Join Prof CJ as he discusses:
- How tensions between the US and Spain over Cuba escalated in 1898, giving the Large Policy clique (covered in our last episode) the opportunity they’d been waiting for
- Spanish abuses (real, exaggerated, and fabricated) in Cuba, including those by Spanish General Weyler (a professed admirer of the American General W. T. Sherman), culminating in a policy of reconcentracion
- The explosion of the USS Maine in Havana, and some evidence as to what probably happened
- How the jingoistic Large Policy clique, uninterested in evidence, immediately pinned it on the Spanish and upped their drive for war (assisted by the press)
- How Theodore Roosevelt used his job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to put the Philippine Islands in Uncle Sam’s crosshairs, though it was on the other side of the world from Cuba
- Quotes from the warhawks, many of which are dripping with references to manliness and virility (see the George Carlin routine linked in last episode)
- How many Southerners were happy to assist the US federal government (which had brutally subjugated them just 30 years previously) to conquer Spaniards, and after them, Filipinos
- A smattering of antiwar quotes
- How Spain bent over backwards trying to avoid war and conceded to almost every American demand, to no avail – the American war party got its war
- The real story of the Teller Amendment
- A brief overview of the brief war against Spain
- The highlights & lowlights of the American war effort
- A cynical (realistic?) look at TR’s wartime experience
- Side effects of the war, including a major effect on the state of Florida; a new cocktail (the Cuba libre); and the North-South reconciliation brought about by the two regions teaming up against foreign enemies; and its role in Anglo-American rapprochement
- This war led directly to a nastier, longer, and costlier war, against the Filipinos, which we’ll cover next episode
Prof CJ’s Picks (buy from Amazon via these links to help support the show at no additional cost to you)