TAPE 24 CONT’D
BEGIN INTERVIEW
DIRECTIONAL
INT: Describe how Cuba was portrayed by the press, Rodriguez, and the amazons.
HOGANSON: I think one of the most remarkable things about the press coverage about the Cuban Revolution is the amount of favorable press coverage that was given to the mixed race Cubans by white American publications in a time when many white Americans were supporting African Americans' rights as citizens within the United States, but it was a time of a number of lynchings in the American South. So I think it's remarkable that there was so much favorable press coverage given to the Cuban revolutionaries. And one thing that I think characterizes much of this press coverage is that the Cuban fighters were portrayed as, ahm, chivalric heroes, as noble men, as shown by their actions, that they respected honor and virtue, that they were fighting for a noble cause, that they had a fraternal ethos. There's one story that was reported by Richard Harding Davis, who was a newspaper reporter who went down to Cuba and wrote a book about the revolution, which was, ah, the execution of a Cuban patriot who, he said, was known simply as Rodriguez, that he didn't have any -- any more of a name that was known. And when he was brought up in the front of the firing squad, ah, Davis said that -- that he was calm, that he was nonchalant. He smoked a cigarette in his final moments before his execution, and that the story, Davis said, showed that -- that the Spaniards could kill Rodriguez, but they couldn't scare him, that he went to death, ahm, in an absolutely fearless fashion. And Davis held him up as an -- as an example of the heroism of the Cuban revolutionaries. And then later in that same account, Davis described the Spanish soldiers and he described them as giggling, ahm, when -- when one of their fellows had done something oafish. And the contrast just couldn't have been more explicit. The Spaniards were -- were child-like, feminine, that they were giggling at themselves and that they didn't have the dignity and the -- the courage and -- and the maturity of the Cuban, ah, patriots, as exemplified by Rodriguez.
INT: Now why did the story have so much power at time in America?
HOGANSON: Well, I think ...
DIRECTIONAL
HOGANSON: Well, such stories had a great deal of power for several reasons. I think foremost was the sense that chivalry was lacking in the United States, that American men were assumed by many, jingos or just people who sympathized with the Cuban revolutionaries to lack the qualities that the Cubans were seen as embodying. The thought was that they didn't, ahm, have the same commitment to chivalric values, to honor, to respect for women, for the weak, for higher purposes besides money-making, that it was coming out of the Gilded Age, the sense was that American men were very greedy, they were commercial minded, that they were just, ahm, out to -- to make a quick buck, and that the Cubans were sacrificing their -- sacrificing their lives in hopes of attaining a nobler purpose. So that the -- I think the Cubans were seen as a foil for American men. Another context that helps explain why these stories had so much power was that of chivalric romances, that there was a lot of adventure writing in the late 19th century that was often -- these stories often, ahm, featured chivalric themes. So that even though they were set -- some of them or many of them are set in contemporary times, the language was that of medieval romances. And many of them featured characters who were American men who would go elsewhere, maybe to Latin American countries or imagined countries, where they would rescue distressed damsels and then bring the advantages of modern civilization to these places. But they would also prove their courtly attributes in the course of doing that. And I think that general context helps explain why the specific Cuban examples had such a powerful grip on people's imaginations.
CUT
INT: Talk about the Cisneros story.
DIRECTIONAL
HOGANSON: Well, the Cisneros story is -- is a great story. The -- the woman involved was a Cuban woman named Evangelina Cisneros who came from an elite Cuban family and was arrested on suspicions of aiding the Cuban revolutionaries. Well, the yellow press picked up on this, particularly the New York Journal. And they reported in sensational and lurid, often exaggerated, ah, stories that Cisneros had been arrested for resisting a Spanish officer who wanted to compromise her virtue. And they reported that she had been cast into a prison full of prostitutes, of low-class, degraded women, and that she was about to be sentenced to Ciuta, a Spanish penal colony in Morocco in North Africa, which, they said, was full of, ah, the robbers, the murderers, the ravishers of Spain, and that, indeed, she would be certain to lose hervirtue upon arrival and then probably to perish within -- within the year. Well, thesestories really struck a chord in the readership of the -- the Journal.
DIRECTIONAL
HOGANSON: Well, the Journal reported that she was to be sentenced to Ciuta, a penal colony in North Africa which was supposedly full of the robbers, the murderers, and the rapists of Spain, where she would undoubtedly be ravished within the year and would probably die as a result. Well, these stories sold extraordinarily well. The circulation numbers for the Journal went up when it ran these headlines on -- on Evangelina Cisneros and her likely doom, ahm, first in Cuba, then in Morocco. And William Randolph Hearst, the brash young editor of the Journal, realized that -- that there was something in this. And he resolved to do something about it in hopes of raising circulation figures even higher. And the first thing he did is he had his reporters scattered across the United States, go out and solicit signatures from prominent American women on petitions that he had devised, begging for the release of Cisneros. And within 24 hours of drafting this petition, his reporters -- I think he had over 200 reporters who he put on the case -- cabled in what the Journal claimed were 15,000 signatures in favor of releasing Cisneros. But they also went out and solicited testimonials from prominent women on behalf of freeing Cisneros. So they had Verina Davis, who was the widow of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate -- ah, ex-Confederate president, ah, write a letter to the queen regent of Spain begging for her freedom. And they had Julia Ward Howe, the author of "The Battle Hymn of Republic", ah, write a letter to the Pope. She wrote an impassioned letter begging for Cisneros' release. They also solicited numerous testimonials, as I said, from -- from prominent women, including President McKinley's mother, who -- who added her name to the cause. Well, all this, ah, this continued to sell newspapers, but it didn't affect Cisneros' release. She continued to languish in this Cuban prison, and it riled up Hearst and his associates because one of the conclusions that people were starting to draw from -- from all this was that American men were inefficacious, that they couldn't secure Cisneros' release, and American women had to jump in with all their petitions and so forth to try to win her freedom. So Hearst commissioned the reporter, a man named Carl Decker, to go down and free her from prison. Decker went down to Cuba and he bribed the prison guards to release her, but this wouldn't have made good copy. So to -- to get better stories out of the incident and to exonerate the prison guards, he fabricated an elaborate rescue scheme which involved renting the house next door to the prison and then he put a plank between that building and the prison and he crawled over and he sawed the prison bars while the bribed guards looked in the other direction. And then he spirited Cisneros to freedom. In his published account of the episode, Decker said that he had one great anxiety when he went down to Cuba, which was that Cisneros wouldn't live up to her reputation, that she'd been marketed in the United States as this beautiful woman, as the-- sort of the -- the imprisoned princess, ahm, the typical damsel of the chivalric story who needed someone to come down and rescue her. And Decker was afraid she'd be ugly (Laughs) and that wouldn't sell newspapers. And then in his account after the rescue, he reported how over-- overwhelmed he was by her beauty and how relieved he was to see that she really did look like a fairy tale princess and he brought her back to New York City. And there were parades and receptions. She met McKinley, ahm, and generated a lot more attention. And the conclusion that the Journal kept drawing from this story was that Decker was the model man, the model American, that he was able to secure her release, he was chivalric, that he was a modern knight in shining armor. And, indeed, a number of women wrote in letters to the newspaper saying that they had thought that chivalry was dead, that it no longer existed in the United States, but that Decker had prove -- proven otherwise, that chivalry was still strong and thriving. And Hearst concluded in -- in a headline after the rescue that American men had rescued one Cuban woman and the question that now faced the nation was when would the United States free Cuba, holding up the Cisneros story as an allegory for the entire Cuban Revolution, or the entire Cuban situation. And it suggested that just as American men had proven their chivalry and capacities by going down and rescuing this one woman, if the United States became involved in the Cuban Revolution, then the nation as soon as whole could prove that it still had higher values than just commercial ones and was capable of performing great and noble deeds.
CUT
INT: Characterize McKinley, starting with the 1896 election and work in the de Lomee letter.
DIRECTIONAL
HOGANSON: Well, in 1897, Enrique Dupuy de Lome, the Spanish ambassador to the United States, wrote a letter to a friend, a private letter, that was intercepted by a Cuban revolutionary who sent it to the New York papers, and in the letter, which was then published, it was revealed that de Lome had called McKinley weak and had said that he "catered to the rabble". And he also made some comments about Spanish intentions in Cuba, how they were making promises they didn't intend to follow through on. But the newspapers picked up on this story and emphasized the first part, his statement that McKinley was weak, that aspersion on McKinley's manhood and character. Well, the interesting thing about the letter is that it generated such an outpouring of -- of rage that de Lome gave up his position and returned to Spain. Ahm, and American men were just really insulted that a foreigner had made such remarks about the American President, who was supposed to embody the character of all American men. But the irony is that McKinley's opponents had been making statements like that all along, that de Lome was not the first person to say that McKinley was weak or that he lacked backbone, because McKinley's political rivals had been saying that ever since he'd been involved in politics. McKinley had a long history of political activism, that he'd been a congressman and a governor of the State of Ohio before becoming President and in all those years there had been some questions about his manhood, which was not unusual for the time period, that all political leaders had to live up to certain expectations about manly character that were seen as being necessary for political leadership. But McKinley might have been particularly vulnerable to such charges of -- of lacking manhood, that he didn't embody the new standards of robust, aggressive manhood that were in the ascendance in the late 19th century. He adhered to older middle class standards of manhood that placed more value on self-control. He was a religious man, a home-loving man, a man who was solicitous ...
DIRECTIONAL
HOGANSON: Well, McKinley was a home-loving man, a domestic man, a religious man, a man who was solicitous of his invalid wife, and he -- he just didn't have the reputation as being a robust, aggressive man's man. He didn't like to go out and spend time in coarse male gatherings. He would rather be at home with his wife. One of the things that happened to him when he was President is he went fishing one day in his top hat and -- and fancy coat and in the course of fishing, to kind of participate in what was seen as a manly activity, he managed to capsize the boat and ended up ruining his -- his fancy and inappropriate, we might say, outfit. Well, despite this home-loving image that McKinley had, when he ran for President in 1896 he ran as a military hero. McKinley had served as a soldier in the Civil War and really took advantage of that in his political campaigns, that when he, ah, campaigned in 1896 he stayed at his home in Canton, Ohio, and delegations of supporters came to visit him. And they often came wearing military uniforms, singing military songs, accompanied by military bands carrying tattered banners from the Grand Army of the Republic, their Union Army, ah, posts. And they honored McKinley as a military man and said that because of his military service, he was fit to lead the country, that he might be, ah, a man supported by the trusts, by the great corporations, but because of his military service he had demonstrated that he had the fraternal characteristics and the manly character necessary to lead. Well, what happened, ahm, after the de Lome letter and just in the spring of 1898 as the war issue heated up, was that McKinley's detractors started to really undercut that military image that had accompanied his domestic image and said that he was really a weak man, that he lacked backbone, that he didn't have the manly character that was seen as necessary in a political leader because he didn't stand up and take a firm stance against Spain, that he didn't clamor for war like some of his associates, or other Republicans or men in Congress. And as a result, he was really pilloried not only by the press, but by congressmen, particularly Democrats who said that he didn't have the -- the character necessary to lead because he was a "chocolate eclair". That was Roosevelt's remark, or that he was a spinelish -- "spineless jellyfish" or just -- the most common statement was he lacks backbone, that he didn't have the attributes that the nation needed in its political leaders. Well, his supporters turned around and brought out his civil war record again and said, "But McKinley does have the characters -- characteristics that are needed in a political leader, that he has this valiant military record behind him." Well, his detractors then pointed out that he had won fame as a soldier in the Civil War for serving coffee to beleaguered troops. And his supporters had always said that that was a really heroic thing, that he had risked his life to bring the coffee to the troops under fire. But his detractors said that it was sort of a femininething, to do too, that cooking and serving coffee, which he had done as a commissary officer, really didn't display the kind of martial character that he had been claiming. And as he hesitated to go to war in the spring of 1898, then their interpretation of his military, ah, record and his character more generally became more accepted among the public as a whole and McKinley had to confront this sense that he was losing control, that he wouldn't be able to lead Congress anymore, that he would have to follow the nation into war instead of being a leader because he was dragging his feet on the war issue and didn't demonstrate the assertive character -- character that was expected in the nation's political leader in a time of crisis.
CUT
END TAPE 024
BEGIN TAPE 025
DIRECTIONAL
INT: Describe reaction to McKinley's war message.
DIRECTIONAL
HOGANSON: Well, McKinley, ah, delivered a war message on April 11 that did not -- it was not a resounding cry for war, that he still expressed hope that the nation could avoid war and find a peaceable resolution to the conflict. And his supporters, who were becoming frustrated at the lack of -- of clear call for war, ahm, continued to defend the President and to say that he -- he would eventually rise to the occasion and would utter that kind of cry for war. And his detractors said that this just showed what they'd been saying all along, that McKinley didn't have the manly character necessary to lead and that he was falling behind the more militant Congress and would have to, ahm, abdicate his leadership essentially because he was not marching in step with the masses of American men, who, they said, were calling for war and, indeed, eager to enlist. That men were starting to, ah, flood, ah, recruiting offices with applications to serve in the military and were -- were volunteering their services in hopes that there would be war. Well, one of the things that happened in the aftermath of the message was that on April 13th, as Congress was continuing to debate the war issue, one congressman, a man named Charles Brum, who was Republican from Pennsylvania ...