Spanish american war recap
by ronald scott harris
coming of war
1895
February 24 - Second Cuban Insurrection begins.
May 19 - Cuban Jose Marti killed in encounter at Dos Rios Oriente Province.
September 17 - Battleship MAINE commissioned.
1897
March 4 - William McKinley inaugurated as president of the United States.
February 15 -Battleship MAINE explodes, 266 crewmen killed.
March 8 - Congress authorizes $50 million for a war fund.
April 25 - U.S. declares war, but makes the declaration retroactive to April 22. Matanzas, Cuba bombarded by the US Navy.
spain declares war
Spain declared war on the United States on April 24, followed by a U.S. declaration of war on the 25th, which was made retroactive to April 21. The ensuing war was pathetically one-sided, since Spain had readied neither its army nor its navy for a distant war with the formidable power of the United States. Commo. George Dewey led a U.S. naval squadron into Manila Bay in the Philippines on May 1, 1898, and destroyed the anchored Spanish fleet in a leisurely morning engagement that cost only seven American seamen wounded. Manila itself was occupied by U.S. troops by August.
http://www.history.com/topics/spanish-american-war
yellow journalisum / quotes
Yellow journalism is what showed us what showed us what was really happening in Cuba.
Yellow journalism was false advertisement of the war.
Many stories in both newspaper greatly exaggerated their claims to make the stories more sensational. Both Hearst and Pulitzer published images of Spanish troops placing Cubans into concentration camps where they were suffered and died from disease and hunger. The term “Yellow Journalism,” which was derived from the name of "The Yellow Kid" comic strip in the Journal, was used to refer to this style of sensationalized newspaper articles. The American public purchased more newspapers because of this form of writing, and this strongly encouraged Hearst and Pulitzer’s newspapers to write more sensationalized stories. Some of the most sensationalized articles concerned “Butcher Weyler” and his reconcentration policies, and the Cuban Insurrection. Circulation continued to soar as the Journal reported that an American civilian was imprisoned without a trial and stating that no American was safe in Cuba as long as Weyler was in charge.
the sinking of the MAINE
http://www.spanamwar.com/Hearst.htm
"I have already transmitted to Congress the report of
the naval court of inquiry on the destruction of the
battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana during the
night of the fifteenth of February. The destruction
of that noble vessel has filled the national heart
with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight
brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy,
reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor,
have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to
their homes and sorrow to the nation."
William McKinley
http://scmidnightflyer.com/mckinley.html
"We could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for
self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and
misrule over there worse than Spain's was ... there was nothing
left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the
Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them."
William McKinley
Source: 1899, on the Filipinos, following the U.S. invasion of
the Philippines in 1898. During the invasion and occupation,
U.S. forces killed an estimated 200,000 Filipino civilians.
Address to the Methodist Episcopal Church; cited in Olcott,
The Life of William McKinley (1916), v. 2, p. 110; estimate
of civilian casualties from U.S. Library of Congress, "The
World of 1898: The Spanish-American War," 1998.