Episode #232 - Why President McKinley? (Part III)

There's a story out there that the USS Main was always considered unlucky.

The American Armored Cruiser first had her keel laid in the New York Naval Yard on October 17, 1888.

At the time, she was meant to represent America's growing naval ambitions, a modern first-rate ship for a force that was eager to be perceived as a modern first-rate navy.

But the construction of the main was beset by delays and calamities.

A fire in the shipbuilding yard's drafting room destroyed the original blueprints for the vessel, which then had to be painstakingly redrafted by the naval architects.

Even after the ship was floated in 1890, the Navy was forced to wait a solid three years before the nickel-steel plates needed for the main's armor were delivered.

This was exasperated by one of the most bitterly fought labor disputes in American history.

The so-called homestead strikes and industrial lockouts from 1889 to 1892 saw unionized steel workers in Pittsburgh violently clash with company-hired mercenary strikebreakers.

Sixteen people were dead before the steel nickel plants were once again operational.

The result was that the main would not be commissioned until 1895, and by that time, naval technology had progressed at such a pace that the armored cruiser was already considered out of date.

Then came a run of bad luck at sea.

Within her first six months of service, the ship had run aground.

A year later, three of the main sailors died when a group were washed overboard near Cape Hatteras.

Just two days after that tragedy, a piece of ammunition exploded on the main, seriously injuring two more sailors.

In the spring of 1897, the main's new captain, Charles Sigsby, attempted to bring the ship into New York Harbor through the infamous Hell Gates.

This maneuver was complicated by the fact that at the moment the ship did not have a dedicated pilot.

After a near collision with a crowded excursion steamer, the captain was forced to ram the main directly into Pier 46.

Now, when you list out all these accidents and misfortunes, it can be easy to see a pattern.

You can convince yourself that the main was born under a bad sign.

This was a cursed ship.

Superstitious types will even point to a photograph of the main's christening in 1890, where the Plimsoul line number 13 can be spotted over the head of the woman smashing the ceremonial champagne on the ship's hull.

And if you don't know, 13 is a famously unlucky number, trichodecaphobia and all that.

For the superstitious, this photograph has been seen as an omen.

But as any student of maritime history can tell you, there are very few ships out there with a spotless service record.

It's quite common for ships to be accidentally run aground, for sailors to be tragically washed overboard in foul weather, or for ammunition to accidentally combust.

The further back in history you go, the more common these events become.

The main's construction and first two years at sea were certainly peppered with mishaps.

But you could argue that this was not particularly out of the ordinary for the 1890s.

I have a suspicion that the reason these embarrassments and minor tragedies have been given so much attention is because people see them through the lens of the USS Maine's ultimate fate.

In February of 1898, while harbored in Havana, Cuba, the USS Maine exploded.

The devastating blast ignited the two forward magazines where the ship's ammunition was stored, splitting the vessel and sending it quickly to the bottom of the bay.

261 American sailors, officers, and marines were killed.

At the time, this made the sinking of the Maine the deadliest day for the American armed forces since the disastrous Battle of Little Bighorn, some 21 years previous.

The sinking of the Maine was more than just a tragic accident.

It was arguably one of the most consequential international incidents in American history.

The destruction of the cruiser is often pointed to as the event that all but ensured a war between America and Spain.

At the time, this national tragedy was touted as something that the American people should never forget.

Remember the Maine became one of the most important patriotic slogans of the era.

But what exactly were Americans being encouraged to remember?

The Maine had been ordered to Havana at a particularly sensitive moment in Spanish-American relations.

Even before the Maine's destruction, a number of high-profile Americans used explosive metaphors to describe just how provocative and potentially dangerous it was to send an American military vessel to Cuba.

The wife of the Maine's executive officer, the famous women's rights campaigner Evelyn Wainwright, said of the ship's deployment that, quote, you might as well send a lighted candle on a visit to an open cask of gunpowder, end quote.

This sentiment was echoed by President McKinley's trusted advisor, Mark Hanna, who compared the Maine's presence in Havana to, quote, waving a match in an oil well for fun, end quote.

But what exactly happened to the USS Maine?

Had this whole thing been a terrible accident, or had this been an act of war?

If this had been an attack, then who was responsible?

Before any of the facts were known, certain American newspapers declared that this had to be understood as an attack on America.

The day after the tragedy, the New York Journal used its headline to declare that, quote, the destruction of the warship main was the work of the enemy, end quote.

But who exactly that enemy was was a little less clear.

You see, in 1898, Cuba had been in the throes of a revolutionary struggle that dated back to the late 1860s.

The most recent phase of this conflict had been reignited in 1895, and three years of bitter fighting between Cuban independence fighters and Spanish imperial troops had ensued.

But by the time the Maine sailed into Havana Harbor in February of 1898, there were at least three different groups who potentially had a motive to destroy the American ship.

The Maine was officially on a peaceful mission to Cuba, but it was well known that the Americans had hoped that the presence of a United States cruiser in the harbor would help calm riots that had recently swept through the capital, or at the very least, discourage any violence towards Americans or American property.

So, who would want to destroy it?

Could it have been the Imperial Spanish Army?

Or perhaps the Maine had been attacked by Cuban rebels, hoping the destruction of the ship would drag the Americans into the war on the side of the rebel cause.

Could it have been attacked by the very people who were rioting in Havana in the weeks before the arrival of the ship?

These were largely disaffected Spanish soldiers and Cuban landowners who felt betrayed by the Spanish government and deeply frustrated by recent compromises and American meddling.

Then, of course, there is the very real possibility that the destruction of the main truly was an accident.

If so, then this was potentially the most horrifically timed maritime accident in the history of the world.

In 1898, few were willing to accept the possibility of an accidental explosion.

The timing and location of the main's destruction in the Havana harbor with tensions at a fever pitch with the Spanish Empire seemed far too meaningful to simply be a dark coincidence.

Two days after the destruction of the ship, the New York Journal declared that the national mood had swung firmly in the direction of war with Spain, blaring from its front page, quote, the whole country thrills with war fever, end quote.

But if there was one person who decidedly did not want a war with the Spanish Empire, it was the President of the United States, William McKinley.

Despite mounting pressure from Congress, the public, the New York-based news media, and war-minded fellow Republicans like Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley remained deeply committed to avoiding a conflict with the Spanish.

But the destruction of the Maine changed everything.

For me, this raises deeper questions about the nature of history.

Are human events the inevitable result of trends and forces in our society?

Or do the decisions and actions of individuals matter?

McKinley, the president, did not want a war, and yet a war became inevitable.

Could President McKinley have chosen another path, or had historical forces conspired to make this conflict unavoidable?

This series has been all about evaluating the historical legacy of President William McKinley, and there's no way to properly do that without examining the outbreak of the Spanish-American War.

Over the decades, there have been a number of competing interpretations of how President McKinley handled the conflict with the Spanish.

One school of thought has it that McKinley was simply blown by the winds of history.

His personal convictions were ultimately subsumed by American public opinion, the tenacity of the press, and the will of a war-crazy American Congress.

Another school of thought, closely associated with the influential American historians Charles and Mary Beard, proposes that this war occurred because of the, quote, increasing pressure for foreign markets and investment opportunities, end quote.

From this perspective, McKinley ultimately pursued the interests of the same industrialist class who got him elected, making the Spanish-American War the, quote, first war of commercial empire, end quote.

McKinley has been cast variously as a wrong-headed peacenik, an ineffectual blunderer, and a bloodthirsty imperialist planting the American flag in the name of capitalism.

Are any of these characterizations accurate?

Let's see what we can figure out today on our fake history.

Episode number 232, Why President McKinley, Part 3.

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story.

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This week, we are wrapping up a trilogy of episodes on the United States President William McKinley.

This is part three of three, so if you've not heard the first two parts, then please go back and give them a listen now.

The goal of this series has been to try and get a handle on the contested historical reputation of McKinley.

In the past year, the once obscure American president has become surprisingly relevant thanks to the interest paid to him by the current president of the United States.

Like many, I found myself asking, why McKinley?

So much about McKinley's political style and personal demeanor are so different from the current president.

It felt a little incongruous that Donald Trump would point to McKinley as a president worthy of emulation.

However, it's become clear to me that Donald Trump is actually reflecting a growing movement among conservative biographers, among them Republican strategist Carl Rove, who have been trying to revive McKinley's reputation.

In part one of this series, we spent some time looking at McKinley's early political life and his embrace of protective tariffs as a pet issue.

This gave me an opportunity to look at how tariffs worked in the late 19th century.

I tried to make the point that McKinley's tariffs had decidedly mixed results.

I also hopefully busted a few myths about how tariffs function and let some air out of some of the more exaggerated claims concerning the prosperity of the Gilded Age economy.

In part two of this series, I focused on the election of 1896 and compared different accounts of that contest found in modern biographies of President McKinley.

Many historians have argued that the election of 1896 was defined by the involvement of the American owner class.

McKinley was helped out of a personal financial crisis by a group of wealthy men and American businesses while he was governor of Ohio.

When he ran for president, McKinley's chief advisor, Mark Hanna, was able to put together the largest campaign fund in American history, thanks to donations from a number of prominent millionaires and large American corporations.

This money was used to blanket the country in persuasive, highly targeted campaign materials.

I also spent some time looking at the alleged unscrupulous tactics used by American business owners to turn out the vote for McKinley.

I discovered that there was considerable evidence that businesses threatened their employees with factory closures and canceled contracts if McKinley was not elected.

I also pointed out that the more recent biographies written by well-known American conservatives tended to glaze over or explain away many of these more uncomfortable aspects of McKinley's political rise.

Carl Rove's biography was particularly slanted in this regard and is downright misleading on the issue of unscrupulous methods used by pro-Republican businesses in 1896.

All of this has helped me understand why there's been a McKinley revival among certain modern Republican writers.

McKinley was an unabashedly pro-business politician who helped solidify the Republican Party as the party of, quote, expansive capitalism.

Critics have long accused McKinley of being little more than a political spokesperson for American big business.

And there's no doubt that McKinley saw America's wealthy industrialists and financiers as a key constituency.

Interestingly, his modern defenders, like Karl Rove, don't really deny that, so much as they subtly argue that this was not a bad thing.

In Rove's case, he does this while also soft-peddling moments in McKinley's biography where corporations openly started using money to influence Republican policy.

The fact that McKinley was a personable, humble, and empathetic leader also make him attractive for reappraisal.

The biographies of Karl Rove and Robert Mary both have as their subtext that government policies that prioritized the growth of American big business and the expansion of American power overseas are good things.

President McKinley's innate decency as a person can be used by a skillful author to cast those policies in a positive light.

But it's the question of American imperial power that really interests me today.

In many ways, William McKinley's struggle with his country's growing imperial ambitions at the turn of the century is one of the most complicated and hotly debated parts of his legacy.

While McKinley's political career had always been unabashedly pro-business, he was not a natural imperialist.

His experience in the Civil War, and particularly the brutal Battle of Antietam, had given him a healthy respect for the cost of war.

Even in those heated days after the destruction of the USS Maine, McKinley bluntly told an Army officer visiting the White House, quote, I shall never get into a war until I am sure God and man approve.

I have been through one war, I have seen the dead piled up, and I do not want to see another,

end quote.

And yet, just a few weeks later, the United States and the Empire of Spain were officially at war with one another.

So, what changed?

Why did America ultimately find itself at war with Spain?

Well, as it turns out, out, this question has divided historians.

So, on today's episode, I want to get into the debate of why the Spanish-American War happened and what it ultimately meant for President McKinley, America, and the world.

Now,

as a result, I'm not going to be getting into the blow-by-blow of this conflict once it was underway.

Apologies to the military history heads in the crowd.

But to properly break down all the action in the Spanish-American War, it would require at least another trilogy of episodes.

I'm going to be glazing over a lot of stuff here.

The focus is going to be on the why of it all.

So apologies if you wanted a super detailed breakdown of the Spanish-American War.

Perhaps I will return to it another day.

I'm hoping that what we explore today will give us all a better understanding of why this conflict happened at all.

This might also give us some insight into why McKinley's historical reputation has been so controversial.

All right.

With all that said, let's dive in.

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The election of 1896 had not been about Cuba.

McKinley campaigned on being a responsible and dignified defender of American prosperity, while his surrogates honed in on the wedge issue of the gold versus silver debate, casting McKinley's opponent, William Jennings Bryan, as a dangerous radical.

But foreign policy was barely mentioned at all by either candidate during the campaign.

But ironically, American foreign policy would define the presidency of of William McKinley.

In the late 19th century, Cuba was one of the few colonial possessions still held by the once mighty Spanish Empire.

In the early part of the century, much of Latin America gained its independence, reducing the once vast Spanish imperial holdings to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Americas, and the Philippines in a smattering of smaller islands in the Pacific.

The island of Cuba was of particular value to the Spanish as it was the world's leading exporter of sugar at the time.

There was also a certain romance and nostalgia associated with the island, as it had been part of the imperial fold since the time of Columbus.

Among imperially minded Spaniards, it was fondly nicknamed the Ever Faithful Isle.

But since the 1860s, the faithfulness of the island had been tested by a series of revolutionary movements.

In 1895, the struggle for Cuban independence was given fresh life by the tenacious General Máximo Gómez Ibaez.

Gomez had found himself fighting on various sides of independence struggles since he was a teenager in what is now the Dominican Republic.

After relocating to Cuba, he became deeply involved in the country's independence movement and is credited with revolutionizing the poorly equipped rebel army's military tactics.

This included the feared machete charge, which made the most of the army's decided lack of firepower.

In 1895, after years of the Spanish government dragging its feet on promised reforms, Gomez and his army of disaffected peasants and recently emancipated slaves had once again taken up arms against the Imperials.

This involved a highly controversial scorched earth campaign that targeted large sugar plantations run by Spanish loyalists.

The rebels sought to destroy Cuba's agricultural economy by burning acres of sugar crops.

They hoped that this would convince the Spanish monarchy that Cuba was no longer worth fighting What had been a $62 million crop in 1894 had been reduced to a $13 million crop by 1896.

This did not deter the Spanish, who responded by dispatching one of their most brutal colonial commanders to the island.

This was Vadareno Weyler Nicolau, a Spanish officer of German ancestry who had cut his teeth fighting insurgents in the Philippines.

Before his arrival, the Cuban rebels had successfully carried out a guerrilla campaign based around hit-and-run tactics.

After an attack, the rebels could blend in with the local population and effectively disappear.

Whaler countered this by implementing one of the most controversial military tactics of the age.

This was known as the reconcentration policy.

The goal was to violently empty the Cuban countryside of its people so the rebels would have nowhere to hide.

The island was divided into military districts, and everyone living in a given district was then given eight days to relocate to one of a series of concentration camps set up in fortified towns.

Anyone who did not relocate was assumed to be a rebel and was shot on sight.

As you might expect, this was a humanitarian disaster.

The forcible relocation of hundreds of thousands of Cubans into poorly provisioned, disease-infested encampments led to an untold number of deaths.

Estimates of exactly how many Cubans died as the result of reconcentration vary wildly, but it was easily 100,000 people and possibly as many as 400,000.

As stories of the Cuban war started to filter out of the country, there was a growing belief among many Americans that the United States military should intervene on the island.

You see, the unfolding tragedy in Cuba was being covered breathlessly by a certain section of the American press.

In New York, two media tycoons, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, were locked in a fierce competition for readership of their various newspapers.

This was the era of so-called yellow journalism, when the American press took a turn towards the sensational.

One of the best descriptions of this comes from Edwin Diamond's book, Behind the Times, where he explains that, quote,

it was said of William Randolph Hearst that he wanted readers to look at page one and say, Gee whiz,

then turn to page two and exclaim, Holy Moses, then at page three shout, God Almighty, end quote.

Both Hearst and his rival, Joseph Pulitzer, quickly came to realize that the war in Cuba provided fodder for the kinds of stories that could elicit exactly those kinds of reactions.

In the pages of Hearst's New York Journal and Pulitzer's New York World, readers found shocking tales of atrocities committed on the island.

These stories were often supplemented with photographs of emaciated children and destitute Cuban peasants.

Now, to be clear, there were very real humanitarian disasters unfolding in Cuba, but quite a lot of what was reported in those papers was learned thirdhand, could not be properly confirmed, and in many cases had been exaggerated.

The Spanish, and particularly Valerino Whaler, who was nicknamed the Butcher by the New York papers, were presented as diabolical monarchists who represented everything America had rejected during her own revolution.

Sympathy for the Cuban independence fighters was also encouraged by an active group of Cuban expatriates living in the United States, sometimes called the Cuban Junta.

These Cubans were particularly active in Florida, New York, and Washington, where they did their best to bring attention to the Cuban independence struggle and lobbied for positive media coverage of the Cuban cause.

But now we are tiptoeing up to what may be a historical myth about the start of the Spanish-American War.

It's been suggested that yellow journalism made the war inevitable.

The idea is that the newspapers owned by Hearst and Pulitzer whipped up American public opinion to the point where they demanded a war with Spain.

In a popular American history textbook published in 1956, historian Thomas A.

Bailey summed up this belief when he wrote, quote, a frenzied public lashed by the yellow press clamored for war to free the abused Cubans.

Overborne, the president finally yielded and gave the people what they wanted, end quote.

The idea that Hearst and Pulitzer were instrumental in whipping the American public into an unstoppable war-mongering force is sometimes illustrated by a fairly dubious quote attributed to William Randolph Hearst.

The story goes that in January 1897, Frederick Remington, a sketch artist sent to Cuba to provide images of the ongoing rebellion for Hearst's New York Journal, sent a cable to his boss stating,

Everything is quiet.

There's no trouble here.

There will be no war.

I wish to return, end quote.

In reply, Hearst allegedly wired back, quote, please remain.

You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war, end quote.

Now, this story is almost certainly a historical myth.

The telegrams in question have never been produced, and Hearst himself denied ever sending a telegram that said anything of the sort.

This story also does not come from Frederick Remington, who never once spoke of the exchange.

Also, the story doesn't really make sense, as Cuba was far from quiet in 1897.

Hearst did not need to furnish a war, as a war was already going on.

Just, you know, not a war with the United States yet.

It turns out this story story was first published in a 1901 book by a journalist named James Creelman, who historian of the press W.

Joseph Campbell has described as having, quote, a keen taste for hyperbole and a fondness for overstatement, end quote.

Creelman was working in Europe at the time of this alleged incident and never explained how he learned about it.

But the story makes for a perfect historical myth.

It's short, memorable, and seems to communicate a deeper truth about the role Hearst's papers played in the lead-up to the war.

Remember, myths often communicate what people think ought to have happened.

But despite the common belief that Hearst helped, quote-unquote, furnish the war, Most historians are far more measured when assessing the role of the press in whipping up war fever.

Historian Richard F.

Hamilton's exhaustive study, President McKinley, War and Empire, has demonstrated that while Hearst and Pulitzer's papers in New York certainly advocated loudly for American intervention in Cuba, the broader American press was less feverish.

He's shown that in papers published outside of New York, you find a larger diversity of opinion concerning U.S.

intervention in Cuba, even after the destruction of the USS Main.

There were certainly many voices loudly calling for war with Spain, but it wasn't everyone.

W.

Joseph Campbell cautions that simply blaming the yellow press for the war, quote, strips away complexity and offers an easy-to-grasp, if badly misleading, explanation about why the country went to war in 1898, end quote.

The press was certainly a piece of the puzzle, but Randolph Hearst did not make the Spanish-American War.

Another school of thought tells us that this war happened because many powerful Americans had been harboring dreams of annexing Cuba for decades.

As early as 1823, Thomas Jefferson had mused that Cuba would be, quote, the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of states,

quote.

John Quincy Adams similarly wrote that, quote, the annexation of Cuba will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself, end quote.

In 1848, President James K.

Polk even offered the Spanish $100 million for the island, which was promptly rebuffed.

Then, in 1881, James G.

Blaine, the same American Secretary of State who hoped McKinley's tariffs would bring about the annexation of Canada, wrote of Cuba, quote, That rich island, the key to the Gulf of Mexico, is, though in the hands of Spain, a part of the American commercial system.

If ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American and not fall under any other European domination.

End quote.

Ah, James Blaine, we can always count on you to lay the imperialist cards on the table.

In the 1890s, there was a growing group of American congressmen and other politicians who started arguing for a more aggressive and interventionist American foreign policy.

These folks were nicknamed the Jingoes, or the Jingoists.

This was a somewhat pejorative nickname for folks who had embraced a certain type of, let's call it chauvinistic patriotism.

The Jingos, chief among them Under Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, argued that America had a right to assert itself internationally and challenge the other great powers.

This meant growing an empire that could rival that of Britain or France, or at the very least, check the rising ambitions of Germany and Japan.

If that meant war, then so be it.

It's been argued that the crisis that was unfolding in Cuba in the late 1890s was cynically used by those eager to annex the island.

The humanitarian crisis gave the Americans moral cover to act,

or so goes the interpretation.

But the difficulty in all of this is President McKinley himself.

He many times stated loudly that he was not interested in, quote, jingo nonsense.

Right up to the destruction of the main, President McKinley seems to have been resolutely opposed to intervening in Cuba.

While speaking to the outgoing President Grover Cleveland on the eve of McKinley's inauguration, the new president was seemingly quite sincere when he said this of intervening on the island, quote, if I can go out of office at the end of my term with the knowledge that I had done what lay in my power to avert this great calamity, I shall be the happiest man in the world, end quote.

President McKinley wanted to avoid a war.

And in this way, he was reflecting the priorities of American big business.

Now,

that might seem counterintuitive.

As I mentioned earlier, there's been a current in American history writing that has characterized the Spanish-American War as the, quote, first war of commercial empire.

But the American business community, including many of the millionaires and corporations who had so generously given to McKinley's election campaign, were resolutely opposed to any American military adventures.

The worry was that a war would be expensive, would disrupt international trade, and would encourage the government to devalue the currency.

Perhaps their gold man would embrace silver to pay for war expenditures.

McKinley's influential backers did not want a war.

The so-called military-industrial complex had yet to fully take shape in the United States.

So we should be careful with any interpretations that tell us that American business drove the country into war.

While many American businessmen would eventually embrace this conflict, they weren't necessarily pushing for it.

So, McKinley pursued a path of diplomacy with Spain.

With the humanitarian crisis worsening and calls for American intervention growing from members of Congress, McKinley tried to chart a way out of a direct confrontation.

In late 1897, McKinley had his diplomats present a communique to the Spanish government, which explained that America had the right to intervene in Cuba due to the ongoing crisis and the disruption that had been caused to the global economy.

However, the United States did not wish to intervene before Spain could create peace on the island that was, quote, honorable to herself, just to her Cuban colony, and mankind, end quote.

But this offer came with a timetable.

If Cuba was not at peace by November 1st, 1898, then America would need to reassess its position.

Now, at first, this communique seemed like a diplomatic triumph for William McKinley.

The Spanish parliament had recently turned over and was now being headed by the liberals, who had long advocated for a more lenient approach to Cuba.

They responded by first dismissing the controversial General Whaler and recalling him to Spain.

The government also proposed that while Cuba would remain under Spanish rule, the island would be given a new level of autonomy.

This included a representative parliament, albeit one that could be called and dissolved by the Spanish governor, and with an upper chamber made up of Spanish appointees.

But for any of that to happen, the rebels needed to surrender.

Spain could not be seen as losing the war.

But this ended up pleasing absolutely no one in Cuba.

The offers of autonomy were simply too little, too late.

The Cuban rebels led by Gomez had fought for too long to accept anything other than full independence.

On the other side, Cuban landowners and other loyalists felt betrayed by the Spanish government for making any concessions to the rebels.

Many loyalists believed that as soon as the rebels got any power, they would be immediately targeted.

Then there were the soldiers who had fought under Whaler and were disgusted by his dismissal.

Many of the soldiers had bought into Whaler's uncompromising tactics and were angry that people that they perceived as bleeding hearts back in Spain had undercut the success of their campaign.

The The brutality of the reconcentration policy couldn't have all been for nothing.

So, in February of 1898, riots swept through Havana, led mostly by those Whaler loyalists.

The riots prompted the ostensibly peaceful deployment of the USS Maine, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, this is one decision where I think President McKinley really erred.

If he was serious about peace, then sending the main to Havana was incredibly foolish.

If McKinley seriously thought an American warship would calm the situation, then he totally misunderstood what was happening in Cuba.

If you wanted to make the case that President McKinley was a blunderer, then the decision to send the main to Havana would be exhibit A.

After the main was destroyed, segments of the American press immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Spanish had been behind the explosion.

As you might expect, the most egregious of these was William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, which, two days after the sinking of the main, declared on its front page, quote, torpedo hole discovered by government divers in the Maine, startling evidence of Spanish treachery revealed, end quote.

This was hugely misleading, especially considering that no such torpedo hole had been found two days after the sinking of the ship.

The president certainly did not jump to that conclusion.

and instead deferred to the work of a Navy-led investigation of the wreck.

But in March, when the Navy divers concluded that the wreckage showed some indication that the hull may have been breached by an external explosion, the journal once again weighed in with the accusatory headline, Spain Guilty.

Now, since 1898, there have been four successive examinations of the wreck of the main.

One in 1911 agreed that a mine likely sunk the ship.

But then in 1976, a study done by Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover made a very strong case that the ship was likely destroyed because of an accident.

You see, the main had a design flaw, which was causing issues in a number of American Navy ships at the time.

The coal bunker on the main shared a bulkhead with with the ammunition magazine.

This meant that heat could pass from the coal bunker to the magazine.

Coal bunker fires were incredibly common in this era as coal kept on ships could spontaneously combust.

The study concluded that a coal bunker fire likely broke out on the main, which heated the bulkhead and then ignited the ammunition.

This study also determined that the holes in the main, which previous divers had assumed were created by a mine, could have just as easily been created by an internal explosion.

So the 1976 study made a very strong case that the main blew up accidentally.

But then in 1998, there was another study done, which used computer modeling.

That study once again raised the possibility of a mine or some other form of external explosion.

Since 1998, experts have debated which of these studies best explains what happened to the USS Maine.

Based on my reading, it seems like most experts now believe that it was an accident.

But the debate continues.

Now, I would argue that an accident actually makes the most sense.

The fact that so many folks in 1898 were keen to blame the Spanish government speaks to just how heated the tensions had become.

Because the Spanish government had absolutely nothing to gain by blowing up the USS Maine.

The Spanish did not want a war with the United States.

They were just barely keeping their colonial empire together.

American intervention would have been bad.

Blowing up the main would not have helped Spanish interests.

If the ship was attacked, it makes considerably more sense that it was done as a false flag operation, orchestrated either by Gomez's rebels or by the Whaler Loyalists.

Both of those groups were incensed by Spain's weak T offer of of autonomy.

Ironically, both the rebels and the loyalists may have believed that American intervention would help their cause.

But there's absolutely no evidence of anyone planting a mine under the main.

The main had been incredibly well guarded the night of 1898.

No one reported seeing anything suspicious.

If a mine was planted underneath an American armored vessel with so many eyes watching, well, then that would be an implausibly amazing act of sabotage.

In this way, an accident just makes the most sense.

But man,

the timing of that accident.

The destruction of the main clearly changed the whole game for William McKinley.

This was especially clear after the Navy came back with a report blaming the destruction of the main on an external explosion.

While McKinley still moved with great caution, it seems like after that point, he saw war as inevitable.

And once McKinley decided that his country was going to war, he quickly came to understand what the potential upside might be.

So let's pause here, and when we come back, we'll discuss the somewhat surprising direction that the Spanish-American War would take.

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On the eve of the Spanish-American War, the always incendiary New York

ran a political cartoon lampooning what they saw as McKinley's pathetic attempts to avert a war that everyone seemed to want.

The cartoon showed a bonneted McKinley wearing a dress and using a large broom to try and sweep back a giant wave labeled Congress and the people crashing on a beach.

The caption read, Another old woman tries to sweep back the sea.

Images like this helped cement the historical reputation that McKinley would carry for most of the 20th century, that he was a weak president, unable to resist the tide of public opinion.

In a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Theodore Roosevelt, published in 1931, the author Henry F.

Pringle asserted,

A strong president could have avoided the war, end quote.

Now, personally, I have been convinced that McKinley was carried into the Spanish-American War by forces greater than himself.

But to suggest that another, stronger president could have avoided the war, especially after the destruction of the USS Maine, is hard for me to accept.

Imagine for a moment that you were the president of the United States in 1898.

Congressmen have been openly calling for American intervention in Cuba for years.

Hearst and Pulitzer's papers have been stoking anti-Spanish sentiment.

Your one grand diplomatic move to peacefully end the conflict results in riots and an inflammation of the situation.

Then the Maine blows up and nearly 300 American servicemen die, provoking an outpouring of grief, public mourning, and anger.

Then the Navy comes back with a report saying that the Maine was likely destroyed by a mine.

Could you, as the president, face the people of the United States and say, you know, we really don't know who did this.

I mean, the loss of the Maine is a tragedy, but war is not the answer.

I know many of you listening have lived through national tragedies and have felt when a country's mood has shifted and called out for restitution, even revenge.

Could you have resisted that?

With all this in mind, you could argue that McKinley demonstrated exceptional character in holding off the dogs of war for as long as he did.

He tried to avoid American intervention.

Even after the Maine exploded, he was cautious and measured with every public statement.

In fact, the official position of the White House until the Navy came back with its report was that the main may have been destroyed as the result of an accident.

Even after the Navy report, McKinley bided his time and was careful not to simply blame the Spanish, like so many of the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers were doing.

This careful, pragmatic approach won him no fans.

In fact, he was excoriated from every side of the aisle.

Between the destruction of the main and the ultimate declaration of war, McKinley's popularity was at an all-time low.

There are even reports of pictures of the president being booed at public events.

But the best research shows that after the destruction of the main, while McKinley was publicly calling for calm and a measured, facts-based approach, he was quietly preparing for war.

Even before the final Navy report on the main was completed, McKinley had drummed up support in Congress to get $50 million set aside for national defense.

America's Pacific fleet was also quietly moved from harbor in Japan to Hong Kong.

with orders to prepare for a potential attack on the Philippines.

Now,

this could potentially be explained as responsible planning, but there's good evidence that McKinley believed that the destruction of the Maine would require a military response.

It may not have been the Spanish who destroyed the vessel, but it looked like the chaos caused by the Cuban war had led to the tragedy.

America had been threatening intervention for too long not to act after the Maine.

So it was that on April 20th, the American Congress authorized the American military to intervene in Cuba.

Notably, this was not a declaration of war against Spain.

Instead, the carefully worded Teller Amendment, as it became known, read, quote,

The people of Cuba are and are of a right to be free and independent.

The United States hereby disclaims any disposition to exercise sovereignty over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people.

America's official position was that it was going to pacify Cuba, but also that it recognized Cuban independence.

So while this was not a technical declaration of war on Spain, it was a de facto declaration of war.

The Spanish responded with a proper declaration of war, and the conflict was on.

The phrase, except for the pacification thereof in the Teller Amendment, would end up doing a lot of heavy lifting.

After the arrival of the American military, it would be many years before Cuba would resemble anything like a sovereign nation.

And notably, these promises of sovereignty would not apply to many of the other Spanish colonies that the United States managed to capture during this conflict.

You see, while historians like Joseph A.

Fry and Richard Hamilton are right to question the assertion that the needs of the growing American economy and the avarice of big business pushed America towards the war, there was a clear change in attitude once the war was on.

Both the president and America's industrialists started to see the conflict as an opportunity.

Very quickly, the Spanish-American war went from being about ending a humanitarian crisis in Cuba to America seizing and holding as much of the former Spanish Empire as possible, especially in the Pacific.

You see, while McKinley had a sincere distaste for the horrors of war, he clearly gained a taste for the spoils of empire.

As Scott Miller explains in his book, The President and the Assassin, quote, the conflict with Spain presented McKinley with a chance to open more territory to American commerce than had ever been dreamed of.

Spain's entire empire, perfectly positioned for building a bridge across the Pacific, was there for the taking.

He had even been presented with a legal fig leaf for taking it all over, as he could claim the territory as reparations in the peace talks that would follow the end of the fighting.

Perhaps most surreal of all was how enthusiastically the American public seemed to bless an expansionist agenda.

⁇

Miller's assertion that McKinley embraced the war once he saw its its potential upside for the American economy is supported by the president's own words.

In a series of speeches that he made late in the war, McKinley made the case that it was justifiable for America to seize overseas colonies as it helped open up new markets.

His message became, if this helps American capitalism, then how could it be a bad thing?

He told one crowd, quote, We have good money, we have ample revenues, we have unquestioned national credit, but what we want are new markets, and as trade follows the flag, it looks very much like we will have new markets, end quote.

In a later speech, he would say, quote, Shall we deny ourselves what the rest of the world so freely and so justly accords itself?

End quote.

The new markets which so excited McKinley were Asian markets.

The first decisive victory in the Spanish-American War came not in the Caribbean, but in the faraway Philippines.

As I mentioned earlier, the American fleet had been stationed in Hong Kong in the months leading up to the war.

When war was officially declared, the Pacific Fleet commanded by Admiral George Dewey was immediately ordered to move against the Spanish in the Pacific.

On May 1st, he caught the Spanish in Manila Bay in the Philippines.

The better armed Americans utterly destroyed the outdated Spanish fleet.

America now had a toehold in the Philippine archipelago, eventually gaining control of the city of Manila itself a few months later.

The victory at Manila Bay was quickly followed by the relatively bloodless American seizure of the island of Guam.

The surprised Spanish colonial administrators on the island didn't even know the two countries were at war.

When the American Navy first fired on them, they assumed that it had to be a friendly salute.

When the situation became clear, the island was quickly surrendered.

Before any American soldiers set foot anywhere in the Caribbean, the American Navy had seized what was the start of a Pacific Empire.

These early victories in the Pacific also gave an added urgency to the question of Hawaiian annexation.

Now, the ins and outs of how the indigenous monarchy of Hawaii was overthrown by a coup led by sugar plantation owners is an important story that sadly I'll have to save for another day.

But for now, suffice it to say that while there was a huge movement to bring the so-called provisional government of Hawaii into the American fold, the dubious way in which the monarchy was toppled had kept many in the American government uneasy about the prospect of taking Hawaii.

The war in the Pacific washed away many of those misgivings.

If America was going to hold Guam and the Philippines, the strategic importance of Hawaii was now simply too great to be ignored.

So, with national security and the promise of new Asian markets in mind, Hawaii was officially annexed by the United States.

Now, as I mentioned at the outset of the show today, it's beyond the scope of this already beefy trilogy of episodes to get into all the ins and outs of the Spanish-American War.

So, please forgive what is an entirely insufficient summary right here.

Much like the story of Hawaiian annexation, I really hope I can return to this topic someday in the future.

I could do an entire episode just talking about Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders who fought in Cuba during this campaign.

So hopefully I get to that one day.

But for now, I hope you don't mind if I skip to the end.

The whole war lasted only 110 days.

Basically, it was just the summer of 1898.

In many ways, it resulted in a quick and decisive American victory, which is why Republican John Hay referred to it as the, quote, splendid little war, end quote.

But this much-quoted summation masks just how poorly organized and nearly disastrous the American war effort truly was.

Again, I'll quote Scott Miller, who explains that: quote: It was simply the most rowdy, chaotic, even slapstick conflict the United States has fought before or since.

Only through a truly remarkable run of Yankee good luck and Spanish ineptitude did the United States manage to avert a national catastrophe?

End quote.

Only around 400 American soldiers were killed in action, but roughly 4,000 died as a result of malaria, malnutrition, and other tropical diseases.

Many of these deaths likely could have been avoided with better planning.

But for all the American bumbling, the hard fact was that the Spanish military was exhausted after years of colonial conflicts.

Their navy was in even worse shape than the relatively green American force, and the Spanish Empire was flat broke.

America would end the war in possession of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and a sizable chunk of Micronesia.

Even after a peace treaty was signed with Spain, America reserved the right to remain in possession of the island of Cuba until they deemed it to be, quote, unquote, pacified.

This victory for America was not necessarily a victory for the Cuban rebels.

Cuban independence was once again put on the backburner.

Puerto Rican independence was not even a consideration.

As many of you know, Puerto Rico remains an unincorporated American territory to this day.

Then there were the Philippines.

Even after the expulsion of the Spanish, the American occupation of the Philippines was bitterly contested by the Filipinos, who had been in the midst of their own independence struggle for decades.

When it became clear that the Americans were in no rush to turn the governance of the archipelago over to the Filipino independence fighters, violence erupted.

This resulted in a brutal, years-long conflict that would ultimately lead to the deaths of over 200,000 people in the Philippines, the vast majority of them non-combatants.

America would lose around 4,200 soldiers in the Philippines in the years after the official end of the Spanish-American War.

More Americans died there than in any other theater of the war.

One of the saddest and most horrifying ironies of the conflict in the Philippines is that the American forces eventually embraced the very same strategies used by the Spanish in Cuba that had so horrified the American public.

The Filipino independence fighters engaged in a guerrilla campaign in the jungles of their archipelago, using tactics that would become familiar to Americans decades later when they were fighting in Vietnam.

Concealed pits with sharpened bamboo stakes and tripwires that unleashed spears and arrows were employed by the guerrillas.

Captured Americans were sometimes found mutilated and left as warnings to their comrades.

Like Gomez's Cuban rebels, the Filipino fighters could also blend in with the local population after a hit-and-run attack.

So the Americans adopted the policy of reconcentration.

Like in Cuba, Filipino villages were emptied and the population was forced into camps.

Anyone who resisted was killed.

Entire towns were burnt to the ground after it was discovered that they had been harboring rebels.

Those who resisted the reconcentration policy were summarily summarily executed, as it was assumed that they must be rebels.

Many American soldiers came home with tales of atrocities.

Many saw civilians, young and old, killed in retribution for insurgent attacks.

It had been argued that a war with Spain was necessary because the Spanish were committing these kinds of atrocities in Cuba.

At the outset of the Spanish-American War, McKinley could have reasonably argued that the war was needed to end a humanitarian disaster.

By the end of the war, that argument rang hollow.

By replacing the Spanish as the colonial master of the Philippines, America was now the author of its own humanitarian disaster.

200,000 dead for the sake of new markets seems like an unreasonably steep price to pay.

But it would take a number of years before the truth of the Philippine-American War became known back in the United States.

In 1899, America was on a high from what seemed like an unambiguous triumph over the Spanish.

In 1900, McKinley rode this sentiment to an easy re-election.

The experience of the Spanish-American War also shifted one of President McKinley's most consistent political positions, his belief in protective tariffs.

Ever since he became president, it had become clearer to him that American industry had thoroughly caught up to that of its European rivals.

American manufacturing was now producing more than could be consumed domestically.

America's need for new markets led to the president embracing a war plan that focused heavily on the Pacific.

But that same need also meant that protective tariffs needed to go.

Even before the war, McKinley's first tariff bill as president was noticeably less protective and more in favor of reciprocity and even free trade.

And so it was that at the outset of his second term, President McKinley doubled down on this commitment.

The last speech that William McKinley ever made was about how the time for protective tariffs had passed and that a new era of reciprocity in trade needed to be embraced.

At the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President McKinley declared, quote,

the period of exclusiveness is past.

The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem.

Commercial wars are unprofitable.

A policy of goodwill and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals.

Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times.

Measures of retaliation are not.

End quote.

Yeah,

McKinley, the tariff man standing on a tariff platform, ultimately decided that tariffs were not the friend of the modern American economy.

So,

recent assertions by certain politicians that McKinley made America rich through tariffs ignores the president's complete reversal on the issue.

McKinley's ultimate legacy would be about opening markets to American business and abandoning protective policies, sometimes at the cost of thousands of lives.

That speech would be the last one that President McKinley would ever give.

Because just a day later, he was shot twice, point blank, in the abdomen, while trying to shake the hands of as many people as he possibly could.

McKinley would die from the wounds 10 days later.

The shooter was one Leon Cholgosz, a Detroit-born son of Polish immigrants.

He was a self-proclaimed anarchist, inspired by the wave of recent assassinations carried out in Europe by other adherents to to that political philosophy.

But interestingly, Chalgash was not really embraced by other anarchists.

In the months before Buffalo, Chalgash had attempted to ingratiate himself with a number of high-profile American anarchist speakers and organizers.

He was apparently so awkward and cloying that many of these anarchists assumed that Chalgash had to be an undercover cop.

There was even a description of him placed in a prominent anarchist newspaper warning fellow travelers that this guy might be a police spy.

Chalgosh was an anarchist with very few anarchist friends, and so he acted alone.

In this way, there's something very random.

about William McKinley's assassination.

Anarchists were certainly critical of American imperialism and capitalism generally, and believed that McKinley represented forces in society that were evil.

But

no one was really calling for his death.

Even Chulgosh later admitted that the idea to kill McKinley only came into his hand just a few days before he actually did it.

Now, this assassination did reflect the so-called propaganda of the deed, which was a concept popular in anarchist circles at the time.

It was believed that high-profile assassinations were a way that society could be moved closer to revolution.

People would be inspired by the audacity of it all.

But it's important to note that Chalgosh was a bit of a lone wolf, unsupported by a larger network of potential revolutionaries.

The book The President and the Assassin by Scott Miller, which I've been quoting from throughout this series, tries to put this assassination in context by pairing a biography of McKinley with a look at violent labor struggles in the United States during the same period.

Now, I appreciate Miller's approach because it helps illustrate just how uneven and dangerous for workers America's emergence as an industrial superpower truly was.

But even with all this context, Chalgash's choice to shoot McKinley still comes off as spur of the moment, impetuous, and poorly thought out.

He may have been inspired by anarchist thought, but Chalgash could not fully articulate why he thought killing McKinley was necessary.

To be honest, it makes for an unsatisfying end to the McKinley story.

But it's also a great reminder of the chaos that sometimes guides human history.

McKinley's time as president could be seen as being guided by inevitable and inescapable historic forces.

The industrial transformation of the American economy and the rise of global capitalism seemed to guide much of William McKinley's political life.

The Spanish-American War could be seen as the inevitable result of the decline of one great power and the rise of another, a clash that was inevitable given the trajectories of both the United States and Spain.

And yet, so much of this story is also governed by chance.

The fact that the main probably blew up by accident at that place and in that moment,

that kind of boggles my mind.

By the same token, McKinley's assassination by Leon Chalgash seems almost just as accidental.

One disaffected man, vaguely inspired by a radical philosophy, decides to act.

There's nothing clean about it.

If there's any lesson, perhaps it's that no analysis of historical trends and forces will ever be totally predictive.

The universe remains chaotic.

But I'd like to return to the question that has animated this entire series, and that is, why President McKinley?

Why has McKinley recently been revived as a president worthy of admiration?

Well, after all my reading, I have developed a personal theory.

Now, this is my opinion, so feel free to take it or leave it.

All right.

McKinley was by nature a humble, pragmatic, and careful politician.

He kept his own counsel, rarely spoke off the cuff, and didn't leave much for historians and biographers curious about the internal workings of his mind.

This means that there's room to project onto William McKinley.

His personality leaves space for biographers to craft their own narrative.

I can see why Republican strategist Carl Rove was attracted to McKinley as a political model.

McKinley was a likable politician who could sell the ideas of expansive capitalism and American empire.

He was a compassionate conservative, if you will.

For those of you old enough to remember, that's exactly how Rove and his campaign team framed George W.

Bush during his first presidential campaign in the year 2000.

But in Rove's biography, I found that the author treated McKinley almost the same way that he would treat a politician whose campaign he was managing.

Instead of engaging with controversial moments in McKinley's career, Rove deflects, tries to explain them away, and sometimes is straight up misleading.

He tries to make McKinley into a certain type of Republican ideal.

You see, William McKinley represents a moment when the 19th century Republican Party looked a little bit more like the party of Ronald Reagan and beyond.

which might explain why modern Republicans have tried to revive his memory.

McKinley represented the interests of America's industrialists and owner class, and he did his best to argue that their interests were the interests of the entire nation.

And after much personal struggle, he ended up embracing an expansionist vision of American foreign policy.

Now, after McKinley, the Republican Party would go through a huge transformation under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt.

You see, after the death of McKinley's first vice president, Garrett Hobart, in 1899, Roosevelt was chosen by the Republican National Convention as his replacement.

He was then duly elected to the post of vice president in 1900.

When McKinley died, Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States.

While Roosevelt was one of the most aggressive American imperialists of the age, he also took the Republican Party in a more progressive direction.

He advocated for a bigger, more powerful federal government that could act as a check on the power of American industry and the millionaire trusts.

It's been argued that the American welfare state begins under Theodore Roosevelt.

So, while Roosevelt is a very exciting and complicated historical figure to study, there's no doubt that his politics are out of step with those of contemporary Republicans.

William McKinley, on the other hand, can seem a bit more familiar.

His achievements are more easily celebrated as the precursor of, say, Ronald Reagan's Republican Party and the party beyond that.

Now, when this reappraisal of McKinley is flattened into a two-dimensional caricature, the turn-of-the-century president can be propped up as a decent man who expanded the American empire and made the country rich.

This overly simplified McKinley caricature can make for some useful political rhetoric.

It's that version of McKinley that we've been hearing about lately.

Now, this is just a guess,

but I think that it's quite possible that Donald Trump was introduced to President McKinley by history-minded Republicans influenced by the writing of Karl Rove and perhaps Robert Mary.

Their McKinley was a winner who championed American commerce.

When you look at it from that angle, then it becomes easy to see why McKinley has made his recent historical comeback.

But the real William McKinley was far more complicated than that oversimplified picture.

His political rise was aided by a new level of corporate activism in American politics.

One of the hardest questions to answer about William McKinley was how beholden was he to his political donors.

He certainly took their money and often acted in their interests, but not always.

Ever since the election of 1896 and the presidency of William McKinley, questions about the influence of money on American politics have only become more pressing.

It is true that McKinley became an American empire builder, but he came into that role hesitantly.

He struggled with the forces in the American government and society that seemed to be pushing him towards war and expansion.

In McKinley, I don't see the architect of the American century.

I see a man who grudgingly accepted that America was going to have a century whether he liked it or not.

After much reticence, William McKinley made the choice to push American power beyond the boundaries of North America.

The story of American overseas military intervention begins with President McKinley.

And I'll let you decide how you feel about that story.

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us again in just one week when I will be dropping a special QA bonus episode.

So, if you have any questions about President McKinley, about the Spanish-American War, about really anything else we've talked about in the last series, please send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

Or if you are a patron, drop your question in the chat about President McKinley.

Then, Then, a week after that, I will be dropping the last new episode of season 10.

We will then take a short break for the month of August, and we will return with brand new episodes of Our Fake History at the start of season 11 on September the 9th.

Before we go this week, as always, I need to give some very special shout-outs.

Big ups to Mike,

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