Transcript
Under Protest
January 16–17, 1893
Honolulu, capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, January 1893. An American cruiser, the Boston, lies at anchor.
Late in the afternoon, 162 sailors and marines came ashore with rifles, a Gatling gun and a small cannon.
The American minister said they were there to protect American lives and property. That night they settled in behind Arion Hall, in full view of the queen's palace.
The next afternoon, an American citizen began reading a proclamation on the steps of the Government Building. Almost no one was listening.
It declared the monarchy over. Within an hour, the American minister recognized the new government.
Queen Liliʻuokalani That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America…
Queen Liliʻuokalani …until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon the facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representative and reinstate me…
She yielded to avoid bloodshed. She was betting on American fairness.
Five years later, the United States went to war to free Cuba, and came out of it with an empire.
Can a republic born in a revolt against an empire rule colonies of its own?
Can a republic born in a revolt against an empire rule colonies of its own?
A Wider Field
1890–1945; 1890–1896
Start in 1890.
Most Americans lived in the country, and many city streetcars still ran on horsepower.
In fifty-five years America fought a small war and two huge ones, and became the strongest power on Earth.
Twice, reformers asked the government to do more: the Progressives, then the New Deal.
Immigrants crossed the Atlantic. Black families left the South. Farm families fled the Dust Bowl.
War, reform, migration: three stories that run under this whole unit. Placing an event inside them is called contextualization.
Back to the 1890s, when American factories passed Britain's.
Farms and factories made more than Americans could buy. Business wanted customers overseas.
In 1893 railroads and banks began to fail, and the worst depression yet lasted almost four years.
The 1890 census said the frontier was gone. Frederick Jackson Turner saw where that energy was heading.
Frederick Jackson Turner The demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an interoceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas,
Frederick Jackson Turner and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries, are indications that the movement will continue.
Meanwhile Europe's empires carved up Africa and much of Asia, and Japan took Taiwan from China.
Where would Americans go next? The answer was the ocean.
Land Birds
1890–1899
Oceans need ships. In 1890, ships needed coal.
The Navy's war college met in a former poorhouse in Newport. Its star lecturer was Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan.
His 1890 book made one argument. Nations that command the sea command trade, and grow great. Its subject was Britain. Its readers took it as advice.
Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war,
Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores.
Back home, Congress approved the Navy's first three modern battleships: Indiana, Massachusetts and Oregon.
But a warship could only steam so far on a load of coal. No coaling stations, no navy.
Mahan gave the Navy its reasons. A minister, Josiah Strong, gave many Protestant Americans theirs.
Rev. Josiah Strong Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history—the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled.
Racism dressed as science and scripture.
In 1895, Washington told Britain, the world's greatest naval power, to settle its border quarrel with Venezuela.
Richard Olney To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.
Britain said no, then agreed to arbitration. The judges were two Americans, two Britons and a Russian. None was Venezuelan.
The Pear
1887–1898
Hawaiʻi's biggest business was sugar, sold tax-free in the United States under a treaty.
The McKinley Tariff of 1890 let foreign raw sugar in free and paid American growers a bounty. Hawaiʻi's edge was gone.
Three years before, an armed militia had forced King Kalākaua to sign the “Bayonet Constitution.”
His sister, Liliʻuokalani, became queen in 1891. In January 1893 she moved to proclaim a constitution restoring royal power.
A Committee of Safety of white businessmen called that a revolution, and made one.
On February 1, the American flag rose over the Government Building. The U.S. minister, John Stevens, had declared a protectorate.
That day he wrote to Washington.
John L. Stevens The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.
The new government ordered the Royal Hawaiian Band to swear loyalty. Nearly all its musicians refused.
President Cleveland withdrew the annexation treaty and sent James Blount to investigate.
On Blount's orders, the flag came down on April 1.
Grover Cleveland By an act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without authority of Congress,
Grover Cleveland the Government of a feeble but friendly and confiding people has been overthrown.
The new government refused to step aside, and Cleveland wouldn't use force. On July 4, 1894, it declared a republic.
In 1895 royalists rose and failed, and the republic arrested the queen. She abdicated to save her supporters from execution, and spent about eight months a prisoner in her own palace.
In 1897 annexation came back. Hawaiian patriotic leagues gathered 21,269 signatures against it and carried them to Washington.
Queen Liliʻuokalani I declare such a treaty to be an act of wrong toward the native and part native people of Hawaii.
The treaty stalled in the Senate, short of two-thirds. The protests worked, until a war.
Remember the Maine
1895–April 1898
Ninety miles from Florida, Cubans were fighting for independence from Spain.
The war began in 1895. An American tariff had just slashed Cuba’s sugar profits, and rebels burned cane to break Spain’s hold.
Spain’s general, Valeriano Weyler, herded country people into guarded towns to cut the rebels off. Historians estimate that 100,000 to 170,000 Cubans died in those camps, of hunger and disease.
In New York, Joseph Pulitzer’s World and William Randolph Hearst’s Journal fought for readers with Cuba’s suffering. The suffering was real. Some of the stories weren’t.
The most famous story: Hearst cabled an artist, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” It comes from a reporter who wasn’t there. No one has ever found the telegram.
In February 1898 the Journal printed a stolen letter from Spain’s minister. He called McKinley “weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd.” The minister resigned.
She had come on a friendly visit. On February 15, at 9:40 at night, the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor.
266 men died. Two days later, a New York newspaper said it knew why.
The country didn’t wait for the Navy. “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!”
McKinley had seen the dead at Antietam. He tried diplomacy. Congress wanted war.
William McKinley In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization,
William McKinley in behalf of endangered American interests which give us the right and the duty to speak and to act,
William McKinley the war in Cuba must stop.
Congress authorized force with a promise attached: the United States would not keep Cuba. Hold on to that promise.
Splendid
February–August 1898
Ten days after the Maine, the Navy secretary took an afternoon off. His assistant, Theodore Roosevelt, cabled Commodore Dewey in Hong Kong.
Theodore Roosevelt Keep full of coal.
Theodore Roosevelt …offensive operations in Philippine Islands.
John D. Long …the very devil seemed to possess him yesterday afternoon.
Neutral Britain ordered Dewey out of Hong Kong. With no American coaling station in Asia, he bought a British coal ship and took it along.
Commodore George Dewey You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.
In the line was the Boston, the cruiser from Honolulu.
At 7:35 Dewey broke off on a false report of low ammunition. The story given out was breakfast.
About 380 Spanish were killed or wounded. No American died in the fighting.
An American ship had carried the exiled revolutionary Emilio Aguinaldo home. On June 12, Filipinos declared independence at Kawit…
…under the protection of the Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, the United States of America.
In June a U.S. cruiser fired a few shots at Guam's empty fort. The Spanish officers who rowed out hadn't heard there was a war.
Roosevelt quit the Navy Department to fight with the Rough Riders. Their horses mostly stayed in Tampa, so the cavalry fought on foot.
On July 1 they charged up Kettle Hill beside the Black troopers of the 9th and 10th Cavalry. The Black 24th Infantry helped take San Juan Hill.
Those soldiers came home to Jim Crow. That November, a white mob overthrew the elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina.
Far more soldiers died of typhoid, malaria and yellow fever than of Spanish bullets.
John Hay It has been a splendid little war; begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that Fortune which loves the brave.
In July, Congress annexed Hawaiʻi by joint resolution, a simple-majority vote. On August 12, Spain agreed to stop fighting.
That same day, in Honolulu, the Hawaiian flag came down. The Hawaiian members of the band had asked to be excused.
One Vote to Spare
August 1898–February 1899
Now the hard question: what to do with the Philippines.
On August 13, Americans took Manila. Dewey had cut the cable, so nobody there knew the war was over.
The Spanish commander signaled he'd put up only a show of resistance if Filipino troops were kept out. They were.
Gen. James F. Rusling …we could not leave them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government…
Gen. James F. Rusling …there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them…
Rusling printed it more than three years after the visit. He had told a nearly identical story about Lincoln. And most Filipinos had been Catholic for three centuries.
The Treaty of Paris. Spain gave up Cuba. Puerto Rico and Guam went to the United States. So did the Philippines, for twenty million dollars.
On January 23, 1899, Filipinos inaugurated their republic in a church at Malolos. It had a written constitution.
On February 4, American and Filipino soldiers began shooting outside Manila. Two days later the Senate voted, behind closed doors. It needed two-thirds.
Eight days later, a promise of eventual Philippine independence tied the Senate, 29 to 29. Vice President Hobart voted no.
Does the Constitution Follow the Flag?
1899–1902
Historians call it the Philippine–American War. Americans at the time called it an 'insurrection.' An insurrection is a revolt against your own government.
Rudyard Kipling urged Americans to 'take up the White Man's burden.' Roosevelt sent it to Lodge with a review.
Theodore Roosevelt …rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion standpoint.
Pitched battles gave way to guerrilla war, and the fighting moved into the villages.
In 1902, soldiers told a Senate committee about the 'water cure.' It meant forcing water down a prisoner's throat until he talked.
In 1901, at Balangiga on Samar, Filipino fighters attacked an American company. Forty-eight of its 74 men were killed or missing.
A court-martial found that General Jacob Smith then ordered: 'I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me.'
Asked for an age limit, Smith said ten.
In Batangas, American officers forced civilians into guarded zones. Less than four years earlier, Americans went to war partly over Weyler's camps in Cuba.
The war's dead
Over 4,200 American and over 20,000 Filipino combatants died. As many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died of violence, famine and disease.
Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901. Roosevelt declared the war over on July 4, 1902. Fighting went on in the Moro south.
The North American Review printed a letter from Aguinaldo's representative, signed 'Semper Vigilans.'
'Semper Vigilans' …abandoned her traditions and set up a double standard of government—government by consent in America, government by force in the Philippine Islands.
Source it the way the exam asks: point of view, purpose, situation, audience. One side, arguing to Americans, mid-war. That limits what it can prove.
At home, the Anti-Imperialist League's platform spoke of 'the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror.'
Mark Twain proposed a flag for the Philippines.
Mark Twain …we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.
Does the Constitution follow the flag? The Court said: not fully. Justice Brown called Puerto Rico 'belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States.'
In Chicago, Finley Peter Dunne's fictional bartender, Mr. Dooley, had a theory.
Mr. Dooley …no matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme coort follows th' iliction returns.
Spain had granted Puerto Rico self-rule in 1897. Eugenio María de Hostos asked for a plebiscite. The Foraker Act had Washington pick the governor. The Navy ran Guam.
The Platt Amendment let Washington intervene in Cuba and take land for naval stations, like Guantánamo. Cuba had to write it into its own constitution before the Army left.
Speak Softly
1899–1904
With the Philippines came a door to China.
In 1899 John Hay asked the powers to keep China open to all traders. Their replies were vague. Hay announced they had agreed.
In 1900 about 2,000 American troops, most shipped from the Philippines, helped break the Boxers' siege of Peking.
In 1901 an assassin killed McKinley. Theodore Roosevelt, forty-two, became president. His favorite proverb: speak softly and carry a big stick.
Remember the Oregon? In 1898 it steamed around South America to Florida in 66 days. Roosevelt wanted a canal.
Colombia's senate rejected America's terms. In November 1903 Panama rebelled, with a U.S. warship offshore. An American-managed railroad wouldn't carry Colombia's troops.
A Frenchman, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, signed Panama's treaty two hours before Panama's delegates reached Washington. The United States got the canal zone forever.
Later he put it himself.
Theodore Roosevelt I took the Isthmus, started the canal, and then left Congress—not to debate the canal, but to debate me.
In 1904 he added a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine:
Theodore Roosevelt …in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.
The Senate, the Court and the voters said yes. Hawaiʻi's queen, the Philippine Republic and the Anti-Imperialist League said no.
One of those coaling stations would matter more than the rest.