A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror by Schweikart Larry & Allen Michael

Author:Schweikart, Larry & Allen, Michael [Allen, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sentinel
Published: 2004-12-29T08:00:00+00:00

Cuba Libre!

A far more difficult problem that McKinley had inherited was a growing tension with Spain over Cuba. A Spanish possession, Cuba lay only ninety miles off the coast of Florida. At one time it had been both gatekeeper and customhouse for Spain’s New World empire, but, like Spain herself, Cuba had lost influence. The Cubans desired freedom and autonomy, as illustrated by revolts that erupted in 1868, 1878, and 1895, all suppressed by the 160,000 Spanish soldiers on the island. General Valeriano Weyler, who governed the island, had a reputation for unusual cruelty, leading to his nickname the Butcher. For forty years the United States had entertained notions of purchasing Cuba, but Spain had no intention of selling, and the installation of Weyler sounded a requiem for negotiations to acquire the Pearl of the Antilles.

American concerns were threefold. First, there was the political component, in which Americans sympathized with the Cubans’ yearning for independence. Second, businessmen had important interests on the island, cultivated over several decades. Sugar, railroads, shipping, and other enterprises gave the United States an undeniable economic interest in Cuba, while at the same time putting Americans in a potential crossfire. Third, there was the moral issue of Weyler’s treatment of the Cubans, which appealed to American humanitarianism.

It might have ended at that—with Americans expressing their support for the rebels from afar—if not for the efforts of two newspapermen, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Pulitzer, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant, had worked as a mule driver before being recruited by Carl Schurz to write for a German-language daily. A Radical Missouri Republican, Pulitzer had purchased the St. Louis Post and Dispatch newspapers, using them as a base for the reformist agenda that included issues of prohibition, tax fraud, and gambling. His most important acquisition, however, the New York World, emphasized sensation, scandal, and human interest stories. For all of its innovation and success, the New York World remains best known for a color supplement it started to run in 1896 on cheap yellow paper featuring a cartoon character known as The Yellow Kid, which led to the phrase, “yellow press.”28

Hearst, born to California millionaire rancher George Hearst, obtained the San Francisco Examiner to satisfy a gambling debt. He admired Pulitzer and tailored the Examiner to resemble Pulitzer’s paper. Emphasizing investigative reporting combined with reformism and sensationalism, Hearst employed the best writers he could find, including Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, and Jack London. Purchasing the New York Journal in 1895, Hearst became Pulitzer’s competitor. The two men had much in common, though. Both saw the chaos and tragedy of Cuba purely in terms of expanded circulation. Cuban suffering advanced sales, but a war would be even better. Hearst assigned the brilliant artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to provide battle sketches, well before any hostilities were announced. When Remington arrived in Cuba, he cabled back to Hearst that there was no war to illustrate. “You furnish the pictures,” Hearst wired. “I’ll furnish the war.”29

Each publisher sought to outdo the other with Spanish horror stories, giving Weyler his nickname and referring to Cuba as a prison.

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