Begin Ambrose Into B Side of Third Audiotape, Still on Dat 6

START INTERVIEW

TAPE #016

DIRECTIONAL

Ambrose: Well, the Spanish-American War certainly was the beginning of the American Century, but nobody thought to call it that until Henry Luce did in the 1940s. It propelled America onto the world stage, brought America a colonial empire that made American interests, already quite large in the Pacific, even bigger and obviously so Puerto Rico and the new relationship with Cuba. So it was this tremendous energy that had been built in the United States after the Civil War with the Industrial Revolution and the movement West and the immigration into the United States and the growth of the country. It was just bursting with energy, and it came out in 1898 as we extended American power south and to the West and became a world power.

INT: How is this in line with Frederick Jackson Turner?

AMBROSE: It was very commonly felt that with the closing of the frontier which had been announced by the census taker in 1890 and then made into a whole theory of American history by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893, that we had to find some new outlet for our energy, for our dynamic nature, for this -- for this coiled spring that was the United States. And the frontier gone was something akin to a panic among people. "Geez, if American institutions can't expand, they're gonna shrink." And so there was a kind of an intellectual justification, rationalization'd be a better way to put it, for “Let's get our power overseas.”

INT: What sort of American institutions needed to expand?

AMBROSE: Not military, no. The United States lagged far behind the rest of the world in both naval and land power. But the output of the factories, the output of the farms, the need for new markets, the common wisdom that you either expanded or you died, and that provided a justification for this impulse to imperialism that swept the country. By no means did everybody sign on to it. Many were very much afraid of it and opposed to it, but it provided a justification. And it came out of the hard work of the American people -- in the mines, in the fields, in the factories and what they were able to produce and that common knowledge wisdom that you've got to expand those markets or you're gonna die.

INT: How long had the Philippine conflicts been in the planning specifically?

AMBROSE: There's a point ...

DIRECTIONAL

A: There's a point of view on the taking of the Philippines that this was a conspiracy hatched by John Hay and Teddy Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan and others who were going to use this crisis in Cuba as an excuse to get America to go out, Puerto Rico, the protection for what was going to be an American Panama Canal, Hawaii, and the Philippines. And the Philippines, in this view -- there's some truth to this -- were just unknown to the great bulk of the American people. President McKinley is reputed to have said -- this was very widely believed -- I don't think it's true -- that when Dewey telegrammed him that he had sunk the Spanish fleet at Manila, McKinley called for an atlas so he could figure out where the Philippines were. So there is this conspiracy kind of arrangement to it that -- or as-- ahm, conspiracy kind of aspect to the thing. And that story takes on greater force when you look at Teddy Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy sending orders off to Dewey, “In the event war with Spain,” which he expected momentarily, “proceed to Manila and sink the Spanish fleet.” Ahm ... ah, that came very close to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy making the decision that “We're going to take the Philippines as a part of this war against Spain,” not necessarily against the President's wishes, but without the President's knowledge.

INT: What was Roosevelt's specific motivation regarding changing the national character ...

AMBROSE: Roosevelt was born in 1857 and, like others born in the 1850s, he had grown up listening to stories of his father's generation about the Civil War. And it was a very strong feeling among young men, and this would especially apply to Roosevelt's class, the natural leaders, as they thought of themselves, the Harvards and the Yales, that they had been deprived of their opportunity, that they hadn't been able to go out there with Oliver Wendell Holmes and stand at the battle front with Abraham Lincoln and follow Grant down into Petersburg and then on into Richmond. They had missed all of that. It's something that I feel myself. I was born in 1935 and I grew up listening to World War II stories and I feel cheated that I wasn't a part of that. Well, these guys felt cheated and they wanted to prove their manhood. This was, as everyone knows, terribly important to Teddy Roosevelt, but to many others, too. And so there was a feeling of "It's our turn. We want to get out there and be heroes." And that is the origin really of the John Hay "splendid little war" line. It was exactly the war they were lookin' for, a war that would give them a chance for glory, but, you know, you're only gone for six months. Doesn't take all that long. You're not disrupting your career all that badly. And you're not getting shot, or at least not in the way that men got shot at Cold Harbor or Petersburg or in the Civil War battles. But you feel that whiz of the ball going by your ear, you hear that crack as it does, and you're a veteran. You're a man of war.

INT: Did the war accomplish that?

DIRECTIONAL

AMBROSE: Well, certainly the war made Americans proud. They had gone out and licked Spain that had been thought to be one of the world's great powers. Yeah, of course, it did. We'd gone out and licked Spain. This was one of the world's great powers, people thought at least up 'til that time. And we had done it quickly and efficiently without a great deal of loss of life. And so it was very -- and very big gains in territory. So, of course, it was very popular. With -- I mean but, you know, this the United States. We're a very diverse country. There were an awful lot of people who were very much opposed to this and thought that this was violating our own Constitution and certainly violating the whole American idea of self-determination and it was embarrassing to be the first colony to revolt in the modern times and to establish its independence, it's now suddenly becoming an imperialist nation. A lot of people were embarrassed by this. And, in my own view, I must say rightly so.

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INT: Talk about Mahan's agenda regarding the Navy.

AMBROSE: Well, Mahan was, as everyone knows -- Alfred Mahan, everybody knows, was a great naval power advocate. He wrote the book on the British had taken over so much of the world thanks to its sea policy. The United States needed such a policy, that we were a two-ocean country, that we had to have a fleet that could control both oceans and this was going to require coaling stations and outposts out there, and if America wanted to take her place as one of the great nations in the world, she had to get into the imperialist race and had to acquire colonies. And this had a tremendous appeal to young men like Teddy Roosevelt and John Hay and -- and the others who were a part of that Mahan circle. It had a very big impact. Roosevelt, as President, of course, put the great white fleet together and started America on the road to becoming the world's number one sea power and there's a direct line that needs from Mahan's study up in Newport, Rhode Island at the Naval War College, where he wrote this stuff, right on into action and on into then results and the acquisition of the American colonial empire.

INT: What about the unifying effect after the Civil War?

AMBROSE: One of the features of the Spanish-American War was an orgy of reconciliation between former Confederates and former Yankees, and it was a great thing for the nation. Almost everybody agreed on this, that you've now got kids from Alabama fighting alongside, instead of against, the kids from Minnesota. You've got kids from Texas fighting with Teddy Roosevelt and his crowd from New York and the Rough Riders. And this was thought to be a very great thing. There's a cute little story that comes out of this. One of the generals in the Spanish-American War named Wheeler had been a Confederate officer and he was gettin' pretty old by this time, a little bit long in the tooth, and he was involved at San Juan Hill and is supposed to have said as the Spanish started retreating and the charge up the hill was going with, "Go get 'em, guys. We got those Yankees on the run!"

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INT: Talk about the disembarkation at Tampa.

AMBROSE: They embarked at Tampa.

DIRECTIONAL

AMBROSE: Well ...

DIRECTIONAL

AMBROSE: The scene in Tampa was just chaotic with people fighting to get on board ships and elbowing other guys aside to get on board ships and no staff officers there to help and no plan or rhyme or reason to it and "How are we gonna load this ship and what supplies do we need for that ship," and all the things that go into an invasion. This was all brand new. Shafter was handling problems that no American Army officer before had ever had to handle and they were just terrible at it. This was a general staff that had been built to fight the Indian wars. This was an army that had been built to fight the Indian wars and all of a sudden they're going to undertake the most difficult of all military operations, an amphibious offensive against a defending shore line. Now in the packing up at at Tampa and in the disembarking from the ... in the packing up at Tampa Bay, chaos reigned and it was ... to put a perspective on the chaos that reigned at Tampa, remember that at Galipoliin the First World War now -- now this is almost two decades after the Spanish-American War -- the British put ships ashore that had troops on 'em and then other ships ashore that were carrying the rifles and the cannons and the other weapons and then on other ships they had the powder. So you -- you've got to be a little bit more generous in looking at Shafter and his staff and their mistakes and realize, you know, guys, this is the first time this had ever been done in the Modern Age. And, of course, they made terrible mistakes.

DIRECTIONAL

AMBROSE: Well, the staff studies were -- yes. What was impact of the chaos that reigned in 1898? It was a creation of a modern army, beginning with Elihu Root and the reforms at the War Department that came about under Teddy Roosevelt's Presidency, because Teddy had been there. And he'd seen how bad the American Army was. And had insisted that it had to be reformed and had to be improved and had to be professionalized and had to be modernized and had to be brought out of its Indian hunting mode. And he did it with Elihu Root and brought in the general staff system into the US Army and great strides forward were made as a result of mistakes and the lessons learned from them in Tampa and in the disembarking at Daiquiri.

INT: What happened when they disembarked at Daiquiri?

AMBROSE: Well, they ... it could hardly have been worse. One thing was that the transports were civilian vessels. The navy had told Shafter, "You've got to get a naval officer on board those transports and you've got to give him command or those guys aren't going to go anywhere near the shore line because that's their ships at risk." Well, the War Department decided, "No, we're not gonna do that. It's cheaper to hire a civilian transport rather than turn them into navy vessels," and then the War Department refused to buy marine hazard insurance for them. So that these guys running these transports, a hodge-podge of a fleet, refused to go closer than five miles inland, for fear of the Spanish guns, which in fact were not there on the shore line. So you get this scene in the D-Day for 1898. The guys come down off the ships into the rowboats that have to be rowed five miles inland, a pretty heavy sea. Of course, they don't have their weapons with them. They've got their rifles, but they don't have any artillery with 'em. And they're coming into a war where the sea is doing this on 'em and when they get on a rise, they have to throw their weapons up onto the wharf and then down they go again and then they rise again and they grab up for guys that are up there on top to help 'em to get out. And, of course, this didn't do any good with their mobility, which was horses and mules. You couldn't take them in in rowboats. What are you going do with 'em. Well, you throw 'em overboard and they'll swim to shore and then you gather 'em up. But in the Rough Rider Regiment, the figures are something like of the 189 mules, three got ashore and were recovered. Roosevelt had two horses, one of which swam out to sea and they couldn't turn the horse around. So he -- he only had one horse for the campaign.

INT: What was the interaction between the Cubans and the Americans at first and how did it change?

AMBROSE: How the Americans and Cubans related to each other -- how the Americans related with the Cuban rebels is a story of missed opportunities. There was some contact, but it really was minimal. No effort was made. I don't know quite how they would have done it either, come to that. But no effort was made to get in contact with the -- the one things that rebels can supply -- the two things that rebels can supply are, one, intelligence. They're there on the scene. They can say, "There's a Spanish company over here and they got some artillery over here and that bridge isn't defended." And you can count on that intelligence. It's the best intelligence of all. "I saw it." That was one thing that the rebels could have given them. And the other was the harassing of supply lines. You know, you have in your mind now long trains of mules packin' bags of rice goin' up to the Spanish positions. That's pretty easy to disrupt that kind of a supply line. And that could have been coordinated. But that's asking the men of 1898 to be like the men of 1944, who had, of course, radios, airplanes for reconnaissance, all kind of ways to establish liaison with each other. None of that was available in 1898. And so the potential asset of the Cuban rebels was, in my view, not exploited to anywhere near the degree that it could have been.

INT: Did the Cubans need American help?

AMBROSE: You mean did the Cuban need American help?

INT: Yes.

AMBROSE: Well, there's dispute about that, as you heard this morning. Ah ... my own view is that the Spanish were not going to get out and they were not on the run. The Cuban revolution had been going on since 1868. This is 30 years later, and they don't appear to have been any closer to achieving the goal of getting the Spanish to march out of Havana and get on ships and go on home and say, "You guys figure out how you want to run your lives. We're outta here." Spain was not even close to that. This Spanish felt they could hold on and intended to hold on. There was also a fear in Spain that "If we give up this gem of our empire," and, remember, the Spanish had been giving up over the years quite a lot, I mean the whole of the Central and South America that they'd had to retreat out of. And now they had to go out of the -- out of Cuba, the gem in the Caribbean, and out of the Philippines, the gem in the Pacific. There was a fear in Spain that this would lead to the overthrow of the monarchy, a revolution, and all kinds of terrible things were gonna happen. So there -- so the best that I can see it, the Spanish, in 1898, were somewhat like the Japanese in 1945. They had no hope of winning, but they weren't about to quit.

DIRECTIONAL

AMBROSE: General Lineares, on the Spanish side, in command at Santiago, counted on disease as his ally. He knew, and he was certain -- and in fact it did happen -- that after June came and you get into July, virtually all the American troops are going to get malaria. And as many as 25 percent of 'em would be down at any one time, and by "down" I mean flat on the back, unable to operate at all. And then in July the yellow fever was going to start. And these things were certainly. I mean nobody knew what caused malaria. Nobody knew how yellow fever was transmitted, much less what to do about it. And so Yankees in Cuba at that time got malaria, period, and they got yellow fever and this was the potential great ally of the Spanish. And it's why Shafter moved things forward as fast as he possibly could, to get a decisive campaign finished before the malaria and yellow fever hit.