The Spanish-American War

The racism expressed in Jim Crow didn’t end at southern, or even American, borders. The vigorous rise of a belief in white, Anglo-Saxon superiority extended overseas. One popular writer of 1885 was the clergyman Josiah Strong,rift gold who argued that the United States was the true center of Anglo-Saxon virtue and was destined to spread it over the world. “This powerful race,” wrote Strong in the best-selling book Our Country, “will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond.” Then, borrowing from Charles Darwin, whose ideas were being floated around, Strong concluded, “Can any one doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the ‘survival of the fittest’?” Strong left no doubt as to who he thought the “fittest” was. Strong’s message found a receptive audience in the corridors of American power, and a few years later the message went out in a war with Spain. This was America’s muscle-flexing war, a war that a young and cocky nation fought to shake off the cobwebs, pull itself out of the economic doldrums, and prove itself to a haughty Europe.

Watching England, Germany, France, and Belgium spread their global empires in Asia and Africa, America fought this war to expand and protect its trade markets overseas, capture valuable mineral deposits, and acquire land that was tera gold
good for growing fruit, tobacco, and sugar. It was a war wanted by banks and brokers, steelmakers and oilmen, manufacturers and missionaries. It was a war that President McKinley didn’t seem to want, and a war that Spain certainly didn’t want. But there were a lot of powerful people who did want it. And, perhaps above all, it was a war the newspapers wanted. War, after all, was good for circulation. The ostensible reason for going to war with Spain was rift platinum to “liberate” Cuba, a Spanish colony. A fading world power, Spain was trying to maintain control over a native population that demanded its freedom, as America had demanded and won its independence a century earlier. When Spain sent a military governor to throw rebels into concentration camps, America acted the part of the outraged sympathizer. It was a convenient excuse. But an element of fear also played into the game. There was already one black republic in the Western Hemisphere, in Haiti. The United States didn’t want another one in Cuba.