The Spanish-American War Begins

By the late 1890s, the Spanish Empire included Cuba, the Philippine Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico, along with various other territories around the world. The people in Cuba wanted to be independent; they did not wish to remain a colony of Spain.

In the United States, people read about Cuba’s struggle for freedom. Americans had sympathy for Cuba, because the United States had been England’s colony and had to fight for its independence, just as Cuba was Spain’s colony and was now fighting for its independence.

Although America had sympathy for Cuba, it did not immediately help Cuba with military aid in its struggle. Two events would change the minds of Americans: First, newspaper reports revealed that Spain had begun rounding up Cubans, placing them into concentration camps, and committing inhumane atrocities. Second, an American battleship parked in a Cuban harbor met a tragic end.

In January 1898, the naval ship USS Maine was sent to Cuba by President William McKinley. The ship was there to protect U.S. citizens who were in Cuba, and also to take some or all of those citizens back to the United States, so that they could be safely away from the fighting in Cuba.

The United States was still not part of the fighting. The ship was in Havana Harbor simply to protect and transport U.S. citizens. That changed suddenly, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

On the night of February 15, 1898, a Marine bugler played “Taps” aboard USS Maine, anchored in Havana’s harbor since late January. Captain Charles D. Sigsbee, the ship’s commander, finished writing a letter as the notes drifted off into the evening stillness. Just as he reached for an envelope, “a bursting, rending, and crashing roar of immense volume” rocked the ship, which trembled, listed to port, and settled into the mud. Out of 354 officers and men on board, 266 died in the explosion. What caused the disaster? No one knew for sure, but one thing was certain: The incident made war between the United States and Spain more likely.

More than 100 years later, the exact cause of the explosion remains uncertain. Did Spain attack the ship, fearing that the U.S. would use it to support the Cuba rebels? Did the Cubans themselves do it, hoping that the U.S. would assume it was done by Spain? Or was it simply an accident, a mechanical failure in the ship which allowed the coal and gunpowder in the ship to catch fire?

The ship’s destruction caused increasing tensions between Spain and the United States. In April 1898, the U.S. Congress confirmed a decision that the U.S. would not attempt to annex Cuba. (To “annex” means to take possession of land: Congress was saying that America wanted Cuba to be free and independent, and not controlled by the U.S.) At the same time, Congress also said that Spain must stop its military aggression toward Cuba. This was an application of the Monroe Doctrine.

In that same month, as a response, Spain declared war on the United States. The Spanish-American War had begun.

The war was brief. It ended in August 1898.

At war’s end, Cuba became a free and independent nation, and would enjoy that freedom for the next sixty years, until it was taken over by the international communist conspiracy.

Spain also surrendered three other territories to the U.S.: Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.

The United States developed a plan to make the Philippines into its own independent country, so that it would not be a part of the United States.

In the United States at the time, there was a strong anti-imperialist political movement, which argued that America should help small nations become independent, and that America should not try to annex these small nations. So, when America had a chance to take over Cuba and the Philippines, it didn’t. Instead, it helped those nations become their own countries.

Guam and Puerto Rico, on the other hand, remained part of the United States.

The Spanish-American War was brief: it lasted less than four months. But it changed the world, and today places like Guam, Cuba, The Philippines, and Puerto Rico are still shaped by this war.

Urbanization in America Between 1865 and 1900: Changing Technology, Changing Lifestyles

The United States became an independent and sovereign country in 1776, less than 4% of the nation’s population lived in cities. By the year 2020, more than 80% of the people lived in urban areas. This change affected society, culture, and technology.

When the nation began, the vast majority of citizens lived on farms. They could largely determine their own schedules. They decided when to chop wood, take care of the animals, tend the crops in the fields, and do housework. Farming families didn’t often look at their clocks.

When most people began living in cities, their schedule was determined by the starting times of the schools they attended, the streetcars and trolleys they rode, the opening and closing hours of stores and shops, and the working hours set by their employers. Clocks became important.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the urbanization trend accelerated. While cities had grown slightly until that year, they expanded dramatically afterward.

This sudden growth was due in part to technology.

Farmhouses were rarely more than two stories tall. Early cities often featured five-storied buildings, and the invention of the elevator suddenly allowed for ten- and twenty-storied buildings.

Large-scale industrial factories became common in cities after 1865. This created a need for workers. Thousands of people moved to cities and got jobs in factories.

The need for workers created opportunities for individuals and families to improve their lives. A steady wage from a factory job, combined with lower prices for ordinary products, lured people from the poor parts of the country. Prices were lower because industrialization allowed for the mass production of basic goods, as historian Wilfred McClay writes:

In 1790, 3.3 percent of the population lived in cities, defined as a population of eight thousand or more. By 1890, that number was 33 percent. The nation grew, but cities grew faster; the nation’s population increased by 12 times between 1800 and 1890, but the population of cities increased by 87 times. By 1890, there were not merely six cities but 448 cities with greater than eight thousand in population. And there were six metropolises by 1900 with populations totaling more than a half million. Much of this growth took place in the postwar years; Chicago tripled its population between 1880 and 1900, while New York grew from two million to three and a half million in the same years.

People moved to the cities not only from other parts of the United States, but also from other countries around the world. A new wave of immigrants came to America. Until the Civil War, most immigrants came from northern and western Europe. They were called the “Old Immigration.”

After the Civil War, people from southern and eastern Europe began coming to America. They were called the “New Immigration.”

There were also immigrants from Japan and China.

Many immigrants faced difficulties when they first arrived. Some could not speak English. Others had no money at all. Sometimes, their new neighbors — people who’d already lived in the United States for a while — were not happy to see them make a new home here.

But in the long run, the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, as Wilfred McClay explains:

Why did they come? Some came for the same reasons that immigrants had always come to America: to escape the poverty, famine, and religious or political persecution of their native lands. But many more were pulled to America by its promise than were pushed to it by the conditions in their homelands. Those who had seen relatives become successful in America were inclined to follow in their wake, and in time whole extended families were affected. Real wages were relatively higher in the United States than in Europe, and burgeoning American industries, ever in need of fresh sources of unskilled labor, were only too happy to appeal to members of economically struggling groups in European countries with the promise of steady employment and an ability to rise in the world. Such companies sought out immigrants in their native lands and actively recruited them to come to America and work in the steel mills and on the railroads. Many did just that.

“In the experiences of these people,” McClay says, industrialization, urbanization, and immigration converged. To tell the story about why and how large cities grew in America, one must also tell the story about technological developments, and about immigrants from other nations.

New technology like the electric lights, telephones, and recorded music were a part of these large, new, and growing cities, as were the people who found opportunities for a better life by moving into those cities.

By the year 1900, a new way of life — an urban life in which people rode powered streetcars, spoke on telephones, listened to recorded music, had electric lights after dark — a life which was scheduled and organized by the operating hours of schools, stores, shops, factories, cable cars, and trams — was offering serious competition to the agricultural way of life. Life on a family farm, which had once been the only option for the majority of Americans, was now merely one option — and a shrinking one at that.