American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  Two flamboyant editors eyed the Cuban situation with avid interest: William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. Engaged in a no-holds-barred circulation war, they largely ignored the gritty realities of the struggle, filling their columns with rumors, invective, fiction, and lurid atrocity stories designed to titillate rather than inform. By 1898, Hearst and Pulitzer were between them selling more than 1½ million copies daily, and a host of papers across the country rushed to imitate them. Popular sympathy for the Cuban revolution, which predated the Hearst-Pulitzer war, surged to a new high. Grover Cleveland had resisted these pressures, being perhaps more concerned with the threat to U.S. commercial interests and by the possibility that the rebels, many of whose leaders were black, would establish a biracial republic just ninety miles from the United States.

  William McKinley had come to office facing a welter of conflicting forces over Cuba. Spain still held the island, precariously, but it was tiring of the expensive conflict. The rebels continued to press for recognition in the United States and military victory in Cuba. A large portion of the American public and the Congress—and the Republican party platform—supported Cuban independence, but had no clear plan for bringing it about. Businessmen favored any peaceful means of bringing more stability and U.S. trade to the island. A small group of expansionists, including Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and McKinley’s own Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, urged the annexation of Cuba as the first step in building an overseas U.S. empire. The yellow journalists continued to play up anything that would yield rousing headlines.

  McKinley’s deftness in shepherding domestic issues through Congress was matched by his careful handling of the Cuban crisis. He deflected congressional moves to recognize the Cubans, put increasing pressure on Spain to loosen its hold on the island, and continued to interdict arms shipments to the rebels. A new Madrid government seemed to respond favorably to McKinley’s call for an end to the cruel and futile occupation policy when, in late 1897, it announced a number of reforms, including a plan for Cuban autonomy within the Spanish empire. The private messages from McKinley’s minister to Spain make clear, however, that the President viewed autonomy as a step toward gradual United States absorption of Cuba, as either a commercial dependency or an outright colony. Thus McKinley carefully avoided any move that would help the rebels in Cuba to achieve independence on their own, Philip Foner has concluded.

  McKinley’s subtle intervention was hampered by the refusal of the rebels, and of many of the Spanish officers in Cuba, to accept autonomy. Late in January 1898, Havana was convulsed by riots protesting the new policy, and Secretary of the Navy John D. Long ordered the Maine to the city to protect American lives and act as a restraining influence. While the battleship kept its tense vigil in Havana harbor, Hearst’s Journal published a letter, stolen from a friend of Spanish Ambassador Dupuy de Lôme, that called into question Spain’s sincerity in granting the recent reforms—as well as containing some gratuitous insults to McKinley. Amidst great public outcry de Lôme was recalled, and the President was confronted with the knowledge that even the Madrid government doubted autonomy was feasible. Then, as pressure to recognize Cuba’s independence again mounted, the Maine blew up, killing 266 of the men on board.

  “THE WARSHIP MAINE WAS SPLIT IN TWO BY AN ENEMY’S SECRET INFERNAL MACHINE,” headlined the Journal, while Assistant Secretary Roosevelt assured a friend that “the Maine was sunk by an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards”—but most of the public withheld judgment pending the findings of the official inquiry. Seventy-eight years after the sinking of the Maine, the U.S. Navy Department would publish a study, prepared by a senior officer and two experienced civilian engineers, attributing the disaster to spontaneous combustion in a coal bunker below decks, which ignited an adjacent ammunition store. But the four officers sent in 1898 to investigate for the U.S. government, pressured by press and public demand for a quick judgment, ruled that the battleship was sunk by “the explosion of a mine situated under the bottom of the ship.” Who had put the alleged mine there, the four could not say.

  The press jingoes had no doubt who put the mine there. The cry for war rose over the land. McKinley had already anticipated war by gaining a congressional appropriation for $50 million. Some in Congress, however, felt that America should enter the conflict as the ally of the Cubans. In an attempt to head off such a move, McKinley assured key legislators that he was negotiating with Spain for Cuba’s independence. In fact, the Spanish did accede to most of the President’s demands. They failed, however, to give independence to the island—which McKinley did not ask for—or to transfer it to the United States, which seems to have been the President’s true aim. On April 11, just two days after Spain made further diplomatic concessions, McKinley sent his war message to Capitol Hill.

  For more than a week a minority in Congress tried to force the President to recognize the Cuban rebels. Ohio’s Senator Joseph Foraker charged that otherwise “this intervention” would be converted from an act of “humanity” into an “aggressive conquest of territory.” On April 20, McKinley signed a joint resolution that did call for Cuba’s independence and authorized American intervention to help achieve it, but withheld recognition of the revolutionaries. The resolution also incorporated the compromise Teller Amendment, which disclaimed any United States intention to annex Cuba. Congress rallied behind the President only after Madrid broke relations with Washington, and by overwhelming majorities the House and Senate voted that a state of war existed with Spain. It was April 25, 1898. For the first time in fifty years the United States faced a foreign foe.

  America had three assets in its war with Spain—a strong navy, a small but professional army, and a well-thought-out strategy. It was the navy that first made itself felt, striking a dramatic blow halfway around the world from Cuba. On the morning of May 1, six U.S. cruisers and gunboats under the command of Commodore George Dewey steamed into Manila Bay and confronted Spain’s larger but antiquated Asian fleet. For five hours, amidst sweltering heat and drifting clouds of gunsmoke, Dewey’s ships battered the Spaniards; by noon, every Spanish ship had been wrecked, while the American squadron was all but untouched. Dewey’s telegram announcing the victory—which took seven days to reach America from the Philippines —electrified the country.

  All eyes now turned to Cuba—and to the United States Army. Although rearmed since the Indian wars, the 25,000-man Regular forces were inadequate to challenge Spain on the ground, so McKinley made the traditional call for volunteers. Some 200,000 men, including Secretary Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan, joined the Volunteer regiments, while Congress authorized the army to enlist another 36,000 Regulars. This tenfold increase over a matter of weeks swamped the peacetime bureaucracy of the War Department. Conflicts between Washington and the states over who would pay for what, the almost complete lack of trained officers and of support personnel for the Volunteers, and the usual politicking in the state capitals all multiplied confusion. Instead of waiting for the new recruits to finish training, McKinley threw into action the Regular and national guard units that were available.

  On May 30, the President instructed General William Shafter to seize the port of Santiago, where a Spanish squadron under Admiral Pascual Cervera was blockaded by the navy’s battleships. After an unseemly rush for the transports—where the Rough Riders saw their first action, against other U.S. soldiers trying to get aboard the overcrowded boats—Shafter’s command sailed for Cuba. The fleet arrived off Santiago and began to bombard the invasion beaches, much to the annoyance of the rebel force waiting to run an iron pier out for the Americans. Once the seasick invaders were ashore, Shafter began a cautious advance toward the fortified city. Ex-Confederate Joseph Wheeler, however, dashed ahead with his brigade of dismounted cavalry and collided with a Spanish delaying force. Before the Americans could work through the jungle on their flank, the blue-clad Spaniards withdrew—prompting Wheeler to slip
back thirty years and shout, “We’ve got the damned Yankees on the run!”

  The main rebel army under Maximo Gomez, who had expected the Americans to land near Havana, was trapped by the Spanish in the center of the island, but one division was able to join Shafter, while other detachments worked to cut off Santiago. Thus reinforced, the American general pushed forward to San Juan Hill, where Spanish General Joaquin del Rey made a stand. Del Rey himself fell in the gallant defense, as the Spaniards shot down an American observation balloon, wrecked an artillery battery, and picked off scores of the attackers. Finally a brigade of Volunteers, stiffened with a black Regular unit led by John J. Pershing, pushed the Spanish off Kettle Hill and wheeled to charge the heights of San Juan. Sweating, holding their rifles across their chests as bullets clipped the waist-high grass around them, the Americans waded up San Juan Hill. The enemy broke, and Shafter advanced to the outskirts of Santiago.

  After one assault on the city failed, the Americans and Cubans settled down to besiege it. Meanwhile General Nelson Miles, captor of Geronimo and Chief Joseph, landed virtually unopposed in Puerto Rico, and the American expeditionary force in the Philippines closed on the capital city of Manila. The last dramatic moment of the war came on July 3, when Admiral Cervera sortied from Santiago harbor, catching the American fleet by surprise. Once again the Spanish ships were outclassed; Cervera watched in despair as one by one his cruisers blew up or ran aground. Captain John Philip of the Texas was also moved, reportedly exhorting his crew, “Don’t cheer, men—the poor fellows are dying.”

  With the defeat of Cervera, Spain had had enough. Representatives from the two powers met in Paris, and on August 12 the Spanish agreed to evacuate the Philippines and the Caribbean, pending a final peace treaty. After 113 days, the war was over.

  America’s striking success owed much to the astute strategy pursued by McKinley. Influenced in part by three years of staff discussions in the navy about the possible ways to fight Spain, the President from the first insisted on a limited war. The navy would defeat Spain’s fleet in the Caribbean and isolate her colonies, which the army would then seize. There would be no need to attack Spain itself, and thus no need for a long conflict. McKinley held to this strategy through all the tactical shifts of the war, with outstanding results. At the price of 345 battle deaths, America had gained an empire.

  But did the country want that empire? The treaty with Spain, signed just before 1898 ended, transferred the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific island of Guam to the United States. The Spanish tried to convince the Americans to annex Cuba and thus assume the $400 million debt that Spain had run up on the island. But McKinley followed through with the Teller Amendment and insisted that Cuba be given its independence—under the supervision of an American army of occupation. The last imperial addition was Hawaii, taken as a stepping-stone to the Philippines. For five years, ever since a cabal of American seamen and sugar planters had deposed the native Hawaiian monarchy, the island’s government had asked to join the United States. Signing the joint resolution to take the islands, McKinley declared: “Annexation is not change; it is consummation.”

  This empire-building delighted economic imperialists, who saw rosy possibilities for economic expansion abroad. Many disagreed. Andrew Carnegie, whose steel plants had armored the ships that won the war, viewed America’s new empire with distaste. Hawaii was acceptable, and for keeping Cuba independent Carnegie had “nothing but praise for the President since he took his rightful place, that of Leadership.” But the Philippines, in the eyes of the steel magnate and the New England Anti-Imperialist League that he helped finance, was a poisoned fruit: a distant, hostile, foreign province that never could be Americanized. The revolt of the Filipinos, who after years of guerrilla war against Spain found their country occupied by an American army, underscored the arguments made by the opponents of empire. Carnegie asked, “Are we to exchange Triumphant Democracy for Triumphant Despotism?” When the government turned down the industrialist’s offer of $20 million to give up the islands, he resolved to oppose the peace treaty with Spain.

  In the Senate debate on the treaty, both sides laid out strong cases. Administration supporters pointed out that the treaty would bring peace with Spain, secure the Philippines against other European colonial powers, and open the way for American commercial interests in all the new territories. Moreover, both Foraker and Lodge assured the Senate that America would keep the Philippines only briefly, until the islanders were ready for self-government. The anti-imperialists, led by George Hoar of Massachusetts, denounced as un-American the taking of any foreign territory. “The downfall of the American Republic,” predicted Hoar, “will date from the administration of William McKinley.” The defection of Bryan and several other Democrats to the pro-treaty side finally tipped the scales in favor of ratification; the treaty passed with one vote to spare. Lodge wrote proudly to Roosevelt, “Aldrich and I … were down in the engine room and we do not get the flowers, but we did make the ship move.”

  Having emerged victorious in Washington, McKinley could now turn his full attention to the struggle in Manila. Filipinos under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo had declared the establishment of a Philippines republic in January 1899; in February, Aguinaldo’s forces clashed with the American occupying troops, and by the end of the month there was full-scale war. General Elwell Otis’s troops broke up the Filipinos’ semi-organized units in a series of bruising encounters, so that by November, Aguinaldo had to revert to guerrilla warfare. The revolt simmered on in the Philippines and American troops still occupied Cuba as the election of 1900 drew near.

  Bryan, nominated again by the Democrats, announced his intention to make imperialism the “paramount” issue—and then campaigned mainly on monopolies and silver. The Republicans countered with a litany of their successes in “filling the lunchpails” of working Americans, but the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt as McKinley’s running mate helped turn attention from economic progress back to foreign policy. Carnegie and other conservative anti-imperialists supported the President as the lesser of two evils. “McKinley stands for war and violence abroad,” declared the industrialist, “but Mr. Bryan stands for these scourges at home.” And Ignatius Donnelly, candidate of the radical Populists, viewed both with distaste: Democrats howled “about Republicans shooting negroes in the Philippines” and the Republicans denounced Democrats “for shooting negroes in the South. This may be good politics, but it is rough on the negroes.”

  Imperialism and the Full Dinner Pail won in November. McKinley bested Bryan by nearly a million votes and carried the electoral college by two to one. The success could not be attributed to any one set of issues either domestic or foreign, however; probably the election was more a personal triumph for William McKinley and the Republican philosophy that the Ohioan had come to represent. To a friend McKinley reflected, “I can no longer be called the President of a party; I am now the President of the whole people.”

  Of all the people save one. In September, McKinley journeyed to New York to speak at the Buffalo Exposition. On the 5th—Presidents’ Day—he addressed a crowd of 50,000 on the theme that “expositions are the timekeepers of progress.” The next day, after a trip to Niagara Falls, he stopped at the Temple of Music for a brief public reception. Waiting in line to shake the President’s hand was Leon Czolgosz, a young anarchist. Czolgosz shot McKinley twice; one bullet pierced the President’s stomach and lodged somewhere in his back. Guards knocked the assassin down as the stunned President sank slowly into a chair.

  For a week McKinley lingered, and the nation hung on the confusing reports of his condition. The doctors tried in vain to locate the bullet; nobody suggested that the experimental X-ray machine, on display at the Exposition, be used. McKinley died on September 14; Vice-President Roosevelt took the oath of office the same day. In Canton, Ohio, as final rites were performed for the departed President, every factory fell silent.

  PART III

  Progressive Democra
cy?

  CHAPTER 7

  The Urban Progressives

  IN THE VERY LAST years of the nineteenth century, at the very height of McKinley Republicanism, a bracing weather change spread through urban America—a weather change that would peak during the first two decades of the new century, transform the nation’s cultural climate, and then fade away. This profound metamorphosis, which came to be known as progressivism, was as puzzling as it was pervasive. Why did it arrive when it did—during an era of prosperity? What caused it? What composed it? What enduring effect did it have? For at least a century historians would debate the answers to these questions.

  The timing of the rise of progressivism is not all that mysterious, and helps to explain the cause. During the 1890s, Western Europe was undergoing intellectual and social phases—Bismarckian “socialism,” British social liberalism and Fabianism, French radicalism—to which Americans could not be immune. The incubation of American progressivism during prosperous times was not surprising, because it is not affluence but deprivation that causes people to “hunker down” in their homes and their ideas. For Americans, the nineties had been filled with tumult—the Populist revolt, the sharp and savage recession of ’93, the searing Homestead and railroad strikes, Bryanism, Coxey’s army, war with Spain. These crises made for conflict, the catalyst of new ideas.

  But even more, progressivism was a response to the rise of the industrial city and its human wants and needs—most basically, for security. Much has been made of the status anxieties of members of “the old-family, college-educated class that had deep ancestral roots in local communities and often owned family businesses, that had traditions of political leadership,” that had supplied leadership for civic improvement, and was now being pushed aside by “the agents of the new corporations, the corrupters of legislatures, the buyers of franchises, the allies of the political bosses,” in Richard Hofstadter’s words. But these threats to status paled next to the stark psychological and economic needs of masses of poor people in the big industrial cities.