592 Chapter 22 From Isolation to Empire
and allow the Cubans to determine their own fate.
Spanish pride and Cuban patriotism had taken the
issue of peace or war out of the president’s hands.
Spain could not put down the rebellion, and it would
not yield to the nationalists’ increasingly extreme
demands. To have granted independence to Cuba
might have caused the Madrid government to fall, or
might even have led to the collapse of the monarchy,
for the Spanish public was in no mood to surrender.
The Cubans, sensing that the continuing bloodshed
aided their cause, refused to give the Spanish regime
room to maneuver. After the Mainedisaster, Spain
might have agreed to an armistice had the rebels asked
for one, and in the resulting negotiations it might well
have given up the island. The rebels refused to make
the first move. The fighting continued, bringing the
United States every day closer to intervention.
The president faced a dilemma. Most of the busi-
ness interests of the country, to which he was particu-
larly sensitive, opposed intervention. His personal
feelings were equally firm. “I have been through one
war,” he told a friend. “I have seen the dead piled up,
and I do not want to see another.” Congress, however,
seemed determined to act. When he submitted a
restrained report on the sinking of the Maine, the
Democrats in Congress, even most of those who had
supported Cleveland’s policies, gleefully accused him
of timidity. Vice President Garret A. Hobart warned
him that the Senate could not be held in check for
long; should Congress declare war on its own, the
administration would be discredited.
McKinley spent a succession of
sleepless nights; sedatives brought
him no repose. Finally, early in April,
the president drafted a message ask-
ing for authority to use the armed
forces “to secure a full and final ter-
mination of hostilities” in Cuba.
At the last moment the
Spanish government seemed to
yield; it ordered its troops in Cuba
to cease hostilities. McKinley
passed this information on to
Congress along with his war mes-
sage, but he gave it no emphasis
and did not try to check the march
toward war. To seek further delay
would have been courageous but
not necessarily wiser. Merely to
stop fighting was not enough. The
Cuban nationalists now insisted on
full independence, and the Spanish
politicians were unprepared to
abandon the last remnant of their
once-great American empire. If the United States
took Cuba by force, the Spanish leaders might save
their political skins; if they meekly surrendered the
island, they were done for.
Burial of theMaineVictims at
http://www.myhistorylab.comThe “Splendid Little” Spanish-American War
On April 20, 1898, Congress, by joint resolution,
recognized the independence of Cuba and authorized
the use of the armed forces to drive out the Spanish.
An amendment proposed by Senator Henry M. Teller
disclaiming any intention of adding Cuban territory
to the United States passed without opposition. Four
days after passage of the Teller Amendment, Spain
declared war on the United States.
The Spanish-American War was fought to free
Cuba, but the first action took place on the other
side of the globe, in the Philippine Islands. Weeks
earlier, Theodore Roosevelt, at the time assistant sec-
retary of the navy, had alerted Commodore George
Dewey, who was in command of the United States
Asiatic Squadron located at Hong Kong, to move
against the Spanish base at Manila if war came.
Dewey had acted promptly, drilling his gun crews,
taking on supplies, giving his gleaming white ships a
coat of battle-gray paint, and establishing secret con-
tacts with the Filipino nationalist leader, Emilio
Aguinaldo. When word of the declaration of warWatchtheVideoThe explosion of the Mainein Havana harbor, killing 260 men, caused much speculation in the
newspapers and across the nation. Many Americans accused Spain of destroying the ship, a
reaction that typified American sentiment toward the Spanish in 1898. What really caused the
explosion remains unknown.