5-3.6

It is essential for students to know

• As a result of the economic development of the late 19th century, the United States became a leading industrial producer and this contributed to the nation’s rise to world power.
• Economic growth led many Americans to advocate for a larger role in the world in order to secure sources of raw materials and markets for the finished products of American factories. Many people in the United States believed that they had a God-given right to expand across the seas as they had done across the continent. This new Manifest Destiny was also motivated by the missionary spirit and the idea of American superiority [Social Darwinism] as well as by economics.
• All of these motivations played a role in the United States’ declaration of war against Spain, in the American involvement in the Panamanian revolt which led to the building of the canal, and in the American involvement in World War I.
• In order to understand the annexation of lands as a result of the Spanish American War, students must also understand why the United States went to war with Spain over Cuba. Although the explosion of the battleship Maine is often cited as the cause of United States involvement, it is important for students to understand that the decision to go to war was much more complicated. The declaration of war against Spain in 1898 is an ideal time to help students understand the constitutional role of the president and the Congress in declaring war.
• Yellow journalism prepared the American public for this decision. Yellow journalists appealed to the sentiments of the reading public to save Cuba from the harsh rule of colonial Spain.
• The explosion of the Maine was widely covered by newspapers that exploited any angle that might lead to wider circulation and greater profit for the papers. However, it alone did not cause the Congress to declare war. The decision of President McKinley to ask the United States Congress to declare war on Spain and Congress’s willingness to do so were based on American economic interests in Cuba, humanitarian concerns for the Cuban people and a desire to demonstrate American power in the world.
• The outbreak of the Spanish American war led to the annexation of territories by the United States. At the start of the war, the United States declared that it had no intention of annexing Cuba. However, the United States quickly annexed Hawaii, where a revolt led by American businessmen had already overthrown the Hawaiian queen [1893]. Hawaii was an ideal fueling stop on the way to the markets of China.
• The Spanish American War started with the takeover of Manila harbor in the Spanish colony of the Philippines by the American fleet stationed in the Pacific [1898]. The Philippines would provide an ideal location from which to access the markets of China.
• Students should be able to locate Hawaii and the Philippines on a map in order to understand the significance of their geographic location for trade.
• The Spanish in Cuba were quickly defeated and a treaty was negotiated by the executive branch and ratified by the Senate that granted the United States control of formerly Spanish territories including Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico.
• Despite the armed protests of Filipinos who sought independence, the United States continued to control the Philippines as a territory until the end of World War II.
• Cuba was occupied by American forces off and on for more than 30 years and the United States secured a permanent naval base on the island of Cuba.
• Eventually Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state.
• The United States continues to control Guam and the territory of Puerto Rico today.
• The United States also played a significant role in a revolution in Panama. Since the time of the California Gold Rush, it was evident that Americans wanted a quick ocean route from the east coast to the west coast. The desire to expand trade with the Far East intensified this desire. President Theodore Roosevelt offered Colombia, which controlled the Isthmus of Panama, money for the right to build a canal. Colombia rejected the offer. A few Panamanians organized a bloodless revolution that was supported by American gunboats and then signed an agreement with the United States allowing the US to lease the isthmus and build the canal. The building of the Panama Canal allowed American commercial and war ships to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific more quickly and contributed to America’s commercial and military might and to its image as a world power.
• At first, the United States tried to maintain a neutral role in World War I. It is important that students understand that America became involved in the war reluctantly as a result of a multitude of factors.
• Wartime propaganda [similar to the yellow journalism of the Spanish American War period], traditional Effect sympathies and commercial ties with and loans to Great Britain strained neutrality.
• Most importantly, the unrestricted submarine warfare declared by the Germans on the high seas and waged against neutral ships trading with Britain and France led President Woodrow Wilson to ask the Congress for a declaration of war to “make the world safe for democracy.”
• The sinking of the Lusitania [1915] was not the direct cause of the US declaration of war [1917]. It was only one incident in a series of sinkings.
• The interception of the Zimmerman telegram by the British and its publication by sensationalist press in the United States led the American public to support going to war.
• American troops, known as doughboys, were instrumental in repelling the final assaults of German troops on the western front and breaking the deadlock of trench warfare. The Central Powers (Germany, Austria Hungary and the Ottoman Empire) agreed to an armistice with the Allies (Great Britain, France and the United States) on the condition that peace negotiations would be based on Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points.
• President Wilson played a significant role at the peace negotiations, although many of his 14 Points were ignored by the other nations. Wilson helped to redraw state borders in Europe so that they better reflected nations, groups of people with the same language, religion and ethnic heritage.
• The Treaty of Versailles included an international peace-keeping organization, the League of Nations, which Wilson hoped would put an end to war.
• However, the United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty because many Senators thought that the League of Nations would compromise Congress’s constitutional right to declare war. Despite their refusal to join the League, the United States continued to be involved in world trade in the 1920s.
• In the 1930s, the Congress limited American involvement in world affairs in a series of laws called the Neutrality Acts. These acts attempted to keep the United States out of the war that was brewing in Europe by addressing what Americans thought were the causes of American involvement in World War I.
• [When the United States finally became involved in World War II, the U.S. allied with Great Britain, France and others as the United Nations. This alliance became the basis for the creation of the, the United Nations after World War II, which replaced the League of Nations with a more effective peace-keeping organization.]

It is not essential for students to know:

• Students do not need to remember the details of the Cuban revolution that led to the Spanish crackdown and American sympathies for the Cubans.
• They do not need to know the names of the newspapers whose circulation war led to the yellow journalism and public cries of “Remember the Maine.”
• Students do not need to remember the names of or the specific contents of either the deLome letter of the pre-Spanish American war period or the Zimmerman note of the pre-World War I period.
• They do not need to know about Teddy Roosevelt’s role in the fighting in Cuba.
• They do not need to know that the Supreme Court ruled that the rights of citizenship do not follow the flag and so the people of the American territories acquired during this period were not granted the rights of United States citizenship.
• Students do not need to understand that as a result of American intervention in places such as Cuba, Panama and other countries, the United States was widely resented in Latin America.
• Students do not need to understand the difficulties encountered in the building of the canal, including the conquest of yellow fever, or how the lock system works in the Panama Canal.
• Students do not need to know how many ships were sunk by the Germans or that Wilson’s diplomatic efforts led the Germans to pledge that they would not sink ships for a time. This pledge was broken when Germans were desperate to break the stalemate of trench warfare.
• Students do not need to know about trench warfare or “no man’s land” or the new technology of war introduced during World War I.