Steppingstone to American empire: ‘Remember the Maine’

One hundred twenty years ago this month an American naval commission investigated the reasons for the explosion of the battleship, Maine, in the Havana, Cuba, harbor, killing a total of 260 sailors on Feb. 15, 1898.

The incident was the precipitating factor in the United States entering a major chapter in empire-building. To be sure, a sense of noblesse oblige also prevailed because for decades America had sparred with Spain’s abusive control of the island nation so close to Florida’s shores. Cuban rebels had tried to overthrow Spain’s colony, but their efforts resulted only in imprisonment in the harshest terms, as expressed by a U.S. senator visiting the camps in 1898:

“Torn from their homes, with foul earth, foul air, foul water, and foul food or none, what wonder that one-half have died and onequarter of the living are so diseased that they cannot be saved?”

The Maine was in Havana’s harbor to protect American citizens during the civil tumult. The cause of its sinking was not readily apparent, only the object of speculation largely revved up by an American press that at the time was in a frantic competitive war. And the press — and in turn Americans — were led to believe that a bomb planted by the Spanish government was responsible. As for the naval investigation that ended six weeks after the explosion, its conclusion upheld the bomb theory, but it was scarcely scientific, particularly in view of the fact that bomb-making and detonation were still in their rudimentary state.

Crude underwater, more torpedo-like bombs found their way into the Civil War, but the American Navy took little interest in this weaponry until the early 20th century. And to think that backward Spain could carry out such a tactic when aboveground bombs, such as those that punctuated the Haymarket Riot in Chicago in 1886, had a high incidence of malfunction, was a stretch. Not surprisingly, subsequent research in recent years has determined that the Maine likely blew up because of an accident, a fire in the coal bunker.

And the ship was a clunker in terms of its history, taking nine years to complete, with three years devoted just to armor plating. Little wonder that the kinks in the vessel would eventually emerge, especially as it was out of date by the time it hit the water.

American leaders from the time of President John Quincy Adams hoped to buy Cuba from Spain, proposing a purchase price of $130 million, but the Spanish responded that they “would prefer seeing it [Cuba] sunk in the ocean.”

So the Maine’s sinking led to a fever pitch of a public bent on war, with “Remember the Maine” a popular slogan. Spain saw that something had to be done, proffering an armistice in Cuba. But a war resolution by April 1898 was already a done deal, highlighted by a curious, stepping-back-from-annexation congressional amendment stating that once the engagement was over and Cuba was independent, the United States would “leave control of the island to its people.”

The first battle of the war, however, did not take place in Cuba, but half a world away, in the Spanishcontrolled Philippine Islands, with an American military success story by August 1898. The Cuban campaign was similarly swift and triumphant. Although fewer than 400 American soldiers had died in combat, more than 5,000 died from disease caused by bad food and poor sanitation.

By the terms of the peace treaty in December 1898, Cuba gained its independence; Spain also gave Puerto Rico to the United States, along with the island of Guam. And it reluctantly agreed to sell the Philippines for $20 million.

President William McKinley, like most Americans, knew little about the Philippines and was unsure what to do with the islands. He later confessed: “When we received the cable ... telling of the taking of the Philippines, I looked up their location on the globe. I could not have told where those darned islands were within 2,000 miles.” After much uncertainty, McKinley decided that public opinion favored taking the islands. “Put the Philippines on the map of the United States,” he said. But it took a three-year war with the Filipino people, who wanted independence, for America to actually control the islands.

Earlier in distant Hawaii in 1894, American planters declared the islands a U. S. republic, no matter the opposition of President Grover Cleveland. Then by 1898, with the first sweep of nation-swapping with Spain, Congress decided to annex Hawaii.

So from an American ship’s mysterious explosion near Florida an empire was born.