Spanish American War 1898

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Spanish American War 1898

• America Becomes an Empire

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The Spanish-American War (April-July 1898) was a
brief, intense conflict that effectively ended
Spain's worldwide empire and gained the United
States several new possessions in the Caribbean
and the Pacific. Preceded by a naval tragedy, the
destruction of USS Maine at Havana, Cuba, the
Spanish-American War featured two major naval
battles, one in the Philippines and the other off
Cuba, plus several smaller naval clashes. The
Navy also provided essential support for U.S.
Army and Marine Corps forces ashore. The war made
public heroes of a number of U.S. Navy officers,
and marked the beginning of an extremely dynamic
period in the Navy's history.
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Spanish Background

• For several centuries Spains position as a world
  power had been slipping away. By the late 19th
  century the nation was left only a few scattered
  possessions in the Pacific, Africa, and the West
  Indies. Guerilla forces were operating in the
  Philippines, and had been present in Cuba for
  decades. The Spanish government did not have the
  financial resources or the manpower to deal with
  these revolts and thus turned to expedients of
  building concentration camps to separate the
  rebels from their rural base of support.

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Yellow Dog Journalism

• William Randolph Hearst was the founder of the
  Hearst Corporation.  During his career in
  newspapers, magazines, radio and film
  broadcasting, he changed the face of the way mass
  media would be seen throughout the world.

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Joseph Pulitzer

• In 1883, he purchased the New York World, a not
  too successful daily owned by the financier Jay
  Gould. Within a year, Pulitzer had turned the
  paper around, building its success on a steady
  diet of titillation and crusading, catching the
  readers attention with large headlines and flashy
  illustrations

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Yellow Dog Journalism

• The outbreak of the second Cuban Revolution in
  1895 was seen as a major news story, and many
  papers, conservative, yellow and middle of the
  road, were soon scrambling to get reporters on
  the scene. Most of these "journalists" go no
  closer to the fighting than Key West or the bar
  of the Hotel Inglaterra in Havana.

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Yellow Dog Journalism

• From these comfortable positions, they concocted
  stories of wild fantasy, based upon slanted press
  releases coming from the "Cuban Junta", the
  Revolution's propaganda agency in the US, or from
  their own fertile imaginations. Readers were
  treated to a steady diet of battles that never
  happened, Cuban victories which never occurred,
  exaggerated stories of Spanish brutality and such
  flights of fancy as repeated stories of
  beautiful, savage Cuban "Amazon" warriors,
  serving the Revolution as Cavalry and showing no
  mercy to the hated Spaniard

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Stephen Crane (standing)

• Crane's greatest novel, The Red Badge of Courage
  (1895),
• was a correspondent for Pulitzers World  during
  the Spanish American war.

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At 940 on the evening of 15 February, a terrible
explosion on board Maine shattered the stillness
in Havana Harbor. Later investigations revealed
that more than five tons of powder charges for
the vessel's six and ten-inch guns ignited,
virtually obliterating the forward third of the
ship. The remaining wreckage rapidly settled to
the bottom of the harbor. Most of Maine's crew
were sleeping or resting in the enlisted quarters
in the forward part of the ship when the
explosion occurred. Two hundred and sixty-six men
lost their lives as a result of the disaster 260
died in the explosion or shortly thereafter, and
six more died later from injuries. Captain
Sigsbee and most of the officers survived because
their quarters were in the aft portion of the
ship.
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USS Maine Entering Havana
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Sinking of USS Maine

• USS Maine, a second-class battleship built
  between 1888 and 1895, was sent to Havana in
  January 1898 to protect American interests during
  the long-standing revolt of the Cubans against
  the Spanish government. In the evening of 15
  February 1898, Maine sank when her forward
  gunpowder magazines exploded. Nearly
  three-quarters of the battleship's crew died as a
  result of the explosion

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Funeral In Cuba

• Funeral procession for crewmen killed when the
  ship exploded, in the streets of Havana, Cuba,
  shortly after the disaster.

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April 11th 1898

• McKinley asks for war
• Teller Amendment which tied Americas hands
  after the war by guaranteeing a free Cuba at the
  end of the war. Europe watched for the outcome
  and German aided Spain

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Manila Bay

• Before dawn on 1 May 1898, Commodore George
  Dewey's flagship Olympia led seven U.S. Navy
  cruisers and gunboats into Manila Bay. By 8 AM
  that morning Dewey's Asiatic Squadron had located
  and destroyed virtually the entire Spanish naval
  force in the Philippines. Damage to the American
  ships was negligible, and their crews suffered no
  fatalities and few injuries.
• The Battle of Manila Bay was a singular
  demonstration of the daring and decisive
  application of sea power. In a few hours, Dewey
  had eliminated any threat that the Spanish Navy
  might pose to U.S. Far Eastern commerce and
  placed Spain's centuries-long rule of the
  Philippines in grave jeopardy. A few days later,
  with the capture of Cavite arsenal, he also
  gained a repair and refueling base, essential for
  maintaining his squadron under wartime conditions
  thousands of miles from home.

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Commodore George Dewey

• Commander of the Pacific fleet
• Flag Ship USS Olympia
• Destroyed Spanish Fleet at Manila Bay
• You may fire when ready Greedly

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Commodore Dewey

• Dewey was promoted to Commodore in 1896, to Rear
  Admiral in May 1898 and to Admiral of the Navy in
  1899.

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USS Olympia in Manila Bay
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Sunk Spanish Wooden Ship Manila Bay
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US Navy Span Am War

• U.S. Navy cruisers came in great variety in 1898,
  all armed with medium caliber or smaller guns.
  Excluding the larger armored cruiser type, these
  warships were "protected cruisers", with a steel
  armored deck covering machinery and ammunition
  magazines. In some smaller cruisers, however,
  this armor was so thin that the ships really
  deserved to be called gunboats. Cruiser missions
  included providing presence throughout the World,
  fleet scouting, commerce protection and raiding,
  all vital missions for a maritime nation.
• Generally, the Navy's cruisers were fairly fast
  by the standards of their day and had good
  seagoing characteristics. While a few still
  retained sails to enhance operating range, the
  introduction of triple-expansion engines a decade
  earlier had made possible a high standard of
  endurance under steam alone.
• During the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Navy
  actively employed fifteen ships rated as cruisers

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USS Olympia

• USS Olympia (Cruiser 6) was a heavily-armed
  protected cruiser that became the Asiatic
  Squadron flagship in 1895, soon after she first
  commissioned. Under Commodore George Dewey, she
  led U.S. Navy forces in the Battle of Manila Bay
  and during subsequent operations in the
  Philippines area.Olympia's active service
  continued until 1922. The only survivor of
  America's Spanish-American War fleet, she is now
  a museum ship at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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USS Brooklyn Armored Cruiser
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Battleship USS Indiana
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Battleship USS Iowa
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USS Texas Cuban Waters
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Spanish Ship CUBA
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Rough Riders/Military Governor

• commander of the First Volunteer Cavalry (The
  Rough Riders)
• Following the war, he served as Military
  Governor of Cuba until 1902

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Sec. Navy Teddy Roosvelt

• As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt
  played an important role in war preparations. He
  resigned that post a few weeks after hostilities
  commenced and actively participated in combat as
  Lieutenant Colonel of the Army's First Volunteer
  Cavalry Regiment. Under Wood

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Cuba San Juan and Kettle Hill and Santiago

• The best-known image of the Spanish-American War
  is that of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback charging
  with his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba.
  But not only was the role of the Rough Riders
  exaggerated, it also displaced attention from the
  black soldiers who made up almost 25 percent of
  the U. S. force in Cuba.

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Make up of the troops

• Of the approximately 20,000 U.S. troops that
  participated actively in the Cuban campaign, the
  majority were regular soldiers (of whom 7,000
  were African Americans) and only 7,400 were
  volunteers. Most of the 200,000 volunteers
  recruited in the United States at the time of the
  war stayed at home in military camps only a
  third of them saw action in Cuba, the
  Philippines, and Puerto Rico. 

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Rough Riders

• The "Rough Riders" was formed from men from the
  western frontier of the United States - men who
  were used to life in the saddle and to the use of
  firearms - and from some eastern high-class young
  men who were athletic and also skilled in
  horsemanship and the use of guns...but for
  entirely different reasons.

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Rough Riders

• The unit included miners, cowboys preachers,
  tradesmen, writers, professors, athletes, and
  clergymen. Remarkably, there were men from each
  of the forty-five states then in existence, the
  four territories and from fourteen countries!
  There were even sixty Native Americans on the
  roster. 

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Regimental Flag of the Rough Riders
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10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers

• At the outbreak of war the army  utilized all
  four of its all black regiments.  Despite the
  prejudice of the time, these units were among the
  very few experienced combat troops in the army. 
  All four of these regiments had fought in the
  Indian wars

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10th Cavalry

• Created in 1866
• 1898 troops of the 10th, under the command of,
  Lt. John J. Pershing played a critical role in
  the war against Spain in Cuba. The future General
  Pershing was nick-named "Black Jack" because of
  his service with the 10th.

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Regimental Flag of the 10th
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John Black Jack Pershing

• He graduated from West Point in 1886 and served
  in the Spanish-American War, the Philippines
  Insurrection, the Mexican Expedition and was the
  overall American Commander in Europe during World
  War I.

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General Joe Wheeler

• U.S. Military Academy in 1859.
• 1861 he resigned from the army joined with the
  Confederate forces.
• Spanish-American War General Wheeler served as
  the major general of volunteers

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General Shafter

• Shafter, at age 63, was a corpulent three hundred
  pounds in weight and suffering from the gout. He
  was in no condition to command troops
• Overall Command at San Juan

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CUBA

• Newspapers Glorified Battles for their readers
• Unbiased reports depict a much less glorified
  version of events, where Spanish troops often
  more quickly surrendered than fought. The U.S.
  troops had far more problems dealing with heat
  and disease than with the Spanish forces, and
  within a month the island was in U.S. hands.

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Guantanamo Bay

• The first action in Cuba was the establishing of
  a base at Guantanamo Bay on 10th June by U.S.
  Marines
• a brief but violent phase of the Spanish-American
  war.
• The invasion was instrumental in the Battle of
  Santiago and the invasion of Puerto Rico

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The Hills Protecting Santiago

• The Battle of San Juan Hill was the bloodiest and
  most famous battle of the Spanish American War.At
  San Juan Hill, 750 Spanish soldiers were ordered
  to hold the heights against an American offensive
  on June 1, 1898. The struggle lasted for more
  than twelve hours, and cost at least two hundred
  American and an equal number of Spanish lives.

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Kettle Hill

• Theodore Roosevelt became a war hero when he led
  a charge up the Kettle Hill at the Battle of San
  Juan Hill outside of Santiago as lieutenant
  colonel of the Rough Riders Regiment on July 1st
• This attack was at the same time as the 10th went
  up San Juan

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Puerto Rico

• On May 10 1898, the first shot which marked
  Puerto Ricos entry into the Spanish American War
  was shot at USS Yale from Fort San Cristobal's
  cannon batteries. Fort San Cristóbal's gunners
  duel with US Navy warships during a day long
  bombardment May 12 1898 Six months later Puerto
  Rico becomes US territory by terms of the Treaty
  of Paris

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Guam

• The Battle of Guam was a bloodless conflict
  between the U.S and Spain during the Spanish
  American War. The capture of Guam gave the United
  States its first possession in the Pacific Ocean.

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USS Charleston

• Being that the Spanish had no adequate defenses
  and were without powder for their cannon,
  Governor Marina surrendered, despite his protests
  of being attacked without any knowledge of the

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Treaty of Paris

• Hostilities were halted on August 12th 1898. The
  Treaty of P aris was signed in Paris on Dec. 10th
  1898 and was ratified by the U.S. Senate on Feb.
  6th 1899
• The United States gained almost all of Spain's
  colonies, including the Philippines, Guam, and
  Puerto Rico. Cuba was granted independence, but
  the United States imposed various restrictions on
  the new government, including prohibiting
  alliances with other countries.

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President William McKinley

• President of the United States, 1897-1901

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Alfonzo III King of Spain

• was the posthumous son of Alfonso XII. The mother
  of Alfonso XIII, another Maria Cristina, acted as
  regent until her son came of age officially in
  1902. Alfonso XIII abdicated in 1931.