Causes of the Spainish American War

By the time William McKinley took office in 1897, the Cuban insurrection had been active since 1895. The outgoing Grover Cleveland administration had worked toward a peaceful solution through diplomatic means with Spain, the colonial power ruling Cuba. McKinley, like Cleveland, sought to avoid United States intervention and war with Spain. Events in Cuba and in the United States, however, forced McKinley to ask Congress for a declaration of war in April 1898.

American citizens were well aware of the inhumane treatment of the Cuban people by the Spanish, particularly the drastic measures of Valeriano Weyler, governor-general of Cuba since 1895. American newspapers regularly printed sensational stories of accused Spanish atrocities, telling readers who then put pressure on the Congress to intervene in Cuba. These stories comprised the “yellow journalism” of the period, led by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

General Weyler’s order requiring the concentration of rural Cubans in camps was a measure that stole away their normal livelihood. Senator Redfield Proctor, addressing the Senate in March 1898 after completing a fact-finding tour of Cuba, focused strongly on the “reconcentrados.” It was the difficulty of the Cuban people that most affected him: “The spectacle of a million and a half of people, the entire native population of Cuba, struggling for freedom and deliverance…”

In February 1898 the battleship USS Maine steamed into Havana harbor, apparently to protect American lives and property, although some researchers note that the recent presence of German warships may have also played a role in the decision to send the vessel. On the evening of February 15th, the ship exploded and sank with a loss of 266 lives. A question into the event concluded that an external mine had caused the disaster but there was no evidence linking to the explosion.

A week before the destruction of the Maine, the New York Journal printed a letter stolen from the Spanish...