saved
the Rough Riders from destruction; and, had it not
been for the Tenth
Cavalry, the Rough Riders would never have passed
through the seething cauldron of Spanish missiles."
When Colonel Theodore Roosevelt returned from the
command of the famous Rough Riders, he delivered a
farewell address to his men, in which he made the
following kind reference to the gallant Negro soldiers:
Now, I want to say just a word more to some
of the men I see standing around not of your number.
I refer to the colored regiments, who occupied the
right and left flanks of us at Guásimas,
the Ninth and Tenth cavalry regiments. The Spaniards
called them 'Smoked Yankees,' but we found them
to be an excellent breed of Yankees. I am sure that
I speak the sentiments of officers and men in the
assemblage when I say that between you and the other
cavalry regiments there exists a tie which we trust
will never be broken.
Unfortunately, these heroes of Cuba returned home
to discrimination, segregation, and even a revision
of the importance of their contribution from Roosevelt
himself. In 1899, writing for Scribner's magazine
in an act of self-promotion, Roosevelt revised his earlier comments
to criticize the performance of African Americans
in the taking of San Juan Hill. He wrote that they
were "peculiarly dependent on their white officers,"
and that they ran when encountering heavy enemy fire.
Only when he threatened to shoot them, Roosevelt said,
did they return to the line. |
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Congress had passed the Teller Amendment
prior to the war, promising Cuban independence.
However, the Senate passed the Platt Amendment
as a rider to an Army appropriations bill, forcing
a peace treaty on Cuba which prohibited it from
signing treaties with other nations or contracting
a public debt. The Platt Amendment was pushed
by imperialists who wanted to project U.S. power
abroad (this was in contrast to the Teller Amendment
which was pushed by anti-imperialists who called
for a restraint on U.S. hegemony). The amendment
granted the United States the right to stabilize
Cuba militarily as needed. The Platt Amendment
also provided for the establishment of a permanent
American naval base in Cuba; it is still in use
today at Guantánamo Bay. The Cuban peace
treaty of 1903 governed Cuban-American relations
until 1934. |
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The Spanish–American War marked American
entry into world affairs. The United States annexed
the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines,
and Guam. The notion of the United States as an imperial
power, with colonies, was hotly debated in the 1900
presidential election, with President McKinley and
the Pro-Imperialists winning despite vocal
opposition led by Democrat William Jennings Bryan,
who had supported the war. The American public largely
supported the possession of colonies, but there were
many outspoken critics such as Mark Twain, who wrote
The War Prayer in protest. The decision to annex the
Philippines rather than support their bid for independence
led to the long and bloody Philippine-American War. |
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In February of 1898, the recovered bodies of sailors
who died on the American Battleship Maine were
interred in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Some injured
sailors were sent to hospitals in Havana and Key West.
Those who died in hospitals were buried in Key West.
In December of 1899 the bodies in Havana were disinterred
and brought back to the United States for burial at
Arlington National Cemetery. The burial site also features
a memorial to those who died, including the ship's anchor
and main mast. Some bodies were never recovered and
the crewmen buried in Key West remain there under a
statue of a U. S. sailor holding an oar.
On August 5, 1910, Congress authorized the raising
of the Maine to remove it as a navigation hazard
in Havana Harbor. On February 2, 1912, she was refloated
under supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers and
towed out to sea where she was sunk in deep water
in the Gulf of Mexico on March 16, 1912, with appropriate
military honors and ceremonies. |
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Because of the uproar the sinking of the Maine caused in the United States, President McKinley demanded
an immediate investigation into the cause of the explosions.
A U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry arrived in Havana and
began its investigation. Survivors and eyewitnesses
testified for the court, and several navy divers explored
the sunken ship, hoping to find clues as to what may
have caused the disaster. All parties involved concluded
without a doubt that the explosion of the forward
six-inch ammunition magazines had caused the sinking.
Why those magazines had exploded, no one could determine
conclusively, and doubt remains as to the exact cause
to this day. There have been four major investigations
into the sinking since 1898. From the four inquiries,
two hypotheses have emerged: The is that a mine in Havana
Harbor had exploded underneath the battleship, causing
the explosion of the magazines. The is that spontaneous
combustion of the coal in bunker A16 created a fire
that detonated the nearby magazines.
The 1898 Court of Inquiry
headed by Captain William T. Sampson began its work
on February 21. Survivors and eyewitnesses testified
for the court, and several navy divers explored the
sunken ship, hoping to find clues as to what may have
caused the disaster. Though several volunteered, no
experts outside the Navy were called upon for advice.
The Sampson Board concluded that the Maine had been
blown up by a mine, which in turn caused the explosion
of her forward magazines. The official report from
the board, which was presented to the Navy Department
in Washington on March 25, specifically stated that,
“The court has been unable to obtain evidence
fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the
Maine upon any person or persons.” This, of course,
did not stop the U.S. from pinning the destruction
on the Spanish, and war was declared one month later.
Ever since the ship sank, doubts about the validity
of the Navy's 1898 and 1911 findings have been expressed
by historians and scientists.
Between November
20 and December 2, 1911 a court of inquiry headed
by Rear Admiral Charles E. Vreeland visited the wreck of the Maine.
The conclusions of the Vreeland Board differed with
the Sampson Board only in detail. The Vreeland Board
agreed that the explosion of the magazines was triggered
by an external blast, but the damage to the Maine
was much more extensive than the Sampson Board had
thought. It was also concluded that the initiating
blast occurred further aft on the ship, and a lower
powered explosive breached the hull than was originally
thought. After the investigation, the newly located
dead were buried in Arlington National Cemetery and
the hollow, intact portion of the hull of the Maine
was refloated and ceremoniously scuttled at sea on
March 16, 1912.
The argument was not touched for another half a century,
until a private investigation in 1976 was triggered
by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover after he read a newspaper
article on the sinking. He and several scientists
from the U.S. Navy launched an investigation based
on the evidence collected during the two Courts of
Inquiry. Rickover believed that the new knowledge
collected since World War II on analyzing ships damaged
by internal and external explosions would shed new
light on the sinking of the Maine. The Rickover analysis
came to a completely different conclusion than the
Courts of Inquiry. Rickover found that the cause of
the explosion did not originate outside the ship.
The cause of the explosion originated within the ship,
but what actually happened could not be precisely
determined. Rickover believed that the most likely
cause was a fire within a coal bunker, which had heated
the magazines to the point of explosion. His 170-page
book, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, was
first published in 1976. The world accepted this new
conclusion, and for more than a quarter of a century,
the coal bunker fire theory reigned over the external
mine theory.
In 1999, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking
of the Maine, National Geographic Magazine commissioned
an analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises, using
computer modeling that was not available for previous
investigations. The AME analysis examined both theories
and concluded that neither theory could be ruled out. Some experts, including Admiral
Rickover’s team and several analysts at AME,
do not agree with the conclusion, and the fury over
new findings even spurred a heated 90-minute debate
at the 124th annual meeting of the U.S. Naval Institute. |
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