A Day to Remember the Maine

One hundred years ago today an explosion in Havana Harbor set in motion events that would swiftly make the United States a global power. The battleship Maine, sent to Cuba on what was officially described as a “friendly visit,” blew up with a loss of 260 men. Blame for the disaster fell on Spain, which for three years had been brutally trying to suppress Cuba’s insurrection against its long colonial rule. In a little more than two months the United States was at war with Spain. An armistice signed on Aug. 12 would lead to independence for Cuba and leave the United States firmly established in the Caribbean and the far Pacific.

John Hay, secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, called the four-month conflict a “splendid little war,” a description that aptly caught the proud nationalistic mood of the time. Certainly much was gained at relatively small cost, even as soon-to-be-legendary feats of arms at sea and on land helped draw together a country still riven by the antagonisms of its recent Civil War.

The destruction of the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay and outside Santiago’s harbor in eastern Cuba ended Spain’s war-making capacity. American battle casualties in the war numbered fewer than 500; deaths from disease were 10 times higher. The dollar cost was about $250 million.

When the war was over, the United States had come into possession of a colonial empire of 120,000 square miles containing more than 8.5 million people, most of them Filipinos who showed no desire to exchange Spanish dominance for American.

The United States became an imperial power with decidedly mixed emotions. The treaty by which Spain ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam was ratified by the Senate by just a single vote. Anti-imperialist sentiment was strong in the country, some of it based on liberal principles, some on fear of colonial economic competition. That feeling became stronger still when the cruelties perpetrated by some American troops fighting rebels in the Philippines became known. But the countervailing mood prevailed. A powerful nation, it was argued, must have overseas markets. A firm base in the Philippines was regarded as essential to expanding trade and commerce in Asia.

Little of this was foreseen when Cuba first drew American attention in the late 1890s. Humanitarian concern for the plight of the Cubans, whipped up by inflammatory newspaper accounts, put heft behind the effort to support Cuba’s independence. When the Maine blew up, a chain of inevitability was forged.

It’s acknowledged today that a spontaneous fire in a coal bunker, and not a mine, may have led to the explosion. No matter.

The United States was destined to become a key international power. That it started on that path apparently through an accident, misperceived as an attack, is one of those ironies history knows so well.