TAPE 019 CONT’D
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DIRECTIONAL
BRINKLEY: One of the great misnomers about the Spanish-American War is this notion that suddenly all these expansionists came out of the woodwork with the sinking of the Maine. In truth, there's a long history of expansionism following the Civil War, and the ring leader of that expansionist movement was William Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State. Seward, from 1861 to 1869 wanted this massive American empire. He wanted to acquire Cuba, but also Canada, Iceland, Greenland, Panama, or what became Panama to get a canal zone, the islands in the Pacific. And Seward had a big influence on a whole generation of diplomats. So by the time you hit the 1880s, the Seward legacy of American empire and expansionism permeated, ah, the United States in both the Democratic and Republican party to the point that you started a movement to build the new Navy. And that became a -- a big catch phrase in the, ahm, 1880s. The idea was "Our navy's an antiquated joke. We've got to do something about it." And the "something" was the Industrial Revolution, steel. Cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago had steel in which they have steel ships and to make, if not the largest navy in the world, at least a new navy that would go from, ahm, you know, using coal to, ah, using steam, that would go from wood to using steel. And the new navy began in the 1880s and it was a steady drum roll and each town started getting proud or oftentimes states got proud of having a ship named after their community. So there was a famous, ahm, naval vessel Boston or the Maine or the Oregon or the Columbia. And this all meant to generate an interest in the community about, you know, "We need to have a big navy to protect ourselves." And the question then is, why? What are you protecting yourself from? Well, the United States had spent the entire, ah, time of the 19th century developing a type of empire under Manifest Destiny, meaning the steady expansion westward. But by the 1880s we had east coast and west coast to sea to shining sea, and what more people were looking at now was the continuation of the -- the Asia market, the Orient. And the -- the funny part of that is that ever since the days of Christopher Columbus, that's what he was looking for also. And if you go to 1492, Columbus came to the New World looking for a route to the Orient. Lewis and Clark explored the Louisiana Purchase looking for a route to the Orient. So by the time of the 1880s and 1890s, people wanted coaling stations, places, ahm, that nobody had heard of before, such as Samoa in the Pacific, a place where you could stop on your way to Australia and China and Japan for trade routes, and Hawaii which became very popular. And so the Navy was to not only defend both parts of the American shore, but to defend American economic interest around the globe.
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BRINKLEY: Certain countries are known for certain types of military, ahm, defenses. And I think Spain is always known for the Spanish Armada. People talk about the Spanish Armada. Well, the Spanish Armada was in ghastly decline by the 1880s and 1890s as the United States was building new ships with using steel and, you know, having boilers made out of steel and they were the -- the most modern boats imaginable, the most modern navy, a small navy. The United States was a much smaller navy than Spain at the time of the Spanish-American War. But American ships were considered the newest, the ah, had the best technology to them. So at the, ahm, time of the Spanish-American War you would say that the United States Navy was -- was very low in the world. Some people would say it was like 15th. Other scholars have said tenth. Some say six, depending on who you want to believe, but certainly it was not a first rate navy, but there were first rate vessels in the American navy due to the push in the 1880s and the 1890s of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Cabot Lodge and then Theodore Roosevelt to have a great American fleet.
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BRINKLEY: The Cuban Revolution of 1898 in the Spanish-American War didn't just happen overnight. It's origins, ah, really date back to 1868 to '78, where, in desperation, Cuba was trying to free itself from Spain. Well, they didn't, but they did get slavery abolished. So the next wave came and in the new wave was an extraordinarily colorful, flashy, in many ways brilliant thinker named Jose Marti. Marti was not Cuban per se;he had, ahm, parents that were, ahm, of European origin. He traveled all over the world. He became a journalist. He lived for a period of time in the United States. And Jose Marti had one objective in mind through his writings, to bring democracy and freedom, independence to his people, which was the -- which were the people of Cuba. So operating out of Florida, he spent an awful lot of time, Marti, ah, traveling to New York, for example, and giving talks and convincing people like Pulitzer and Hearst and some of the big newspaper moguls of that day that Cuban independence was something the United States needed to be behind, that he raised money in the United States to go and go -- and leave America, go to Cuba and take over again, you know, kick the Spanish out and finally give Cuba back to the Cubans. "Cuba Libre" became the catch phrase in the movement that he was -- he was running. And, ah, Marti is truly considered the great hero of Cuba, not just in the 19th century or in the early 20th century, but probably the greatest Cuban hero of all time.
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BRINKLEY: Wyler's reconcentration policy ...
DIRECTIONAL
BRINKLEY: Wyler's reconcentration policy in Cuba was a horrible thing. The only way to really think about it would be what happened in the United States to the Native Americans in many ways. A round-up of Cuban people, putting them into essentially a concentration camp where they lived in just ghastly conditions of -- of, ahm, you know, no food, horrible sanitation conditions. Ahm, there are examples of torture that occurred at these camps. And the Cubans that wanted liberation made a great issue of these -- these camps. They were able to, in the United States, play up the emotions of the American people that of how can America, the country of George Washington, and of liberty, and of the Declaration of Independence not want to help Cuba get rid of these Spanish scoundrels who are treating, ahm, our neighbors, the Cuban neighbors, in such a horrible way? So with -- I think it was -- became the rally cry for the horrors of Spain where the -- was this policy and the rounding up of people, of Cuban people, into camps.
INT: What was the purpose of the policy?
BRINKLEY: The purpose of the policy -- the purpose of the concen-- reconcentration policy ...
IRRELEVANT
BRINKLEY: The purpose of reconcentration policy was to get riff-raff and the most -- ahm, the most boisterous and belligerent of Cuban nationalists and to isolate them and also to isolate some communities that were considered hotbeds of Cuban nationalism, ahm, to -- to close them off, to keep an eye on them, to not let them take part in the actual, ahm, colony of Cuba in any way. So it was -- became a sort of symbol, the policy and the camps, of oppression by Spain.
INT: And did the reconcentration camps– were they responsible for the deaths of many Cubans?
BRINKLEY: The reconcentration camps were, ahm, responsible for many deaths of many Cubans. I mean they -- the body count we're not sure of, but -- and certainly for Jose Marti and -- and his followers it became the most important factor that they kept bringing overto the United States all the time is these death camps.
DIRECTIONAL
BRINKLEY: William McKinley won the Presidential election of 1896, beating William Jennings Bryan, and he was a curious character in many ways. Of course, he came and hailed from Canton, Ohio. He ran often what he then called the Front Porch strategy where he'd stay at home and let reporters come to him and not really move around very much at all. But McKinley is a -- a curious figure because some people thought that he was a weak leader. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, said that he had the spine and backbone of a chocolate eclair. On the other hand, Elihu Root said that this was a man of foremost principle and courage and intelligence and a powerful disposition. So we're in history handed down two William McKinleys, and I think it's the two McKinleys we see coming into play over the Maine. Ahm, first off, McKinley was a politician who led by, if you like, popular opinion. He let the people lead him. He wasn't an ideologue. And at the time, February of 1898, at the time of the sinking of the Maine, it was about 50/50 in the country between whether, ahm, we should help Cuba or whether this should be no -- none of our business. And McKinley obviscated on this issue. He was considered an anti-interventionist more or less, but by the time, ahm,he sent the Maine down to Havana Harbor and to, ahm -- to, you know, keep the peace and to make the American presence there. And the time that the Maine got sunk, ah, we started seeing McKinley in a very difficult position. And the reason McKinley was in -- in a difficult position was by the, ahm, Dupuy letter that came ...
IRRELEVANT
BRINKLEY: McKinley, who was known to obviscate a lot, found himself in a very difficult position prior to the sinking of the Maine because of the, ahm, Dupuy de Lome letter which occurred. This was our -- ah, the Spanish minister in Washington, D.C. And the, ahm, Hearst papers in New York, ahm, got the letter and printed it. And in it, it said, "William McKinley is weak. William McKinley won't follow, ahm, you know, anything but the people and he's not anybody who's going to act in any kind of forceful fashion." So once the sinking of the Maine occurred, this letter started being flagged all the time, saying, "Look, Spain's laughing at the United States, mocking William McKinley, mocking the institution of the Presidency." And, ahm, McKinley, I think, found some of his strength to act to declare war actually with Spain partially due to showing that he didn't have a wimp factor.
DIRECTIONAL
BEGIN TAPE 020
BRINKLEY: It's impossible to even think about the Spanish-American War without William Randolph Hearst, who was, in today's terms, a media mogul of his day, ah, a father of yellow journalism, a man who -- whose view of journalism was selling the most papers that you could. Some people called his newspaper the New York, ah, World, the freak journalism, that this wasn't real writing, and he’d tend to sensationalize headlines a lot, a tabloid artist in many ways. And he took up the, ahm, Marti issue and the issue of, ah, the Cuban independence movement as a way, a jingoistic way to bring America together. We were a nation in that period that was at each other's throats. North was still angry at South. Ah, Populist farmers didn't like East Coast bankers. Ah, you had the race division between black and white. We had economic depression of 1893 which created a panic. And Hearst saw that the way to pull everybody together was with some war and -- and to put forward American virtues. And those virtues were independence for Cuba. Well, when the Maine sunk without any kind of, ahm, real investigation, he immediately dispatched a team of reporters, ahm, down to, ahm -- to the harbor in Cuba, in Havana, and immediately sent people like Frederick Remington down there and the day after -- the first two days, on February -- ahm, well, you had the headlines of February 15th, February 16th, and February 17th, all with bold headlines, the most famous one being the "Remember -- Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain", which became the rally cry of the Spanish-American War. And, ahm, Hearst then just started rubbing it in left and right into, ahm,the face of Spain. And I think without the Hearst newspapers helping to get this swell of -- of public opinion against Spain, I'm not sure that McKinley would have gone to war. I think the difference was Hearst and the -- the media outlets he had. Hearst also had a great access to, ah, underground transatlantic cables to Europe, which were brand new from the 1860s but had developed by this time, that he could get news flashes immediately from Europe and was being very clever on publishing documents, government documents supposedly captured from Spain, ahm, and he was -- had a -- a profound influence on, ahm, the -- not only the history of 20th century journalism, but I think in this case of leading America to war.
BRINKLEY: After the sinking of the Maine, one group of prominent Americans that stayed very anti-interventionist was Wall Street. Financiers did not want to get involved with this war whatsoever. And it stayed that way until mid-March, when Senator Proctor gave a famous speech. And in it he laid out clearly for Wall Street the need for intervention to -- ah, for Cuban independence. And immediately after, or at least a few days after the Proctor speech the tide had turned and Wall Street was now supporting of the war. And from that point on, it was a steady march into April and then the Navy commission came in with their report on the Maine and with Wall Street behind it, McKinley made the much stronger move to, ahm, supporting intervention and really going to war with Spain.
BRINKLEY: Anti-interventionists came in many different varieties, many different stripes. You could make a generalization that most of them came from the East Coast and were highly educated, but a number of them are very quite famous in -- in their own rights not just for their protest. I mean people like William James, the father of American pragmatism, a great philosopher. James, ahm, clearly thought that the Spanish-American War was a bad idea. He said that he can't believe America was willing to "puke up its heritage" and engagein such a, ahm, endeavor. James went on, based on his observations of the Spanish-American War, later to write a famous essay called "The Moral Equivalent of War" in which he -- he was saying, "I recognize in people like a Theodore Roosevelt, that jingoistic activity, that sense of adventurism, that a little war's good, that nations have" -- he wanted to see couldn't we find something else for people to put that energy into besides killing and violence? And in "The Moral Equivalence of the War" he came up with notions of, if you'd like, ahm, strenuous life, perhaps ahm, mountain climbing or, ah, hunting or going out and doing things beyond calling war on other people. So James was, I think, as the intellectual circles went, was the premiere anti-imperialist. And it's his thinking on that from that period is what really lasts from that group down to today.
DIRECTIONAL
BRINKLEY: Um, Mark Twain turned against the Spanish-American War, but he first feigned indifference. When the war began, he was touring in -- in Europe, ahm, and he went to Egypt and he came back and, of course, caught into what was going on in the -- in the war frenzy. But he ended up writing a completely vicious satire of the Spanish-American War and particularly what the United States was doing in the Philippines. To Twain, that this represented an abomination of everything that America -- ah, America stood for, that in a way we were becoming now just like the Europeans, ahm, in that we were sticking our flag in foreign lands, ahm, in -- in such a, ahm, strange fashion and that he wanted desperately to, ahm -- to, ah ...
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BRINKLEY: The interesting difference between Hearst and let's say the anti-interventionists were that the anti-interventionists saw America as a city on the hill, that it was a democracy that was something very special and untarnished, and that we were the example, a moral example, to the rest of the world, ahm, and if we acquired empire, we were going to be like the Europeans. So we'd lose that -- that, ahm, you know, moral example. Hearst, on the other hand, went back to the American Revolution and he said that what's happening in Cuba is what we fought for, that Jose Marti is like Thomas Jefferson, and he is like George Washington, that this is a -- is about Cuban liberation and that how can the United States not stand for other brothers in arms that are trying to throw the horrible European oppressors out of this hemisphere? And he also, Hearst, believed that the Monroe Doctrine was in play, that this was -- the Caribbean was an American lake, that at first it belonged to the individual countries in Latin America and, secondly, the people that would protect it would be the United States, not Spain or not Britain in the Venezuela crisis of 1895. And so for Hearst, the Spanish-American War was about the ideals of America as exemplified by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the other Founding Fathers.