On April 25, 1898 the United States declared war on Spain following the sinking of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. As a result Spain lost its control over the remains of its overseas empire -- Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippine islands, Guam, and other islands.

Beginning in 1492, Spain was the first European nation to sail westward across the Atlantic Ocean, explore, and colonize the Amerindian nations of the Western Hemisphere. At its greatest extent, the empire that resulted from this exploration extended from Virginia on the eastern coast of the United States south to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America excluding Brazil and westward to California and Alaska. Across the Pacific, it included the Philippines and other island groups. By 1825 much of this empire had fallen into other hands and in that year, Spain acknowledged the independence of its possessions in the present-day United States (then under Mexican control) and south to the tip of South America. The only remnants that remained in the empire in the Western Hemisphere were Cuba and Puerto Rico and across the Pacific in Philippine Islands, and the Carolina, Marshall, and Mariana Islands (including Guam) in Micronesia.

Cuba

Following the liberation from Spain of mainland Latin America, Cuba was the first to initiate its own struggle for independence. During the years from 1868-1878, Cubans personified by guerrilla fighters known as mambises fought for autonomy from Spain. That war concluded with a treaty that was never enforced. In the 1890's Cubans began to agitate once again for their freedom from Spain. The moral leader of this struggle was José Martí, known as "El Apóstol," who established the Cuban Revolutionary Party on January 5, 1892 in the United States. Following the grito de Baire, the call to arms on February 24, 1895, Martí returned to Cuba and participated in the first weeks of armed struggle when he was killed on May 19, 1895.

The Philippines

The Philippines too was beginning to grow restive with Spanish rule. José Rizal, a member of a wealthy mestizo family, resented that his upper mobility was limited by Spanish insistence on promoting only "pure-blooded" Spaniards. He began his political career at the University of Madrid in 1882 where he became the leader of Filipino students there. For the next ten years he traveled in Europe and wrote several novels considered seditious by Filipino and Church authorities. He returned to Manila in 1892 and founded the Liga Filipina, a political group dedicated to peaceful change. He was rapidly exiled to Mindanao. During his absence, Andrés Bonifacio founded Katipunan, dedicated to the violent overthrow of Spanish rule. On August 26, 1896, after learning that the Katipunan had been betrayed, Bonifacio issued the Grito de Balintawak, a call for Filipinos to revolt. Bonifacio was succeeded as head of the Philippine revolution by Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy, who had his predecessor arrested and executed on May 10, 1897. Aguinaldo negotiated a deal with the Spaniards who exiled him to Hong Kong with 400,000 pesos that he subsequently used to buy weapons to resume the fight.

Puerto Rico

During the 1880s and 1890s, Puerto Ricans developed many different political parties, some of which sought independence for island while others, headquartered like their Cuban counterparts in New York, preferred to ally with the United States. Spain proclaimed the autonomy of Puerto Rico on November 25, 1897, although the news did not reach the island until January 1898 and a new government established on February 12, 1898.

U.S. interest in purchasing Cuba had begun long before 1898. Following the Ten Years War, American sugar interests bought up large tracts of land in Cuba. Alterations in the U.S. sugar tariff favoring home-grown beet sugar helped foment the rekindling of revolutionary fervor in 1895. By that time the U.S. had more than $50 million invested in Cuba and annual trade, mostly in sugar, was worth twice that much. Fervor for war had been growing in the United States, despite President Grover Cleveland's proclamation of neutrality on June 12, 1895. But sentiment to enter the conflict grew in the United States when General Valeriano Weyler began implementing a policy of Reconcentration that moved the population into central locations guarded by Spanish troops and placed the entire country under martial law in February 1896. By December 7, President Cleveland reversed himself declaring that the United States might intervene should Spain fail to end the crisis in Cuba. President William McKinley, inaugurated on March 4, 1897, was even more anxious to become involved, particularly after the New York Journal published a copy of a letter from Spanish Foreign Minister Enrique Dupuy de Lôme criticizing the American President on February 9, 1898. Events moved swiftly after the explosion aboard the U.S.S. Maine on February 15. On March 9, Congress passed a law allocating fifty million dollars to build up military strength. On March 28, the U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry finds that a mine blew up the Maine. On April 21 President McKinley orders a blockade of Cuba and four days later the U.S. declares war.

Following its declaration of war against Spain issued on April 25, 1898, the United States added the Teller Amendment asserting that it would not attempt to exercise hegemony over Cuba. Two days later Commodore George Dewey sailed from Hong Kong with Emilio Aguinaldo on board. Fighting began in the Phillipine islands at the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1 where Commodore George Dewey reportedly exclaimed, "You may fire when ready, Gridley," destroyed the Spanish fleet under Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo. However, he did not have enough manpower to capture Manila and so Aguinaldo's guerrillas maintained their operations until 15,000 U.S. troops arrived at the end of July. On the way, the cruiser Charleston stopped at Guam and accepted its surrender from its Spanish governor who was unaware his nation was at war. Although a peace protocol was signed by the two belligerants on August 12, Commodore Dewey and Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt, leader of the army troops, assaulted Manila the very next day, unaware that peace had broken out.

In late April, Andrew Summers Rowan made contact with Cuban General Calixto García who supplied him with maps, intelligence, and a core of rebel officers to coordinate U.S. efforts on the island. The U.S. North Atlantic Squadron left Key West for Cuba on April 22 following the frightening news that the Spanish home fleet commanded by Admiral Pascual Cervera had left Cadiz and entered Santiago, having slipped by U.S. ships commanded by William T. Sampson and Winfield Scott Schley. They arrived in Cuba in late May.

War actually began for the U.S. in Cuba in June when the Marines captured Guantánamo Bay and 17,000 troops landed at Siboney and Daiquirí, east of Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city on the island. At that time Spanish troops stationed on the island included 150,000 regulars and 40,000 irregulars and volunteers while rebels inside Cuba numbered as many as 50,000. Total U.S. army strength at the time totalled 26,000, requiring the passage of the Mobilization Act of April 22 that allowed for an army of at first 125,000 volunteers (later increased to 200,000) and a regular army of 65,000. On June 22, U.S. troops landed at Daiquiri where they were joined by Calixto García and about 5,000 revolutionaries.

U.S. troops attacked the San Juan heights on July 1, 1898. Dismounted troopers, including the African-American Ninth and Tenth cavalries and the Rough Riders commanded by Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt went up against Kettle Hill while the forces led by Brigadier General Jacob Kent charged up San Juan Hill and pushed Spanish troops further inland while inflicting 1,700 casualties. While U.S. commanders were deciding on a further course of action, Admiral Cervera left port only to be defeated by Schley. On July 16, the Spaniards agreed to the unconditional surrendar of the 23,500 troops around the city. A few days later, Major General Nelson Miles sailed from Guantánamo to Puerto Rico. His forces landed near Ponce and marched to San Juan with virtually no opposition.

Representatives of Spain and the United States signed a peace treaty in Paris on December 10, 1898 established the independence of Cuba, ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States, and allowed the victorious power to purchase the Philippines Islands from Spain for $20 million. The war had cost the United States $250 million and 3,000 lives, of whom 90% had perished from infectious diseases.

The view of the average American of 1998:

Quite frankly, if you asked the average American of 1998 about the war, you would probably be met with a quizzical stare. The Spanish American War, in spite of its tremendous implications for the United States, Spain, Cuba, Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and other places, is seldom mentioned in the popular media or brought to the attention of the public. Most may have heard the statement "Remember the MAINE," but with no understanding what the MAINE itself was. Few have any idea of the involvement of the U.S. in Cuba, and less so in the Philippines or Puerto Rico. Mandatory school American history classes generally gloss over the war as a silly, three-month lark taken by a group of over-eager men with no real gain. Of course, this goes against historical fact in many, but not all respects.

This situation may seem odd to other nations, on which the war had a tremendous affect. However, the war must be viewed in the historical perspective of the average American. The Spanish American War occurred in the interval between two conflicts that resulted in great death and anguish in the U.S., whereas the Spanish American War was relatively bloodless from the American perspective. The American Civil War (1861-1865) was a conflict of truly epic proportions for the country. More Americans died in the Civil War than the combined total number of American deaths in all other conflicts in which the U.S. has been involved, from the 1776 Revolution to the present. The loss was approximately three-quarters of a million men, whereas in the more populous America of 1898, only three thousand men were lost. Virtually every family had members serving in the Civil War. Towns sent entire military units. The terrible toll, recounted by relatives for years, burned this war into the collective consciousness, and it will never leave.

There are several obvious measures of a war's impact on the public's collective memory, and we can use them to gauge the Civil War's impact on the people of today. First, the average American bookstore will have a major portion of its history section devoted to the Civil War. Secondly, Hollywood continues to produce innumerable dramas of the Civil War, as it has for many years. Also, amazingly, re-enacting Civil War battles is a large hobby in the U.S., with about twenty thousand involved in the hobby nation-wide.

The Spanish American War was followed by U.S. involvement in World War One (1917-1918). This was also a war of shocking losses, with the U.S. losing 177,000 killed, wounded and missing in the one year of its involvement. In this war, again virtually every family had someone involved. For the first time, a tremendous number of American men - 1.2 million - were sent overseas, to be separated from their families for a long period of time. Though the war has not remained as strongly in the memory as does the Civil War, the terror and separation experienced is also burned into the collective mind. Using our gauges of the war's lasting effect, we can see that virtually all bookstores carry books on the war and its effects. Also, Hollywood continues to produce films about the period, with one very highly honored major production on the war recently.

Both of these conflicts, one a little over a generation before the Spanish American War, and the other a little less than a generation after the war were in great contrast to the Spanish American War itself. During the Spanish American War, few of the many American military units raised actually saw foreign service, with most remaining in training camps in the U.S. on a glorified camping trip. There were few of the heart-rending or exciting stories to bring back to the families. The majority of the families did not have the pangs of a long-term, worrisome separation. As a result, this war did not make it into the collective memory. Using the gauges of measurement of the lasting memory of the war, we learn that, until recently spurred by the centennial, few bookstores carried ANY works on the Spanish American War. Few new works were produced after World War I eclipsed the Spanish American War.  The number of films produced by Hollywood concerning the Spanish American War has been very few in number in the past one hundred years. The total number could probably be counted on one hand.

The Spanish American War, one of the conflicts with the greatest implications for Americans even today, has all but faded from the modern American mind. Its centennial was barely noticed.

Last Surviving Veterans of the Spanish American War

For info. on the national organization of Sons of Spanish American War Veterans, click here!

General:

We are frequently asked if any Spanish American War Veterans still survive, and if not, who was the last veteran surviving. This page will clarify these issues.

The last surviving veteran:

There are no longer any veterans surviving from the Spanish American War today. The last surviving veteran was Jones Morgan, an African American. Mr. Jones passed away in Richmond, Virginia on August 29, 1993 at the incredible age of 110 years, 10 months and 6 days. Mr. Jones had served as a member of the U.S. Cavalry (either 9th or 10th) as a cook and horse wrangler. He has served from 1896 to 1900.

The last "Rough Rider" was Jesse Langdon. He passed away on June 28, 1975. Langdon served in K Troop.

The last member of the 71st New York to pass away was Ralph Waldo Taylor of Pompano Beach, Florida. He passed away on May 15, 1987 at the age of 105. He had served in Company K.