Weekend. This should be a fun class. Today, we are going to talk about the spanishamerican war. But before we get into that i want to recap a few things we did in our last class. Specifically, lets talk a little bit about the imperialism that developed in the late 19th century. Have anything you can contribute in this regard . Sure. Had we were imperialistic and we thought that going sorry. To go werereasons humanitarian. We tried to help our little Brown Brothers down there, to try and make them more american because we felt it was superior. Joseph it is really an ethnocentrism. Yeah. Joseph taylor, do you have anything to add to that . That stood one thing out the most to me was the economic aspect because the u. S. Had a lot of territorial interests in cuba and a lot of americans owned sugar plantations and they wanted to protect their citizens and investments down there. But in the u. S. , there was also overproduction, so they were also looking to advance to new markets. Joseph good, good. Anyone else have a reason . Anyone want to volunteer something . I can say something. Joseph good, tyler. Tyler im sorry, my smoke alarm is beeping right now. Saidoing off of what blake about imperialism, i felt it was the start of blatant american patriotism, which we talk about a lot now and missionary trips and evangelical christianity, and i just thought that was an interesting connection to what we are talking about now. Joseph good, good. So what we have got our three principal motivations. One economic. We talked about how turbulent the American Economy was in the latter part of the 19th century. About weked talked about how they needed to find new markets because of overproduction. So the economic motive was just that, to find new markets. Then on top of that, you have a humanitarian component that both blake and tyler talked about, then there is the ethnocentric component that blake talked about. We have a superior system, and ist we really need to do share our superior system with other people, even if they are a little unwilling. We are going to force it upon them. I talked in the course of that lecture, we talked about the and of Alfred Thayer mahan, what was so interesting about itans naval strategy was dovetailed beautifully with the sense of imperialism. A just force around the world that would open new markets, but also be able to fight climactic rattles and win victories. In wartime, we would be able to control the c lane so we could get supplies the sea lane so we could get supplies. In addition to those elements, we would have colonies around the world. Those colonies would serve as stations for our vessels. And we would have to build a canal in the isthmus in Central America so we could easily move warships from the atlantic to the pacific and back. Things worked in conjunction with sentiments that were kicking around in American Society at the time. That is, we really needed to find new markets, we needed colonies for Raw Materials, colonies that would buy our finished products. And of course, having the military strength to project forces to protect those elements. So it all worked out really well with regard to imperialism. Im sorry . Did someone have a question . The whole idea of the white mans burden, i think it was actually written about the spanish war. Was that more about ethnocentrism, or more about the humanitarian aspect, or an elixir of both . Joseph i think it is a combination of ethnocentrism and racism. Expressed it in that time period, the little brown brother. But it is also a form of exploitation because we expected them to produce the Raw Materials and by the finished products. And buy the finished products. But in the end, it would improve their quality of life. So there are all three components, ethnocentrism, humanitarian, and racism. I guess you could say that ethnocentrism is racist. Professor, i have a question as well. Joseph sure. I know this had been happening with europe for a long time, especially with africa and all their colonies over there. Was this an idea that had already spread from europe to the americas . Joseph yeah, we were a little slow to get into the imperialist game. But on the other hand, we were acting in an imperialist fashion in america, expanding from one ocean to another, suppressing the indians, gobbling up their land for economic exploitation. So we were already doing it. Our focus was mainly in america, the. Ough. Thank you. Joseph sure. Does anyone else have a question about this . Right when we broke from class last time, we talked about the uss maine. We talked about how there had been trouble in cuba for a long time. The American People were increasingly upset, and the motivations, as both taylor and blake had talked about, a lot of americans felt sympathy for the cubans, that they should have their independence. The United States had long had interest in acquiring cuba. It was a great means of defense against the gold coast states in case of invasion. And of course, lots of americans had invested heavily, as taylor said, in cuba, owning sugar plantations and the like. So the United States sent the uss maine to show the flag and make sure that everyone knew the united dates was there to protect american property. 1858, 15th of february, the maine exploded. Who knows about what yellow journalism is . Was thew journalism press would emphasize and not fully tell the truth about an event that happened, so they created onesided accounts of what the spanish were doing to the cubans. Joseph yeah. It is a means of selling newspapers by sensationalize ation. The journalists claimed spain had been the ones who had blown up the ship, but in fact subsequent investigations indicated that explosion took place on the ship. So it was not an act of terrorism, as the newspapers claimed. Nonetheless, 260 american soldiers were killed, and the American People were driven into a frenzy because of the yellow journalists. The pressure was enormous on our president , who many of you know, william mckinley. Was a civil i said, war hero. Had he fought in todays military, he probably would have been a recipient of the medal of honor because he went out under fire and rescued wounded comrades and carried them back to american lines. And he did this repeatedly. What an extraordinary soldier. He knew what war was all about and he did not want to get the United States involved. But the pressure was enormous, and ultimately he succumbed to that pressure. Cuba i states sent ultimatum,spain an demanding they negotiate a peace with the cuban insurrectionist. Is, before cuba could respond, the United States declared war on spain. So weve got the spanishamerican war. In the declaration of war, we attached what was called the teller amendment, which said the United States had no desire to acquire cuba. We are trying to make our fight against spain look altruistic. That is, we are fighting on behalf of our cuban americans, and that was our sole intention, when in fact we had much different motivations. One of the most interesting aspect of this whole event occurred just before the u. S. Declared war. The secretary of the navy, a guy named long, left the office one day, and that left his assistant secretary, Teddy Roosevelt, in charge. He fired off a telegraph to george dewey. He warned that it looked like there would be were ahead, so he should prepare his muscles for an attack on manila prepare his vassals for an attack on manila. Dewey wasas declared, ordered to go after the spanish fleet in Manila Harbor in the philippines, and he did just that. The very first fight took place on may 1 in the philippines. Dewey had six u. S. Vessels take elliptical passes on the spanish fleet. The shooting began about 5 40 a. M. After the americans had fired 15 rounds from each gun, dewey received the information that he thought they said we only had 15 rounds left, when in fact they said they had only fired 15 rounds. But at that point, dewey decided to pull back. Also at that point, the troops had not eaten anything. The spanish fleet was in a disastrous shape. The spanish had 380 one killed and wounded in the fight, the americans had eight wounded, one death, and the death was from heat prostration. As a result of that, it was a resounding victory. The spanish fleet surrendered, and dewey on the first battle won the first battle. One of the big issues the United States had with this big hurry, which mobilizing for war, and we had a small regular army, about 28,000 people. Our secretary of war was russell alger. He was a civil war hero and a congressman, but he was really incompetent as secretary of war. Thehat happened ultimately, commanding general was a man name nelson miles. He was an excellent soldier and not a very nice human being. In fact, he married shermans niece, and William Tecumseh sherman hated miles. He thought he was a jerk. Mckinley isolated miles and had the acting general come to the white house, and the two of them ran the war and they excluded alger. First, they were going to mobilize increasing dramatically, but they didnt like it. Jake, why with the National Guard be able to change policy like that . Do you have any idea . Jake a lot of the National Guard would have been holdovers from the militia, i assume. A lot of those people would have some pretty influential people in lower level government positions to get upset about Something Like this. Joseph that is exactly right. Keep in mind, the National Guard comes from the local community. These people live in the community, and they vote. As a result of that, the government is very careful about responding to National Guard, and it has been ever since. In this instance, mckinley did not want that kind of pressure. As a result, he allowed the National Guard to invest in mass. Is oney would have regular army officer assigned to them. He also raised about 200,000 volunteers to fight the war, and we expanded the size of the regular army dramatically. Far as units were concerned, the most famous was the first volunteer cavalry, Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the brainchild of this. He had no military experience, so he got his friend leonard would to serve as the leonard wood to serve the regimental dr. He had earned a medal of honor fighting geronimo. There is a picture of Teddy Roosevelt with some of the rough riders. It is a really unusual mixture of individuals. His volunteer unit, some regular army officers, hes got some cowboys. Can you imagine the campfires in those situations . Hes got some really tough folks in their. A strange, strange mixture of people. Organization was called the astor battery. Astor paid for an artillery battery. He recruited some harvard grads, and he got ou men to serve for them too. You have strange commands here in the spanishamerican war. When we began mobilizing manpower, we had absolutely no mobilization planned whatsoever. No manpower mobilization plans, no industrial mobilization plans. So the army was completely unprepared for this situation. The Quartermaster Department only had 57 officers and had enough supplies for 40,000 men for three months. When youot going to do bring into hundred thousand volunteers and expanding the size of the regular army to 64,000. As one bureaucrat said, we had a great system going until the war came along and messed it up. There is a lot of truth to that. On top of that, the War Department was flooded, absolutely flooded, with applications for commissions and papers. Huge numbers of people wanted to get into the war, so they were working all hours of the day and night all around the clock to try and staff and equipped these units. They did do something smart. They started taking over areas, often times old civil war battle areas because they were cleared areas, and they used those for training facilities. One of the big problems they had had reallyular army good weapons. They had a magazine you clipped on that had five bullets in it, and these fired smokeless gunpowder. But most of the National Guard and ultimately most of the volunteers had to use old springfield models, which and whiteack powder clouds of smoke they were fired, which gave away your position. The only volunteer unit that did not was the first u. S. Volunteer calvary, the rough riders. Teddy roosevelt that political clout that he could get things he wanted and thought he needed. A lot of these units were still loaded with civil war veterans, and a lot of them had very old folks. For example, there was a guy named bigelow who graduated from west point in 1877. Bigelow had his first assignment with this regiment, got all sorts of other excitements, and in 1898 got reassigned to his old regiment, and the old First Sergeant was in his company. He was assigned as a First Company commander. After 21 years, this does not sound that appealing. 21 years and you are still a captain . 21 years and he had the same First Sergeant he had when he got out of west point. Not a lot of turnover, especially the older guys. The more Senior Officers were civil war commanders. The overall commander for the operation is a guy named william schafter. You can see he is brutalizing a horse. He had received a medal of honor in the civil war, and he was not west point graduate. He was widely regarded as being unprofessional. As far as his conduct. And if you look at the size of him, you can see he is illsuited for deployment in cuba. He weighs over 300 pounds. In that cuban summer heat, he is just not going to make it. He is not going to get the job done. He is very much disorganized. You have a little clash in the regular army in those days between those who came into the army in the aftermath of the civil war who did not have a west point education and those who did. Some of those who didnt became very good professional soldiers, but many of them did not. Lookedters case, he was down upon. People were pretty critical of him. Shafter had just been promoted to Brigadier General, and he was to an invasion in tampa, florida. That is where they began accumulating manpower. The army was undersupplied. People were rushing into tampa, soldiers were coming in, civilians were coming in to see the invasion. Yellow journalists were pestering shafter at all hours of the day and night. He was not dealing with the heat very well. It was a huge problem. Worse,y to make matters the u. S. Army did not own transport ships, so we had to try to lease them from private leasing civilians, and them from civilians was a big deal, it was a big problem because of course they did not want to risk their votes being set there bein their boats being sunk. No one had thought out the logistical issues, so there was only a single Railroad Track that ran into tampa and trains were literally backed up from tampa, florida, to North Carolina with supplies and other goods. Oneake matters worse, no put a bill on the railroad cars. Does anybody know what a bill of lading is . Then i will just have to tell you. A bill of lading is a statement about exactly what is in each railroad car. That is kind of important stuff. So without bills of lading, you have to get in and start rummaging through crate after crate after crate to find out what youve got. You can imagine what a mess that was. To make matters worse, people like Teddy Roosevelt did not want to get left behind. His idea of a nightmare was not participating in the war. So teddy stole a train. He literally stole a train. Then he literally stole two transport ships and his men on them. And when an officer came and said, excuse me, you are on our transport ships, teddy gave them a big white toothed grin. His men were not giving up the transports. Teddy did not realize he was actually designated to go to tampa, but he was not going to give up those transport. That is how Teddy Roosevelt ended up getting there. They finally got it underway in midjune 1898. From tampa to the santiago area. If you look at the map, santiago is in the southeastern portion of cuba. As i said, it was an eight day trip, which is fairly long. Troops went long periods of time without adequate food. The best they got was some cold beef and maybe a cup of coffee once a day, Something Like that. The stores were woefully inadequate. The men were crammed on these transports. They had blue woolen uniforms and they are going into cuba. That does not sound all that pleasant to me. It is a really bad situation. The transports they took were scattered over an enormous number of miles. Had one spanish warship broken free, it would have smashed all of them. But fortunately, that didnt happen. They landed at a place called daiquiri, a beach on the righthand side of the map, of your powerpoint. It was a fiasco. Private shipowners would not let their vessels get close. They had no lighters so they could not get close to shore, and they had to loan a bunch of small rowboats to enable them to row so they could take troops and ultimately supplies, but they did not manage the supplies, so they created a Giant Mountain of supplies on the beach. Everything was completely chaotic. Two soldiers lost their lives in the landing. Think back to the mexican war, when Winfield Scott assisted in the designing and Construction Craft and pulled off an Amphibious Landing in mexico against Hostile Forces and suffered zero casualties. It show