THE LAWRENCE F. BREWSTER

XVII

1898/1998
Echoes and Lessons from the Spanish-American War

Presented by H. Wayne Morgan

November 1998

EAST CAROLINA UNIVERSITY

GREENVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, USA

As Professor Morgan and others have shown, this transformation had enormous implications for the role the United States has played in the world. In particular, historians point to the decade of the 1890s as a time when America's involvement in international relations experienced a sea change. Whether they have called it an imperial surge, an outward thrust, an end of innocence, a paradigm shift, or a new empire, historians have focused on that decade as the great watershed in our foreign relations, and on 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War, as a pivotal year. That war may have been, as Secretary of State John Hay put it, "a splendid little war," but it was also in a sense a mini-world war, fought not only in the western hemisphere at Santiago de Cuba and on the slopes of San Juan Hill, but in the Far East as well, where it was followed by a prolonged struggle in the jungle to fasten American control on the Philippines. Whether by deliberate design or as accidental aftermath, the United States had taken a prominent place on the world stage The consequences of that step reverberate down to our own day, whether they be the making of a quagmire and a tragedy in Vietnam, attempting to tame Saddam Hussein, shoring up the Mexican Peso, or peace-making at Wye River plantation.

No one understands all this better than H. Wayne Morgan, who has dedicated his scholarly life to exploring and explaining America in the critical era of change at the end of the nineteenth century.

Professor Morgan received his Ph.D. in history from UCLA in 1960. At the tender age of 29, he published an award-winning biography of William McKinley, president and commander-in-chief during the Spanish American War. Within two years he quickly followed with two other books on the war and the peace-making, and thus launched a remarkable career during which he has written eleven books and edited nine others. His interests have ranged broadly, encompassing politics, foreign relations, environmental history, social history, and art and culture in Gilded Age America. Professor Morgan taught for a decade at the University of Texas before going to the University of Oklahoma where he is the George Lynn Cross Research Professor of History. Over the years he has garnered several important honors, including most recently the Distinguished Historian Award of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive era. We are indeed fortunate in having with us tonight this master interpreter of the American past. His topic tonight is 1898/1998: Echoes and Lessons from the Spanish-American War.

Charles Calhoun, Professor
Department of History

Anniversaries are important in human affairs. Whether dealing with birth, marriage or other important personal milestones, they mark accomplishments and remind us of the different stages of life. So it is with nations and peoples. One hundred years ago the United States and Spain had concluded their war and were arranging a peace settlement. Neither nation would ever be the same again; nor would the issues of the conflict, be they the status of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands, or the larger nature of the United States' new sense of being a major player on the world stage. The Spanish-American War has not figured largely in American consciousness. Somehow, it disappears between the Civil War and World War I. It was brief, we were victorious, and it has always been tempting to see it as what some contemporaries called it, a "splendid little war." Of course, it was not that to the people involved; nor were its results for the history of the United States, and for world affairs in general. Perhaps we have something to learn from remembering it at this centenary. The events and issues were specific to the times and circumstances, but they also involved enduring interests and ideas from which we might learn some lessons now that we are a century older, if not necessarily wiser, as a nation.

A century means little in history, but, in human time, it is four generations. By this standard we are a long way from the events of 1898, and consequently we need to establish some principles for judging them. Both scholar and reader must always guard against the human tendency to judge the past by the present, to be aghast at some historical action or belief without realizing that the actors involved lacked our perspective or knowledge of what followed from their decisions. We always need to judge people first in their own times, and only then for the effects of their actions. We also need to take into account the "What if?" factor; that is, what if something untoward occurs, and what are the likely consequences of doing or not doing something? Closely allied to this is another caution. Policymakers, like parents and professors, seldom have an array of delightful, wise or safe options in treating problems. Policymakers are usually compelled to select the least dangerous, distasteful or obscure policy, just as we do when we vote for political candidates. And last, we need to remember that though governments are composed of people, they are not people. Policymakers inevitably tend to see interests, dangers and opportunities differently from the ways citizens do. The basic problem in foreign policy is to judge national self-interest in the circumstance when a decision has to be made. It is probably too much to ask that policymakers grasp or implement programs of long-range national interest.¹

Aristotle said that nature makes no leaps. So it is with mankind. The Spanish-American War did not materialize from thin air, and the United States did not become a world power overnight. The status of Cuba was an issue in American public life throughout the nineteenth century. While the United States was involved in overseas events long before the crisis of the 1890s, post-Civil War America was hardly a world power. Like other emerging countries, it had that magical attribute "potential," but who could tell when it would take a world role? Secretary of State William II. Seward 1861-69 hoped to acquire territories and develop overseas interests that would mark the country's entry onto the world stage. In the late 1860s, he tried to persuade Congress and the American public to acquire several strategic Caribbean islands, which would make the United States supreme in the region. Though he failed, he did enforce the Monroe Doctrine that compelled France to liquidate its monarchical experiment in Mexico in 1867. In the Pacific region, Seward acquired Midway Island and bought Alaska in the same year. The purchase of Alaska brought into sharp focus the question of if and how the country should expand overseas. Congress bought the territory from Russia only after great pressure and ample grease, but opponents summarized the perceived disadvantages of overseas territory by labeling it "Seward's Icebox," or "Seward's Folly." There appeared to be little real constituency for further overseas activities in the 1860s and 1870s, no matter how fiercely each such effort agitated the press and politicians. Congress was obsessed with Reconstruction, and the public could see few benefits beyond prestige among other nations in acquiring territory. There was also no serious demand for an economic foreign policy, based on territory secured for raw materials, or for developing an export-driven domestic economy. This last idea, which Britain embodied, raised fears among Republican politicians that the elaborate system of tariff protection would come unglued in any effort to emphasize exports, with major consequences to domestic politics. Nor could the country play much of a world role without revamping its diplomatic resources. The United States had sent numerous distinguished diplomats to European capitals, but they did not symbolize power as those nations understood it. The agents such as consuls who did the real work of developing long term national interests in foreign countries were a mixed lot. Many were competent, but others were political hacks. There was no sense of professionalism, and few sources of relevant information to guide these people in their competition with other powers, or to understand the local scene. Congress was slow to vote the funds necessary to develop a true diplomatic and consular corps. Nor was the United States government, with a tiny army and antiquated navy, able to project the necessary power or alter the foreign view of the nation as uninterested in world affairs.

Despite these limitations, the sense that the United States was developing its "potential" into policies accelerated in the 1880s. More and more interest groups noted the inevitability of American concern about the world, given its geography with three coastlines, if nothing else. The national government gradually developed a more expert foreign service. Presidents of both parties conducted routine foreign relations, which had the cumulative effect of creating policies. Perhaps most significantly, the United States began to build a modern steel, steam powered navy, visible evidence of interests and policies. Information about the world situation was now readily available from the telegraph and cables, and thus was bound to alter American perceptions. Moreover, behind events and material interests stood an &d well-loved body of thought that could make any new foreign policy popular. The American public was committed in its Manifest Destiny as a special nation; in its commitment to the modern in all aspects of life; and in its idealism, as expressed in democracy and individual liberty. Of course, economic benefits and national prestige would accompany any American mission. This combination of the emotional and the material, hardly unique to the United States, would provide a formidable basis for its foreign policy. In 1887 Oscar Wilde's "Canterville Ghost" commiserated with the American woman who lamented her country's lack of the picturesque, as contrasted to Europe: "What! No ruins, no curiosities! You have your manners and your navy!" By the early 1890s, the ghost was only half right; the Navy had improved. Times had changed.'

The developing situation began to register on the American public and government by the mid-1890s. Two events predicted the future. The first was a sharp confrontation with Great Britain in 1895 over a disputed boundary between its colony British Guiana and Venezuela. President Grover Cleveland accepted the belligerent views of his secretary of state, Richard Olney, in demanding arbitration. Olney expanded the Monroe Doctrine, which was not really applicable, to hold that American authority was absolute in any such dealings in the New World. Britain's realism in not wishing to antagonize the United States over a minor issue indicated its recognition of the growing importance of American opinion and power to British interests. The most important point of the crisis was the American public's enthusiastic support for an expanded role in regional, and possibly in world affairs.

The second issue involved United States interest in an arena that was new to the public, the Pacific region in general, and the Hawaiian Islands in particular. Pro-American interests in the islands overthrew the monarchy in 1893 and sought annexation to the United States. The incoming Democratic president Grover Cleveland withdrew the treaty from the Senate because he disliked the way the Hawaiian revolution had developed. The resulting independent republic continued its close economic ties to the United States. The new Republican president William McKinley resubmitted an annexation treaty in the spring of 1897 for reasons that indicated an expanding horizon both for him and for many countrymen. McKinley and proponents of annexation saw the islands as strategically important for the new navy and for future trade in Asia. He also feared that the Hawaiian Republic would either become a Japanese protectorate or possession. "We cannot let these islands go to Japan," he told Republican Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts in the spring of 1897. "Japan has her eye on them. Her people are crowding in there. I am satisfied [that] they do not go there voluntarily as ordinary immigrants, but that Tap an is pressing them there in order to get possession before anybody can interfere." Here was a major "What if?" of the sort that would recur regularly in the immediate future. If another power acquired the islands would American interests suffer? The president did not press for annexation, which he intended as a warning to Japan, until the summer of 1895 when Congress approved it by joint resolution. After signing the measure, he told his secretary George B. Cortelyou, "We need Ha wail just as much [as] and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny."² American attitudes and policies now began to seem elastic and open-ended.

The Pacific Basin may have seemed far away to the American public, but Cuba was very familiar. Public and official knowledge of the island was both negative and positive. It had figured in American politics in the nineteenth century, with frequent calls for annexation as a slave state before 1561, or because of what President McKinley called its "singular ties of intimacy" to the United States. The island had major economic assets and had enjoyed periods of prosperity because of the sugar trade with the United States. Americans invested substantial sums in its plantation economy, and the Cuban's automaticalW looked north for protection during its periodic revolts against Spain. The worst of these was the Ten Years War of 1868-78, which ravaged much of the island and cost thousands of Cuban and Spanish lives. An uneasy peace followed, and the island retained an air of instability. Cubans revolted against Spain again in 1895, this time demanding independence. This insurrection was more savage than the Ten Years War, and presented the United States with a whole buffet of "What ifs?" What if the United States remained neutral and did nothing? Would the conflict continue until the parties were exhausted and the island devastated? What if the Spanish managed to win, or made a deal with the rebels, and the conflict resumed in the future? What if the rebels expelled the Spanish, proclaimed independence, but fought among themselves? Could the United States realistically see American citizens' assets destroyed and lives threatened? Could it afford the costs of indefinite naval surveillance, humanitarian aid, and public outrage at the savagery? Finally, could all of these scenarios be kept out of domestic politics, or become a more acceptable end than intervention? By 1895, the island had been in some kind of turmoil for the mature lives of most Americans, which reinforced demands to end the problems of that sustained conflict. But how?

The Cuban dilemma involved three powers, Spain, the Cuban insurrectos, and the United States. The Spanish understood and feared American interest in the island. They hoped to end the rebellion, but rejected American efforts to mediate. At the same time, Spain was bankrupt, and its internal politics were tenuous following the restoration of a constitutional monarchy in 1876. Any appearance of weakness provoked bitter press comment and occasional riots. Spain lacked the resources to end the war quickly, but could not surrender the island without losing pretensions to major power status. Its domestic politics were therefore just as determining and volatile as were those in the United States. While it proclaimed many reforms for Cuba in 1897 and 1898, during this brutal war, this resembled Mr. Micawber waiting for something to turn up.³

The situation was equally complex for Cubans. A substantial element, plus foreigners, wanted a Spanish success, or at least a functioning autonomy, which promised stability and protection for their property and status. Most Cubans were committed to independence. Those fighting in the field hoped for both independence and some kind of social and economic changes. Their ideas often seemed uncertain and conflicting. The military leaders disliked the politicians, and there were divisive ethnic and social differences in the ranks. The insurrectos were a true guerilla. movement, rife with differences, often disorderly and intent on some kind of social settlement after victory. Cuban groups in the United States tried to influence public opinion and to secure material aid. They wanted American assistance to fulfill their cry of "Cuba Libre!" but were as suspicious of domination from the North as from Spain.⁴

President Grover Cleveland was not inclined to intervene in Cuba but knew that the conflict was a standing invitation to do so. He hoped that Spain could win the war, but warned in his last annual message of December 1896 that the turmoil must cease. His successor, William McKinley, took office on March 4, 1897. He came to the presidency after an influential career in the House of Representatives, 1877-1891, where he championed tariff protection. He was governor of Ohio 1893-1897, before winning the election of 1896 on a platform promising restored prosperity and political calm after the turbulent mid-1890s. He had no experience in foreign affairs, and had expressed no views about Cuba beyond pious hopes for peace. His inaugural address promised caution and realism. "We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression," he noted, without any specific reference to Cuba. "War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable to war in almost every contingency. Arbitration is the true method of settlement of international as well as local or individual differences.⁵

However a change in context will alter a leader's views. Once in office, McKinley rather quickly developed a broad executive, as contrasted to a congressional, view of foreign affairs based on awareness of the nation's growing prospects and responsibilities in the world. McKinley quickly took charge of the diplomacy with Spain, while restraining critics in Congress and elsewhere with a legendary charm that often belied a stubborn will to have his way. He insisted on keeping all options open while focusing on ending the war in Cuba. The consistent heart of his foreign policy was to protect and enhance America's strategic, economic and prestige interests. He understood that any successful policy must also satisfy the public's perceptions of democracy, national greatness, and mission. McKinley was typical of his countrymen in believing that American values enhanced the well-being of other peoples, and that satisfying American needs meant progress for others as well.

Destructiveness was the most basic fact of the Cuban war. since February 1896 General Valeriano Weyler had pursued a strategy labeled reconcentration, which involved herding women, children and the elderly into fortified places, then destroying the insurrectos' ability to fight. This meant burning cane fields and plantations, killing prisoners, taking or killing livestock, and removing whatever sustained the rebels. The reconcentrados languished in horrible conditions, enduring high mortality, endemic disease, and despair. "Butcher Weyler" typified the apparent Spanish willingness to destroy Cuba rather than surrender it. In the United States, this carnage fed public outrage, press criticism, and congressional restiveness as demands of "Cuba Libre!" grew apace.

McKinley first hoped to be an honest broker, stop the destruction of the island, and secure genuine autonomy for Cuba. He received a steady stream of information from the American embassy in Madrid and the U.S. consulate in Havana. Most of it was sound enough, generally favoring peace but not at the Cubans' expense. Diplomatic estimates of Spain's ability to win or to establish autonomy varied with the events of the day, but were seldom optimistic. Like so many other presidents, McKinley decided to see for himself through the eyes of a special envoy. In June 1897 he dispatched his friend and political supporter, William J. Calhoun of Illinois, to Cuba to report on the situation after eyewitness observation and talks with as many islanders as possible. Calhoun sent the president a lengthy report that confirmed the worst aspects of the situation. He found no evidence that Weyler's policy was succeeding; little hope for autonomy; and every reason to think that the war would go on indefinitely. He foresaw American intervention as the only solution, but left policy to the president. He concluded with a vivid description of the island's condition:

I traveled by rail from Havana to Matanzas. The country outside of the military posts was practically depopulated. Every house had been burned, banana trees cut down, cane fields swept with fire, and everything in the shape of food destroyed. It was as fair a landscape as mortal eye ever looked upon; but I did not see a house, man, woman or child, a horse, mule, or cow, nor even a dog. I did not see a sign of life, except an occasional vulture or buzzard sailing through the air. The country was wrapped in the stillness of death and the silence of desolation.

The president doggedly maintained his efforts to secure self-rule for Cuba. The opinions of American special interests, and the public, impinged upon but did not determine these negotiations. The business community, so critical to the administration's efforts to restore prosperity, seemed to favor Cuba and would likely follow the president's lead. Above all, it wanted the problem solved, in the name of business as usual. American investors and traders in Cuba seemed willing to settle for Spanish rule, or at least real autonomy, provided either produced order. The American press favored Cuban independence, and an element of the sensational New York City press, "Yellow Journalism," was shrill in reporting atrocities in Cuba, and demanding American intervention. Editorial opinion elsewhere generally lauded the Cubans' fight for freedom, recognized American interests in Cuba, and favored allowing the president to exhaust every effort for peace. This mix was volatile. Newspaper reporting was important simply because it reflected support for Cuba and recognized American interests there, whether the front pages or editorials were temperate or intemperate. Public opinion concerned McKinley chiefly because it influenced Congress, which had generally favored recognizing Cuban independence. The president and his congressional lieutenants thwarted every effort at unilateral congressional action, because it would upset diplomacy, and invade executive prerogatives in making foreign policy. For his own part, McKinley directed his staff not to show him clippings from the yellowest newspapers in their daily summaries. He was determined to pursue logical diplomacy, yet well understood that in the end he must have public and congressional support for whatever he decided to do.

The president's best efforts were doomed to failure. Rather than bringing progress toward Cuban autonomy, the new year of 1898 produced a series of unexpected crises that brought war. In January, Spanish sympathizers in Havana rioted against autonomy, indicating resistance to any policy that seemed to weaken Spain's status. On February 9, the New York Journal published the facsimile of a private letter from the Spanish minister, Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, which Cuban exiles had stolen from the mails. This "De Lôme Letter" was a sardonic attack on president McKinley as a weak politician ready to do the bidding of public opinion and jingoes. This was indiscreet enough, but another paragraph suggested that Spain fake the game of diplomacy, which cast doubt on the sincerity of any Spanish promises. A greater disaster followed with the destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15. The ship was there on a courtesy call, to monitor events and to show the flag. A court of inquiry decided that the explosion was the result of an external mine, but did not assign blame. The tragedy underscored the fact that the ship was there because of the apparently endless war, which had to be settled to avoid future atrocities. The last in this series of events was less dramatic, but equally important. On March 17, Republican Redfield Proctor of Vermont spoke at length in the Senate about a recent trip to Cuba. In solemn, dispassionate almost clinical tones, he recounted the continued deaths from starvation and disease among civilians, the brutal ineffectiveness of Spanish rule, and the need for America to intervene to stop the conflict. The speech scored a great impact on both Congress and the public because of Proctor's well known realism and calmness, and because lie had apparently discussed the speech with McKinley, it thus reflected at least some of his views. These events did not cause the war, but collectively indicated the hopelessness of McKinley's diplomacy and the widespread support for intervention. They also produced a crescendo of concern, which might prompt Congress to act unilaterally.

By early April, McKinley turned to writing a war message for Congress, an emotionally draining task. "Grieved and disappointed at this barren outcome of my sincere efforts to reach a practicable solution," he noted later, "1 felt it my duty to remit the whole question to Congress." He delayed the message a week to allow U.S. citizens to leave Cuba. Spain then seemed suddenly to yield to American demands, promising a cease-fire until the fall, and offered yet more pieties about autonomy. The Spanish, however, made it clear that they would not leave Cuba, which was now the administration's basic demand. McKinley saw this as more delay rather than progress, and had no reason to believe any new Spanish promises.

His message was not a stirring call to arms. Instead the president recapitulated his diplomacy and its frustrations, and sought congressional power to act. He did state clearly why the administration, apparently with popular support, should go to war:

First, in the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to stop or mitigate. It is no answer to say this is all ill another country, belonging to another nation, and is therefore none of our business. It is specially our duty, for it is right at our door.

Second. We owe it to our citizens in Cuba to afford them that protection and indemnity for life and property which no government there can or will afford, and to that end to terminate the conditions that deprive them of legal protection.

Third. The right to intervene may be justified by the very serious injury to commerce, trade, and business of our people and by the wanton destruction of property and devastation of the island.

Fourth, and which is of the utmost importance. The present condition of affairs in Cuba is a constant menace to our peace and entails upon this government an enormous expense....

The conflict officially began on April 25, and Americans prepared for an invasion of Cuba, but war surprised them. Commodore George Dewey's fleet was in Hong Kong, with orders to prevent the Spanish from deploying their Asiatic fleet if war came. He did so in a brief, crushing victory on May 1 in Manila harbor. McKinley had approved these naval dispositions earlier, though like most of his countrymen he knew little if anything about the islands. The decision was military; the results were political, in a classic case of the unforeseen in foreign affairs.⁸

The Philippine question required both immediate decisions and long term thinking The first problem was to find information on the archipelago. There was little academic or journalistic writing on the islands, though the president did read one current source. An Englishman named John Foreman wrote an article about his residence in the Philippines, and offered a view of how foreigners saw the inhabitants and their culture. Foreman delineated the tribal, religious and social forces involved. He did not believe that Spain could retain the islands, or that any of the indigenous rebels could govern the country. Foreman did see great economic potential if order came to the islands. McKinley read the article on August 1, and although he did not comment on it, there was little other information to begin the process of forming his views.

Once an American presence developed in the Philippines, the president had more sources. He received reports about the immediate situation from local consuls and from Dewey By the end of the summer more detailed information was coming from the newly arrived army establishment. This was especially true of Major General Francis V. Greene, of the New York volunteers, who had a military and business background, and was a shrewd observer. He wrote a lengthy report on the situation for his superiors, returned home to brief McKinley, then went to Paris to do the same for the peace commission. Greene met McKinley five times between September 27 and October 1. He spoke of the islands' great diversity of both geography and culture. Outside the few cities, it was a village society, jealous of local control, with a major division between Islam and Christianity, not to mention indigenous religions. In Greene's view, none of the local leaders could successfully govern the islands. He emphasized that the Filipinos hated the Spanish and that leaving them to Spain was not an option. On the other hand, he did not see how any American protectorate over the islands could function. In the end, he spoke a hard realism: "Whichever way we turn to dispose of these distant lands into whose affairs we have interjected ourselves, we find difficulties; but the least of all will result from keeping them." These views, impressive for being from the field and for coming from a realist like Greene, fortified McKinley's developing disposition to retain the islands.⁹

McKinley kept his counsel as usual, but that disposition clarified throughout the summer, The first step toward acquiring the islands was no less important for seeming to be routine. Dewey cut the cables to Hong Kong after the battle, but information on its outcome was on the way to Europe. On May 2, knowing of the victory though lacking official word, McKinley authorized sending volunteer forces to Manila in anticipation either of a land war or an occupation. In the weeks that followed this commitinent grew from 5000 men to a formidable force that indicated the administration's determination to be ready for whatever happened. McKinley also forbade any local American officials to recognize the authority of any insurgent group.

At home he listened, prompted, suggested rather than commanded influential people. At some point early in the war he wrote himself a note: "While we are conducting war and until its conclusion we must keep all we get; when the war is over we must keep what we want." To leading spokesmen for the "large policy," such as Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, he seemed amenable to expansion. He guided his cabinet, whose members disagreed on how to control the islands though not on some kind of expansion. After a cabinet meeting in late July, his old friend Secretary of State William R. Day said: "Mr. President, you didn't put my motion for a naval base." McKinley answered with both humor and shrewdness: "No, Judge, I was afraid it would be carried."'¹⁰

The Philippine options emerged rather quickly. The most obvious, to leave after peace, was never acceptable. This would abandon the Filipinos to continued rebellion, which would also tempt European powers or Japan to intervene. This was a major consideration, since a dispute over the islands among other powers might provoke a conflict that upset the Asian balance. The United States was the only major power without a significant Asian presence, consequently its control of the islands was acceptaNe to other parties, such as Germany or Japan. McKinley summarized this dilemma in a striking classical allusion in his annual message to Congress in December 1899: We could not "fling them, a golden apple of discord, among the rival powers, no one of which could permit another to seize them unquestioned." And although McKinley first talked of taking only the port of Manila and/or its large island of Luzon, this option became progressively unacceptable. The islands were interdependent, and problems beyond the enclave would compel intervention in general Philippine affairs. This implied a protectorate, which meant responsibility without power. In the summer of 1899 McKinley remarked to visitors in his home in Canton, Ohio that "one of the best things we ever did was to insist upon taking the Philippines and not a coaling station or an island, for if we had done the latter we would have been the laughing-stock of the world." Realistically, the administration also had to think of the country's role in Asian markets. Holding the islands would signal an American presence without becoming embroiled with the powers who had treaty ports on the Chinese mainland. Americans might also be more acceptable to Asians in general and to Filipinos in particular than would be European or Japanese.

McKinley summarized this tangle of options and his own thoughts in one of the most famous anecdotes in American diplomatic history. In November 1899 he told a delegation from the Methodist Episcopal Church of agonizing over the decision, that he had walked the White House floors in sleepless agitation, reviewing the options. To return the islands to Spain "would be cowardly and dishonorable." Allowing them to go to another power would be "bad business and discreditable." The Filipinos were unready for self-rule, "and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was." He finally prayed for divine guidance: the United States must take the islands and "educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died." The story did not appear until 1903, after McKinley's death, and may have gained much in the telling. But McKinley was a devout Christian, speaking in this case to those of like mind, and the tone rang true. Whether or not God spoke, the president neatly summarized his policy making procedure.¹¹

In all of this, the president understood the critical need for public support for whatever option he exercised. In October he made a western tour, speaking to immense and enthusiastic crowds. He did not discuss the Philippines, but spoke of destiny, commercial opportunity and national prestige. The loudest cheers came for comments about enhancing America's status and power. He was cultivating, not seeking support. By October 25 he could write Secretary Day in Paris: "There is a very general feeling that the United States, whatever it might prefer as to the Philippines, is in a situation where it cannot let go." On October 28 he instructed the peace commissioners to claim the entire archipelago.¹²

McKinley had carefully orchestrated the final result. The decision of May 2 to prepare a land force in the islands established a presence that he could not later repudiate in any settlement that failed to make American interests paramount. He never dealt with local rebels. Every subsequent step, no matter how incremental, enlarged American interest, and pointed toward acquisition. He carefully framed his October speeches to elicit popular support for a position he had long since adopted. He also knew that this would translate into congressional support for what would be a difficult treaty ratification fight.

The decision to acquire the islands provoked a sharp debate among the public, in Congress, and between the parties. The pro-annexationists generally saw the policy as part of America's changed status in world affairs. Some people emphasized future Asian markets. Others, including the president himself, combined material self-interests such as trade and strategy with a strong sense of duty toward the peoples involved, an echo of the enduring belief in American mission. Opponents of expansion argued that the Constitution did not permit acquiring foreign territory not intended to be admitted as states. They also feared enhanced presidential power in any new world role. But the most vehement opposition came from frank racists, who saw the Filipinos as inferior-another race problem for the country that had not solved its black-white relations. This rhetoric, prominent among Democrats in Congress, was often bitter. One example from Senator George Graham Vest of Missouri will suffice: "The idea of conferring American citizenship upon the half-civilized, piratical, muck-running inhabitants of two thousand islands seven thousand miles distant, in another hemisphere, and creating a State of the Union from such materials, is absurd and indefensible." The debate climaxed in early February 1899 when the Senate considered the treaty. Using all his presidential powers, McKinley secured approval by one vote above the two-thirds required. At the same time, the principal indigenous leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, clashed with American forces, beginning a tragic insurrection that lasted until 1902. For his part, McKinley did not look back. His rhetoric on empire became ever more lofty, no matter the immediate problems or costs. He continued to believe that once the Philippine insurrection ended and an American presence was no longer needed in Cuba, relations would stabilize and become cooperative He was a child of his time in believing in the power of American values and procedures in bringing such peoples into the mainstream of a developing world culture.¹³

Some of those reforms and developments did happen in Cuba and the Philippines. The U.S. Army and civilian agents improved life with schools, sanitation, public health, and other progressive measures, such as tutelage in modem democratic procedures, dedicated to ultimate self-rule. The Cubans established a republic in 1902, but America retained the right to intervene to maintain order. The difficult relationship between the two countries continued. The Philippines gained independence in 1946, and Puerto Rico still retains commonwealth status.¹⁴ The United States acquired no more territory, but it continued on its way to world power, then to super-power status with policies and ideas that emphasized influence rather than territorial possessions.

To end where we began, what leSSons does this story offer? Of course, history does not repeat itself and circumstances have changed. The great European empires are gone. Unilateral intervention has generally yielded to multi-lateral actions among powers and to the use of more indirect means to affect world events. But the basic human problems expressed in conflicts that have effects beyond their borders continue, as they always have. Powers with the means to effect their self-interests will do so, and they will strive to maintain an order that will promote them, In a modern democracy with popular participation, or at least the puNic's power to approve or disapprove actions, foreign policies must combine the material and emotional. People must believe in both doing good and doing well. They must follow their perceived values, which they will think coincide with the interests of others.

The events of 1898 offer some specific reminders of the perils in foreign policies. Those desiring to intervene in a country in turmoil should remember that most such conflicts involve civil wars that no outsiders are likely to understand, whatever their good intentions. (May I suggest Yugoslavia?) An intervening power inevitably identifies with one or more of the parties involved. The longer this lasts the more unpopular foreigners become. (May I suggest Somalia?) The law of unexpected consequences always operates in foreign affairs. Plans yield to events, beliefs to realities on the ground, the moment's apparent interests to the undefinable future. (May I note Iraq?) Policy makers in modern states have to accept the power and role of public opinion, usually expressed through some kind of media coverage, whether a yellow press or television. (May I suggest Viet Nam?) These and other similar observations are the stuff of traditional relations among nations. At the end of the twentieth century, an array of additional new mechanisms has developed that affect foreign relations. Great powers use foreign aid to blunt conflicts, to sustain allies, and to remind recipients that they should try to resemble them. Encouragement of private investment follows the same paLtern. More formal, government-sponsored agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are dedicated to similar goals-stability and economic development in a world system that great powers dominate. At the same time, much of the specific rhetoric of 1998 sounds familiar to listeners in 1898. The United States strives to open markets and protects its economic interests everywhere. It fosters the ideals of democracy and human rights, based on its own model, which it believes will develop a system amenable to its ambitions that surely coincide with the welfare of others. Is this a sinister process? No more than people thought in 1898 in relation to Cuba and the Philippines. Are American ideas and methods exportable? Americans thought so in 1898 and seem to in 1998. These dynamic strains remain in our culture; time and events will test their validity. The great lesson of 1898/1998 is probably not that the more things change the more they seem to be the same, but that the more things change, the more new problems arise in an ongoing process. There is no conclusion, no victory, only management in human affairs.

Let me close with a quotation from Ambrose Bierce, one of the late nineteenth century's best known cynics, or realists, who authored The Devil's Dictionary. In it he gave the cynic's definitions of words. For "Zig-zag" he offered: "To move forward uncertainly, from side to side, as one carrying the white man's burden." The burden now is world power and interests, which began in 1898. The echoes and lessons persist.

Notes

1.   In this essay I have cited readily available secondary literature, whose source notes and bibliographies will lead the interested reader to primary material and technical works. For general background on America's rise to world power, see: David Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: America's Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865-1900 (Columbia. University of Missouri Press, 1998), and his articles, "1861-1898: Economic Growth and Diplomatic Adjustment," in William H. Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr., eds, Economics and World Power: An Assessment of American Diplomacy Since 1789 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 119-72, and "Rhetoric and Results: A Pragmatic View of American Economic Expansionism, 185-1898," Diplomatic History, 5 (Spring, 1981), 93-105; and Milton Plesur, America's Outward Thrust: Approaches to Foreign Affairs 1865-2890 (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971; John M Dobson, America's Ascent: The United States Becomes a Great Power, 1880- 1924 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1978); Edward P. Crapol, "Coming to Terms with Empire: The Historiography of Late-nineteenth-century American Foreign relations," Diplomatic History, 16 (Fall, 1992), 573-95; Joseph A. Fry, "Imperialism American Style, 1890-1916," in Gordon Martel, ed., American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 1890-1993 (New York: Routledge, 1994), 52-70, and his "In Search of an Orderly World: U.S. Imperialism 1898-1912," in John M. Carroll and George C. Herring, eds., Modern American Diplomacy, rev. ed. (Wilmington, Dekware: Scholarly Resources, 1996), 1-23; Robert L. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 2nd. ed. (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1986); David Healy, U.S. Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), 33-47.

2.    Dobson, America's Ascent, 54-74, 79; Thomas I. Osborne, "Empire Can Wait": American Opposition to Hawaiian Annexation 1893-1898 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1981); William Michael Morgan, "The Anti-Japanese Origins of the Hawaiian Annexation Treaty of 1897," Diplomatic History, 6 (Winter, 1982), 23-44; Cornelius W. Vahie, Jr., "Congress, the President, and Overseas Expansion," Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1967, 1-33; Healy, US Expansionism, 25; George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, 2 vols. (New York: Scribner's, 1903), 11: 307-O8; George B. Cortelyou diary, June 8, 1898, Cortelyou papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

3.    Thomas Hart Baker, Jr., "Imperial Finale: Crisis, Decolonization, and War in Spain, 1890- 1898," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1976; Jose Varela Ortega, "Aftermath of Splendid Disaster: Spanish Politics Before and After the Spanish-American War of 1898," Journal of Contemporary History, 15 (April, 1980), 317-44; Sebastian Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898-1923 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1997).

4.    Louis A. Perez, Jr., Cuba Between Empires, 1878-1902 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), xvli 196-227, and his Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 159-61, and his Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy, 2nd. rev. ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 77-109; and his The War of 1898 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Marshall M. True, "Revolutionaries in Exile: The Cuban Revolutionary Party, 1891-1898," Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1965; Jose M. Hernandez, Cuba and the United States: Intervention and Militarism, 1868-1933 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 32, 36-37, 47-48.

5.    On McKinley, see: Charles S. Olcott, Life of William McKinley, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916); Margaret Leech, In the Days of McKinley (New York: Harper, 1959); H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1963) and his America's Road to Empire (New York: John Wiley, 1965); Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1980), and his The Spanish-American War and President McKinley (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1982); Joseph A. Fry, "William McKinley and the Coming of the Spanish-American War: A study in the Besmirching and Redemption of an Historical Image," Diplomatic History, 3 (Winter, 1979), 77-97; Walter La Feber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865-1913 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). James D. Richardson, comp., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908 (Washington: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1909) X: 16-17.

6.    Morgan, America's Road to Empire, 24-26; John L. Ofiner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain over Cuba, 1895-1898 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), ix-x, 57.

7.    McKinley delineated his basic approach to the Cuban question in his first annual message to Congress, December 6, 1897, in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, X: 29-36; Gould, The Spanish-American War and President McKinley, 34-35; Olcott, William McKinley, II, 14-15, 28-29; Offner, An Unwanted War, 230-31; Speeches and Addresses of William McKinley from March 1, 1897 to May 30, 1900 (New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1900) McKinley stated his disappointment in his second annual message to Congress, December 5, 1598, in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, X: 85, and the quotation from his war message is in ibid., 64-65; David Healy, The United States in Cuba, 1898-1902 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1963), 30-38; Perez, Cuba between Empires, 67, 113-14.

8.    Ronald Spector, "Who Planned the Attack on Manila Bay?" Mid-America, 53 (April, 1971), 94-102; John Dobs on, Reticent Expansionism: The Foreign Policy of William McKinley (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988), 80-81; John A. S. Grenville and George Berkeley Young, Politics, Strategy and American Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 269-78; Walter La Feber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963), 360-62; Leech, In the Days of McKinley, 162.

9.    John Foreman, "Spain and the Philippine Islands," Contemporary Review, 74 (July, 1898), 20-33; Ephraim K. Smith, "A Question from which we could not escape: William McKinley and the Decision to Acquire the Philippines," Diplomatic History, 9 (Fall, 1985), Leech, In the Days of McKinley, 334-35; Gould, The Spanish-American War and President McKinley, 102-03; Olcott, William McKinley, 11: 163-65.

10.    Gould, The Spanish-American War and President McKinley, 67; Olcott, William McKinley, II: 62-63, 165. Offner, An Unwanted War, 223.

11.    Healy, US Expansionism, 65-66; Smith, "A Question from which we could not escape," 363-75; Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, X: 172-73; Olcott, William McKinley, 11:308-09; Dobson, America's Ascent, 117-18; on the ministers, see Gould, The Spanish-American War and President McKinley, 108-09, and the original interview is in Christian Advocate, January 22, 1903.

12.    McKinley, Speeches, 84-155; Olcott, William McKinley, II: 107-08; the story of the peace negotiations is in H. Wayne Morgan, ed., Making Peace With Spain: The Diary of Whitelaw Reid, September-December, 1898 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965).

13.    Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists 1898-1900 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968); Paolo Coletta, "Bryan, McKinley, and the Treaty of Paris," Pacific Historical Review, 26 (May, 1957), 13146, and his "McKinley, the Peace Negotiations, and the Acquisition of the Philippines," ibid., 30 (November, 1961), 341-50; Healy, US Expansionism, 245-47; George C. Vest, "Objections to Annexing the Philippines," North American Review, 168 January 1899), 112; McKinley's speech to the Home Market Club of Boston, February 16, 1899, is especially significant, in Speeches, 185-92; Charles C. Dawes, A Journal of the McKinley Years (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1950), 176, notes tersely: "Whatever the result to our nation the retention of the Philippines was inevitable from the first. No man, no party could have prevented it."

14.    For Cuba see, Healy, The United States in Cuba; for the Philippines, see John Morgan Gates, Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1898-1902 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973); Brian McAllister Linn, The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); James C. Thomson, Peter W. Stanley, and Jolin Curtis Perry, Sentimental Imperialists: The American Experience in East Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1981; Peter W. Stanley, Reappraising an Empire: New Perspectives on Philippine-American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), esp. 1-10. Gould, The Spanish-American War and President McKinley, 137, has a measured conclusion on the Philippine issue, while Richard F. Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1898-1902 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), is bitterly critical of the final decision.