Introduction

The Spanish–American War (Spanish: Guerra hispano-estadounidense or Guerra hispano-americana; Filipino: Digmaang Espanyol-Amerikano) was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States in 1898.

Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbour in Cuba, leading to US intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. The war led to the US emerging predominant in the Caribbean region, and resulted in US acquisition of Spain’s Pacific possessions. That led to US involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately to the Philippine-American War (1899-1902).

The main issue was Cuban independence. Revolts had been occurring for some years in Cuba against Spanish colonial rule. The US backed these revolts upon entering the Spanish-American War. There had been war scares before, as in the Virginius Affair in 1873. But in the late 1890s, American public opinion swayed in support of the rebellion due to reports of concentration camps (death estimates range from 150,000 to 400,000 people) set up to control the populace. Yellow journalism exaggerated the atrocities to further increase public fervour, and to sell more papers.

The business community had just recovered from a deep depression and feared that a war would reverse the gains. Accordingly, most business interests lobbied vigorously against going to war. President William McKinley ignored the exaggerated news reporting and sought a peaceful settlement. However, after the United States Navy armoured cruiser USS Maine mysteriously exploded and sank in Havana Harbour on 15 February 1898, political pressures from the Democratic Party pushed McKinley into a war that he had wished to avoid.

On 20 April 1898, McKinley signed a joint Congressional resolution demanding Spanish withdrawal and authorising the President to use military force to help Cuba gain independence. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on 21 April. On the same day, the US Navy began a blockade of Cuba. Both sides declared war; neither had allies.

The 10-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. As US agitators for war well knew, US naval power would prove decisive, allowing expeditionary forces to disembark in Cuba against a Spanish garrison already facing nationwide Cuban insurgent attacks and further wasted by yellow fever. The invaders obtained the surrender of Santiago de Cuba and Manila despite the good performance of some Spanish infantry units, and fierce fighting for positions such as San Juan Hill. Madrid sued for peace after two Spanish squadrons were sunk in the battles of Santiago de Cuba and Manila Bay, and a third, more modern, fleet was recalled home to protect the Spanish coasts.

The result was the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favourable to the US which allowed it temporary control of Cuba and ceded ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine islands. The cession of the Philippines involved payment of $20 million ($610 million today) to Spain by the US to cover infrastructure owned by Spain.

The defeat and loss of the Spanish Empire’s last remnants was a profound shock to Spain’s national psyche and provoked a thorough philosophical and artistic re-evaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of ’98. The United States gained several island possessions spanning the globe, which provoked rancorous debate over the wisdom of expansionism.

Background

Spain’s Attitude towards its Colonies

The combined problems arising from the Peninsular War (1807-1814), the loss of most of its colonies in the Americas in the early 19th-century Spanish American wars of independence, and three Carlist Wars (1832-1876) marked the low point of Spanish colonialism. Liberal Spanish elites like Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and Emilio Castelar offered new interpretations of the concept of “empire” to dovetail with Spain’s emerging nationalism. Cánovas made clear in an address to the University of Madrid in 1882 his view of the Spanish nation as based on shared cultural and linguistic elements – on both sides of the Atlantic – that tied Spain’s territories together.

Cánovas saw Spanish colonialism as more “benevolent” than that of other European colonial powers. The prevalent opinion in Spain before the war regarded the spreading of “civilisation” and Christianity as Spain’s main objective and contribution to the New World. The concept of cultural unity bestowed special significance on Cuba, which had been Spanish for almost four hundred years, and was viewed as an integral part of the Spanish nation. The focus on preserving the empire would have negative consequences for Spain’s national pride in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War.

American Interest in the Caribbean

In 1823, the fifth American President James Monroe (1758-1831, served 1817-1825) enunciated the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States would not tolerate further efforts by European governments to retake or expand their colonial holdings in the Americas or to interfere with the newly independent states in the hemisphere. The US would, however, respect the status of the existing European colonies. Before the American Civil War (1861-1865), Southern interests attempted to have the United States purchase Cuba and convert it into a new slave state. The pro-slavery element proposed the Ostend Manifesto proposal of 1854. Anti-slavery forces rejected it.

After the American Civil War and Cuba’s Ten Years’ War, US businessmen began monopolising the devalued sugar markets in Cuba. In 1894, 90% of Cuba’s total exports went to the US, which also provided 40% of Cuba’s imports. Cuba’s total exports to the US were almost twelve times larger than the export to her mother country, Spain. US business interests indicated that while Spain still held political authority over Cuba, it was the US that held economic power over Cuba.

The US became interested in a trans-isthmus canal in either Nicaragua or Panama and realized the need for naval protection. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan was an exceptionally influential theorist; his ideas were much admired by future 26th President Theodore Roosevelt, as the US rapidly built a powerful naval fleet of steel warships in the 1880s and 1890s. Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897-1898 and was an aggressive supporter of an American war with Spain over Cuban interests.

Meanwhile, the “Cuba Libre” movement, led by Cuban intellectual José Martí until he died in 1895, had established offices in Florida. The face of the Cuban revolution in the US was the Cuban “Junta”, under the leadership of Tomás Estrada Palma, who in 1902 became Cuba’s first president. The Junta dealt with leading newspapers and Washington officials and held fund-raising events across the US. It funded and smuggled weapons. It mounted an extensive propaganda campaign that generated enormous popular support in the US in favour of the Cubans. Protestant churches and most Democrats were supportive, but business interests called on Washington to negotiate a settlement and avoid war.

Cuba attracted enormous American attention, but almost no discussion involved the other Spanish colonies of the Philippines, Guam, or Puerto Rico. Historians note that there was no popular demand in the United States for an overseas colonial empire.

Path to War

Cuban Struggle for Independence

The first serious bid for Cuban independence, the Ten Years’ War, erupted in 1868 and was subdued by the authorities a decade later. Neither the fighting nor the reforms in the Pact of Zanjón (February 1878) quelled the desire of some revolutionaries for wider autonomy and, ultimately, independence. One such revolutionary, José Martí, continued to promote Cuban financial and political freedom in exile. In early 1895, after years of organizing, Martí launched a three-pronged invasion of the island.

The plan called for one group from Santo Domingo led by Máximo Gómez, one group from Costa Rica led by Antonio Maceo Grajales, and another from the United States (pre-emptively thwarted by US officials in Florida) to land in different places on the island and provoke an uprising. While their call for revolution, the grito de Baíre, was successful, the result was not the grand show of force Martí had expected. With a quick victory effectively lost, the revolutionaries settled in to fight a protracted guerrilla campaign.

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the architect of Spain’s Restoration constitution and the prime minister at the time, ordered General Arsenio Martínez-Campos, a distinguished veteran of the war against the previous uprising in Cuba, to quell the revolt. Campos’s reluctance to accept his new assignment and his method of containing the revolt to the province of Oriente earned him criticism in the Spanish press.

The mounting pressure forced Cánovas to replace General Campos with General Valeriano Weyler, a soldier who had experience in quelling rebellions in overseas provinces and the Spanish metropole. Weyler deprived the insurgency of weaponry, supplies, and assistance by ordering the residents of some Cuban districts to move to re-concentration areas near the military headquarters. This strategy was effective in slowing the spread of rebellion. In the United States, this fuelled the fire of anti-Spanish propaganda. In a political speech President William McKinley used this to ram Spanish actions against armed rebels. He even said this “was not civilized warfare” but “extermination”.

Spanish Attitude

The Spanish government regarded Cuba as a province of Spain rather than a colony. Spain depended on Cuba for prestige and trade, and used it as a training ground for its army. Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo announced that “the Spanish nation is disposed to sacrifice to the last peseta of its treasure and to the last drop of blood of the last Spaniard before consenting that anyone snatch from it even one piece of its territory”. He had long dominated and stabilised Spanish politics. He was assassinated in 1897 by Italian anarchist Michele Angiolillo, leaving a Spanish political system that was not stable and could not risk a blow to its prestige.

US Response

The eruption of the Cuban revolt, Weyler’s measures, and the popular fury these events whipped up proved to be a boon to the newspaper industry in New York City. Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal recognised the potential for great headlines and stories that would sell copies. Both papers denounced Spain but had little influence outside New York. American opinion generally saw Spain as a hopelessly backward power that was unable to deal fairly with Cuba. American Catholics were divided before the war began but supported it enthusiastically once it started.

The US had important economic interests that were being harmed by the prolonged conflict and deepening uncertainty about Cuba’s future. Shipping firms that had relied heavily on trade with Cuba now suffered losses as the conflict continued unresolved. These firms pressed Congress and McKinley to seek an end to the revolt. Other American business concerns, specifically those who had invested in Cuban sugar, looked to the Spanish to restore order. Stability, not war, was the goal of both interests. How stability would be achieved would depend largely on the ability of Spain and the US to work out their issues diplomatically.

While tension increased among the Cubans and Spanish Government, popular support of intervention began to spring up in the United States. Many Americans likened the Cuban revolt to the American Revolution, and they viewed the Spanish Government as a tyrannical oppressor. Historian Louis Pérez notes that “The proposition of war in behalf of Cuban independence took hold immediately and held on thereafter. Such was the sense of the public mood.” Many poems and songs were written in the United States to express support of the “Cuba Libre” movement. At the same time, many African Americans, facing growing racial discrimination and increasing retardation of their civil rights, wanted to take part in the war. They saw it as a way to advance the cause of equality, service to country hopefully helping to gain political and public respect amongst the wider population.

President McKinley, well aware of the political complexity surrounding the conflict, wanted to end the revolt peacefully. He began to negotiate with the Spanish government, hoping that the talks would dampen yellow journalism in the US and soften support for war with Spain. An attempt was made to negotiate a peace before McKinley took office. However, the Spanish refused to take part in the negotiations. In 1897 McKinley appointed Stewart L. Woodford as the new minister to Spain, who again offered to negotiate a peace. In October 1897, the Spanish government refused the United States’ offer to negotiate between the Spanish and the Cubans, but promised the US it would give the Cubans more autonomy. However, with the election of a more liberal Spanish government in November, Spain began to change its policies in Cuba. First, the new Spanish government told the US that it was willing to offer a change in the Reconcentration policies if the Cuban rebels agreed to a cessation of hostilities. This time the rebels refused the terms in hopes that continued conflict would lead to US intervention and the creation of an independent Cuba. The liberal Spanish government also recalled the Spanish Governor-General Valeriano Weyler from Cuba. This action alarmed many Cubans loyal to Spain.

The Cubans loyal to Weyler began planning large demonstrations to take place when the next Governor General, Ramón Blanco, arrived in Cuba. US consul Fitzhugh Lee learned of these plans and sent a request to the US State Department to send a US warship to Cuba. This request led to the USS Maine being sent to Cuba. While Maine was docked in Havana, an explosion sank the ship. The sinking of Maine was blamed on the Spanish and made the possibility of a negotiated peace very slim. Throughout the negotiation process, the major European powers, especially Britain, France, and Russia, generally supported the American position and urged Spain to give in. Spain repeatedly promised specific reforms that would pacify Cuba but failed to deliver; American patience ran out.

USS Maine Dispatch to Havana and Loss

McKinley sent USS Maine to Havana to ensure the safety of American citizens and interests, and to underscore the urgent need for reform. Naval forces were moved in position to attack simultaneously on several fronts if the war was not avoided. As Maine left Florida, a large part of the North Atlantic Squadron was moved to Key West and the Gulf of Mexico. Others were also moved just off the shore of Lisbon, and others were moved to Hong Kong too.

At 9:40 pm on 15 February 1898, Maine sank in Havana Harbor after suffering a massive explosion. While McKinley urged patience and did not declare that Spain had caused the explosion, the deaths of 250 out of 355 sailors on board focused American attention. McKinley asked Congress to appropriate $50 million for defence, and Congress unanimously obliged. Most American leaders believed that the cause of the explosion was unknown. Still, public attention was now riveted on the situation and Spain could not find a diplomatic solution to avoid war. Spain appealed to the European powers, most of whom advised it to accept US conditions for Cuba in order to avoid war. Germany urged a united European stand against the United States but took no action.

The US Navy’s investigation, made public on 28 March, concluded that the ship’s powder magazines were ignited when an external explosion was set off under the ship’s hull. This report poured fuel on popular indignation in the US, making the war inevitable. Spain’s investigation came to the opposite conclusion: the explosion originated within the ship. Other investigations in later years came to various contradictory conclusions, but had no bearing on the coming of the war. In 1974, Admiral Hyman George Rickover had his staff look at the documents and decided there was an internal explosion. A study commissioned by National Geographic magazine in 1999, using AME computer modelling, stated that a mine could have caused the explosion, but no definitive evidence was found.

Declaring War

After Maine was destroyed, New York City newspaper publishers Hearst and Pulitzer decided that the Spanish were to blame, and they publicised this theory as fact in their papers. They both used sensationalistic and astonishing accounts of “atrocities” committed by the Spanish in Cuba by using headlines in their newspapers, such as “Spanish Murderers” and “Remember The Maine”. Their press exaggerated what was happening and how the Spanish were treating the Cuban prisoners. The stories were based on factual accounts, but most of the time, the articles that were published were embellished and written with incendiary language causing emotional and often heated responses among readers. A common myth falsely states that when illustrator Frederic Remington said there was no war brewing in Cuba, Hearst responded: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

However, this new “yellow journalism” was uncommon outside New York City, and historians no longer consider it the major force shaping the national mood. Public opinion nationwide did demand immediate action, overwhelming the efforts of President McKinley, Speaker of the House Thomas Brackett Reed, and the business community to find a negotiated solution. Wall Street, big business, high finance and Main Street businesses across the country were vocally opposed to war and demanded peace. After years of severe depression, the economic outlook for the domestic economy was suddenly bright again in 1897. However, the uncertainties of warfare posed a serious threat to full economic recovery. “War would impede the march of prosperity and put the country back many years,” warned the New Jersey Trade Review. The leading railroad magazine editorialised, “From a commercial and mercenary standpoint it seems peculiarly bitter that this war should come when the country had already suffered so much and so needed rest and peace.” McKinley paid close attention to the strong anti-war consensus of the business community, and strengthened his resolve to use diplomacy and negotiation rather than brute force to end the Spanish tyranny in Cuba. Historian Nick Kapur argues that McKinley’s actions as he moved toward war were rooted not in various pressure groups but in his deeply held “Victorian” values, especially arbitration, pacifism, humanitarianism, and manly self-restraint.

A speech delivered by Republican Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont on 17 March 1898, thoroughly analysed the situation and greatly strengthened the pro-war cause. Proctor concluded that war was the only answer. Many in the business and religious communities which had until then opposed war, switched sides, leaving McKinley and Speaker Reed almost alone in their resistance to a war. On 11 April, McKinley ended his resistance and asked Congress for authority to send American troops to Cuba to end the civil war there, knowing that Congress would force a war.

On 19 April, while Congress was considering joint resolutions supporting Cuban independence, Republican Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado proposed the Teller Amendment to ensure that the US would not establish permanent control over Cuba after the war. The amendment, disclaiming any intention to annex Cuba, passed the Senate 42 to 35; the House concurred the same day, 311 to 6. The amended resolution demanded Spanish withdrawal and authorized the President to use as much military force as he thought necessary to help Cuba gain independence from Spain. President McKinley signed the joint resolution on 20 April 1898, and the ultimatum was sent to Spain. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on 21 April. On the same day, the US Navy began a blockade of Cuba. On 23 April, Spain reacted to the blockade by declaring war on the US.

On 25 April, the US Congress responded in kind, declaring that a state of war between the US and Spain had de facto existed since 21 April, the day the blockade of Cuba had begun.

The Navy was ready, but the Army was not well-prepared for the war and made radical changes in plans and quickly purchased supplies. In the spring of 1898, the strength of the US Regular Army was just 25,000 men. The Army wanted 50,000 new men but received over 220,000 through volunteers and the mobilisation of state National Guard units, even gaining nearly 100,000 men on the first night after the explosion of USS Maine.

Historiography

The overwhelming consensus of observers in the 1890s, and historians ever since, is that an upsurge of humanitarian concern with the plight of the Cubans was the main motivating force that caused the war with Spain in 1898. McKinley put it succinctly in late 1897 that if Spain failed to resolve its crisis, the United States would see “a duty imposed by our obligations to ourselves, to civilization and humanity to intervene with force.” Intervention in terms of negotiating a settlement proved impossible – neither Spain nor the insurgents would agree. Louis Perez states, “Certainly the moralistic determinants of war in 1898 has been accorded preponderant explanatory weight in the historiography.” By the 1950s, however, American political scientists began attacking the war as a mistake based on idealism, arguing that a better policy would be realism. They discredited the idealism by suggesting the people were deliberately misled by propaganda and sensationalist yellow journalism. Political scientist Robert Osgood, writing in 1953, led the attack on the American decision process as a confused mix of “self-righteousness and genuine moral fervour,” in the form of a “crusade” and a combination of “knight-errantry and national self- assertiveness.” Osgood argued:

A war to free Cuba from Spanish despotism, corruption, and cruelty, from the filth and disease and barbarity of General ‘Butcher’ Weyler’s reconcentration camps, from the devastation of haciendas, the extermination of families, and the outraging of women; that would be a blow for humanity and democracy…. No one could doubt it if he believed—and skepticism was not popular—the exaggerations of the Cuban Junta’s propaganda and the lurid distortions and imaginative lies pervade by the “yellow sheets” of Hearst and Pulitzer at the combined rate of 2 million [newspaper copies] a day.

In his War and Empire,[24] Prof. Paul Atwood of the University of Massachusetts (Boston) writes:

The Spanish–American War was fomented on outright lies and trumped up accusations against the intended enemy. … War fever in the general population never reached a critical temperature until the accidental sinking of the USS Maine was deliberately, and falsely, attributed to Spanish villainy. … In a cryptic message … Senator Lodge wrote that ‘There may be an explosion any day in Cuba which would settle a great many things. We have got a battleship in the harbor of Havana, and our fleet, which overmatches anything the Spanish have, is masked at the Dry Tortugas.

In his autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt gave his views of the origins of the war:

Our own direct interests were great, because of the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and especially because of Cuba’s relation to the projected Isthmian [Panama] Canal. But even greater were our interests from the standpoint of humanity. … It was our duty, even more from the standpoint of National honor than from the standpoint of National interest, to stop the devastation and destruction. Because of these considerations I favored war.

Pacific Theatre

Philippines

In the 333 years of Spanish rule, the Philippines developed from a small overseas colony governed from the Viceroyalty of New Spain to a land with modern elements in the cities. The Spanish-speaking middle classes of the 19th century were mostly educated in the liberal ideas coming from Europe. Among these Ilustrados was the Filipino national hero José Rizal, who demanded larger reforms from the Spanish authorities. This movement eventually led to the Philippine Revolution against Spanish colonial rule. The revolution had been in a state of truce since the signing of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato in 1897, with revolutionary leaders having accepted exile outside of the country.

Lieutenanrt William Warren Kimball, Staff Intelligence Officer with the Naval War College prepared a plan for war with Spain including the Philippines on 01 June 1896 known as “the Kimball Plan”.

On 23 April 1898, a document from Governor General Basilio Augustín appeared in the Manila Gazette newspaper warning of the impending war and calling for Filipinos to participate on the side of Spain.

The first battle between American and Spanish forces was at Manila Bay where, on 01 May, Commodore George Dewey, commanding the US Navy’s Asiatic Squadron aboard USS Olympia, in a matter of hours defeated a Spanish squadron under Admiral Patricio Montojo. Dewey managed this with only nine wounded. With the German seizure of Tsingtao in 1897, Dewey’s squadron had become the only naval force in the Far East without a local base of its own, and was beset with coal and ammunition problems. Despite these problems, the Asiatic Squadron destroyed the Spanish fleet and captured Manila’s harbour.

Following Dewey’s victory, Manila Bay became filled with the warships of other naval powers. The German squadron of eight ships, ostensibly in Philippine waters to protect German interests, acted provocatively – cutting in front of American ships, refusing to salute the American flag (according to customs of naval courtesy), taking soundings of the harbour, and landing supplies for the besieged Spanish.

With interests of their own, Germany was eager to take advantage of whatever opportunities the conflict in the islands might afford. There was a fear at the time that the islands would become a German possession. The Americans called Germany’s bluff and threatened conflict if the aggression continued. The Germans backed down. At the time, the Germans expected the confrontation in the Philippines to end in an American defeat, with the revolutionaries capturing Manila and leaving the Philippines ripe for German picking.

Commodore Dewey transported Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader who led rebellion against Spanish rule in the Philippines in 1896, from exile in Hong Kong to the Philippines to rally more Filipinos against the Spanish colonial government. By 09 June, Aguinaldo’s forces controlled the provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Bataan, Zambales, Pampanga, Pangasinan, and Mindoro, and had laid siege to Manila. On 12 June, Aguinaldo proclaimed the independence of the Philippines.

On 05 August, upon instruction from Spain, Governor-General Basilio Augustin turned over the command of the Philippines to his deputy, Fermin Jaudenes. On 13 August, with American commanders unaware that a peace protocol had been signed between Spain and the US on the previous day in Washington D.C., American forces captured the city of Manila from the Spanish in the Battle of Manila. This battle marked the end of Filipino-American collaboration, as the American action of preventing Filipino forces from entering the captured city of Manila was deeply resented by the Filipinos. This later led to the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), which would prove to be more deadly and costly than the Spanish-American War.

The US had sent a force of some 11,000 ground troops to the Philippines. On 14 August 1899, Spanish Captain-General Jaudenes formally capitulated and US General Merritt formally accepted the surrender and declared the establishment of a US military government in occupation. The capitulation document declared, “The surrender of the Philippine Archipelago.” and set forth a mechanism for its physical accomplishment. That same day, the Schurman Commission recommended that the US retain control of the Philippines, possibly granting independence in the future. On 10 December 1898, the Spanish government ceded the Philippines to the United States in the Treaty of Paris. Armed conflict broke out between US forces and the Filipinos when US troops began to take the place of the Spanish in control of the country after the end of the war, quickly escalating into the Philippine-American War.

Guam

Refer to Capture of Guam (1898).

On 20 June 1898, a US fleet commanded by Captain Henry Glass, consisting of the protected cruiser USS Charleston and three transports carrying troops to the Philippines, entered Guam’s Apra Harbour, Captain Glass having opened sealed orders instructing him to proceed to Guam and capture it. Charleston fired a few rounds at Fort Santa Cruz without receiving return fire. Two local officials, not knowing that war had been declared and believing the firing had been a salute, came out to Charleston to apologise for their inability to return the salute as they were out of gunpowder. Glass informed them that the US and Spain were at war.

The following day, Glass sent Lieutenant William Braunersruehter to meet the Spanish Governor to arrange the surrender of the island and the Spanish garrison there. Some 54 Spanish infantry were captured and transported to the Philippines as prisoners of war. No US forces were left on Guam, but the only US citizen on the island, Frank Portusach, told Captain Glass that he would look after things until US forces returned.

Caribbean Theatre

Cuba

Theodore Roosevelt advocated intervention in Cuba, both for the Cuban people and to promote the Monroe Doctrine. While Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he placed the Navy on a war-time footing and prepared Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron for battle. He also worked with Leonard Wood in convincing the Army to raise an all-volunteer regiment, the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry. Wood was given command of the regiment that quickly became known as the “Rough Riders”.

The Americans planned to capture the city of Santiago de Cuba to destroy Linares’ army and Cervera’s fleet. To reach Santiago they had to pass through concentrated Spanish defences in the San Juan Hills and a small town in El Caney. The American forces were aided in Cuba by the pro-independence rebels led by General Calixto García.

Cuban Sentiment

For quite some time the Cuban public believed the United States government to possibly hold the key to its independence, and even annexation was considered for a time, which historian Louis Pérez explored in his book Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy. The Cubans harboured a great deal of discontent towards the Spanish government, due to years of manipulation on the part of the Spanish. The prospect of getting the United States involved in the fight was considered by many Cubans as a step in the right direction. While the Cubans were wary of the United States’ intentions, the overwhelming support from the American public provided the Cubans with some peace of mind, because they believed that the United States was committed to helping them achieve their independence. However, with the imposition of the Platt Amendment of 1903 after the war, as well as economic and military manipulation on the part of the United States, Cuban sentiment towards the United States became polarised, with many Cubans disappointed with continuing American interference.

Land Campaign

Refer to Battle of Las Guasimas (1898).

From 22 to 24 June, the Fifth Army Corps under General William R. Shafter landed at Daiquirí and Siboney, east of Santiago, and established an American base of operations. A contingent of Spanish troops, having fought a skirmish with the Americans near Siboney on 23 June, had retired to their lightly entrenched positions at Las Guasimas. An advance guard of US forces under former Confederate General Joseph Wheeler ignored Cuban scouting parties and orders to proceed with caution. They caught up with and engaged the Spanish rearguard of about 2,000 soldiers led by General Antero Rubín who effectively ambushed them, in the Battle of Las Guasimas on 24 June. The battle ended indecisively in favour of Spain and the Spanish left Las Guasimas on their planned retreat to Santiago.

The US Army employed Civil War-era skirmishers at the head of the advancing columns. Three of four of the US soldiers who had volunteered to act as skirmishers walking point at the head of the American column were killed, including Hamilton Fish II (grandson of Hamilton Fish, the Secretary of State under Ulysses S. Grant), and Captain Allyn K. Capron, Jr., whom Theodore Roosevelt would describe as one of the finest natural leaders and soldiers he ever met. Only Oklahoma Territory Pawnee Indian, Tom Isbell, wounded seven times, survived.

Regular Spanish troops were mostly armed with modern charger-loaded, 7mm 1893 Spanish Mauser rifles and using smokeless powder. The high-speed 7×57mm Mauser round was termed the “Spanish Hornet” by the Americans because of the supersonic crack as it passed overhead. Other irregular troops were armed with Remington Rolling Block rifles in .43 Spanish using smokeless powder and brass-jacketed bullets. US regular infantry were armed with the .30-40 Krag-Jørgensen, a bolt-action rifle with a complex magazine. Both the US regular cavalry and the volunteer cavalry used smokeless ammunition. In later battles, state volunteers used the .45-70 Springfield, a single-shot black powder rifle.

On 01 July, a combined force of about 15,000 American troops in regular infantry and cavalry regiments, including all four of the army’s “Coloured” Buffalo soldier regiments, and volunteer regiments, among them Roosevelt and his “Rough Riders”, the 71st New York, the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, and 1st North Carolina, and rebel Cuban forces attacked 1,270 entrenched Spaniards in dangerous Civil War-style frontal assaults at the Battle of El Caney and Battle of San Juan Hill outside of Santiago. More than 200 US soldiers were killed and close to 1,200 wounded in the fighting, thanks to the high rate of fire the Spanish put down range at the Americans. Supporting fire by Gatling guns was critical to the success of the assault. Cervera decided to escape Santiago two days later. First Lieutenant John J. Pershing, nicknamed “Black Jack”, oversaw the 10th Cavalry Unit during the war. Pershing and his unit fought in the Battle of San Juan Hill. Pershing was cited for his gallantry during the battle.

The Spanish forces at Guantánamo were so isolated by Marines and Cuban forces that they did not know that Santiago was under siege, and their forces in the northern part of the province could not break through Cuban lines. This was not true of the Escario relief column from Manzanillo, which fought its way past determined Cuban resistance but arrived too late to participate in the siege.

After the battles of San Juan Hill and El Caney, the American advance halted. Spanish troops successfully defended Fort Canosa, allowing them to stabilise their line and bar the entry to Santiago. The Americans and Cubans forcibly began a bloody, strangling siege of the city. During the nights, Cuban troops dug successive series of “trenches” (raised parapets), toward the Spanish positions. Once completed, these parapets were occupied by US soldiers and a new set of excavations went forward. American troops, while suffering daily losses from Spanish fire, suffered far more casualties from heat exhaustion and mosquito-borne disease. At the western approaches to the city, Cuban general Calixto Garcia began to encroach on the city, causing much panic and fear of reprisals among the Spanish forces.

Battle of Tayacoba

Refer to Battle of Tayacoba (1898).

Lieutenant Carter P. Johnson of the Buffalo Soldiers’ 10th Cavalry, with experience in special operations roles as head of the 10th Cavalry’s attached Apache scouts in the Apache Wars, chose 50 soldiers from the regiment to lead a deployment mission with at least 375 Cuban soldiers under Cuban Brigadier General Emilio Nunez and other supplies to the mouth of the San Juan River east of Cienfuegos. On 29 June 1898, a reconnaissance team in landing boats from the transports Florida and Fanita attempted to land on the beach, but were repelled by Spanish fire. A second attempt was made on 30 June 1898, but a team of reconnaissance soldiers was trapped on the beach near the mouth of the Tallabacoa River. A team of four soldiers saved this group and were awarded Medals of Honour. The USS Peoria and the recently arrived USS Helena then shelled the beach to distract the Spanish while the Cuban deployment landed 40 miles east at Palo Alto, where they linked up with Cuban General Gomez.

Naval Operations

The major port of Santiago de Cuba was the main target of naval operations during the war. The US fleet attacking Santiago needed shelter from the summer hurricane season; Guantánamo Bay, with its excellent harbour, was chosen. The 1898 invasion of Guantánamo Bay happened between 06 and 10 June, with the first US naval attack and subsequent successful landing of US Marines with naval support.

On 23 April, a council of senior admirals of the Spanish Navy had decided to order Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete’s squadron of four armored cruisers and three torpedo boat destroyers to proceed from their present location in Cape Verde (having left from Cádiz, Spain) to the West Indies.

The Battle of Santiago de Cuba on 03 July, was the largest naval engagement of the Spanish-American War and resulted in the destruction of the Spanish Caribbean Squadron (also known as the Flota de Ultramar). In May, the fleet of Spanish Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete had been spotted by American forces in Santiago harbour, where they had taken shelter for protection from sea attack. A two-month stand-off between Spanish and American naval forces followed.

When the Spanish squadron finally attempted to leave the harbour on 03 July, the American forces destroyed or grounded five of the six ships. Only one Spanish vessel, the new armoured cruiser Cristóbal Colón, survived, but her captain hauled down her flag and scuttled her when the Americans finally caught up with her. The 1,612 Spanish sailors who were captured, including Admiral Cervera, were sent to Seavey’s Island at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, where they were confined at Camp Long as prisoners of war from 11 July until mid-September.

During the stand-off, US Assistant Naval Constructor, Lieutenant Richmond Pearson Hobson had been ordered by Rear Admiral William T. Sampson to sink the collier USS Merrimac in the harbour to bottle up the Spanish fleet. The mission was a failure, and Hobson and his crew were captured. They were exchanged on 06 July, and Hobson became a national hero; he received the Medal of Honour in 1933, retired as a Rear Admiral and became a Congressman.

US Withdrawal

Yellow fever had quickly spread among the American occupation force, crippling it. A group of concerned officers of the American army chose Theodore Roosevelt to draft a request to Washington that it withdraw the Army, a request that paralleled a similar one from General Shafter, who described his force as an “army of convalescents”. By the time of his letter, 75% of the force in Cuba was unfit for service.

On 07 August, the American invasion force started to leave Cuba. The evacuation was not total. The US Army kept the black Ninth US Cavalry Regiment in Cuba to support the occupation. The logic was that their race and the fact that many black volunteers came from southern states would protect them from disease; this logic led to these soldiers being nicknamed “Immunes”. Still, when the Ninth left, 73 of its 984 soldiers had contracted the disease.

Puerto Rico

Refer to the Puerto Rico Campaign (1898).

On 24 May 1898, in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote, “Porto Rico is not forgotten and we mean to have it”.

In the same month, Lieutenant Henry H. Whitney of the United States Fourth Artillery was sent to Puerto Rico on a reconnaissance mission, sponsored by the Army’s Bureau of Military Intelligence. He provided maps and information on the Spanish military forces to the US government before the invasion.

The American offensive began on 12 May 1898, when a squadron of 12 US ships commanded by Rear Admiral William T. Sampson of the US Navy attacked the archipelago’s capital, San Juan. Though the damage inflicted on the city was minimal, the Americans established a blockade in the city’s harbour, San Juan Bay. On 22 June, the cruiser Isabel II and the destroyer Terror delivered a Spanish counterattack, but were unable to break the blockade and Terror was damaged.

The land offensive began on 25 July, when 1,300 infantry soldiers led by Nelson A. Miles disembarked off the coast of Guánica. The first organised armed opposition occurred in Yauco in what became known as the Battle of Yauco.

This encounter was followed by the Battle of Fajardo. The United States seized control of Fajardo on August 1, but were forced to withdraw on 05 August after a group of 200 Puerto Rican-Spanish soldiers led by Pedro del Pino gained control of the city, while most civilian inhabitants fled to a nearby lighthouse. The Americans encountered larger opposition during the Battle of Guayama and as they advanced towards the main island’s interior. They engaged in crossfire at Guamaní River Bridge, Coamo and Silva Heights and finally at the Battle of Asomante. The battles were inconclusive as the allied soldiers retreated.

A battle in San Germán concluded in a similar fashion with the Spanish retreating to Lares. On 09 August, 1898, American troops that were pursuing units retreating from Coamo encountered heavy resistance in Aibonito in a mountain known as Cerro Gervasio del Asomante and retreated after six of their soldiers were injured. They returned three days later, reinforced with artillery units and attempted a surprise attack. In the subsequent crossfire, confused soldiers reported seeing Spanish reinforcements nearby and five American officers were gravely injured, which prompted a retreat order. All military actions in Puerto Rico were suspended on 13 August, after US President William McKinley and French Ambassador Jules Cambon, acting on behalf of the Spanish Government, signed an armistice whereby Spain relinquished its sovereignty over Puerto Rico.

Cámara’s Squadron

Shortly after the war began in April, the Spanish Navy ordered major units of its fleet to concentrate at Cádiz to form the 2nd Squadron, under the command of Rear Admiral Manuel de la Cámara y Livermoore. Two of Spain’s most powerful warships, the battleship Pelayo and the brand-new armoured cruiser Emperador Carlos V, were not available when the war began – the former undergoing reconstruction in a French shipyard and the latter not yet delivered from her builders – but both were rushed into service and assigned to Cámara’s squadron. The squadron was ordered to guard the Spanish coast against raids by the US Navy. No such raids materialised, and while Cámara’s squadron lay idle at Cádiz, US Navy forces destroyed Montojo’s squadron at Manila Bay on 01 May and bottled up Cervera’s squadron at Santiago de Cuba on 27 May.

During May, the Spanish Ministry of Marine considered options for employing Cámara’s squadron. Spanish Minister of Marine Ramón Auñón y Villalón made plans for Cámara to take a portion of his squadron across the Atlantic Ocean and bombard a city on the United States East Coast – preferably Charleston, South Carolina – and then head for the Caribbean to make port at San Juan, Havana, or Santiago de Cuba, but in the end this idea was dropped. Meanwhile, US intelligence reported rumours as early as 15 May that Spain also was considering sending Cámara’s squadron to the Philippines to destroy Dewey’s squadron and reinforce the Spanish forces there with fresh troops. Pelayo and Emperado Carlos V each were more powerful than any of Dewey’s ships, and the possibility of their arrival in the Philippines was of great concern to the United States, which hastily arranged to dispatch 10,000 additional US Army troops to the Philippines and send two US Navy monitors to reinforce Dewey.

On 15 June, Cámara finally received orders to depart immediately for the Philippines. His squadron, made up of Pelayo (his flagship), Emperador Carlos V, two auxiliary cruisers, three destroyers, and four colliers, was to depart Cádiz escorting four transports. After detaching two of the transports to steam independently to the Caribbean, his squadron was to proceed to the Philippines, escorting the other two transports, which carried 4,000 Spanish Army troops to reinforce Spanish forces there. He then was to destroy Dewey’s squadron. Accordingly, he sortied from Cádiz on 16 June and, after detaching two of the transports for their voyages to the Caribbean, passed Gibraltar on 17 June and arrived at Port Said, at the northern end of the Suez Canal, on 26 June. There he found that US operatives had purchased all the coal available at the other end of the canal in Suez to prevent his ships from coaling with it and received word on 29 June from the British government, which controlled Egypt at the time, that his squadron was not permitted to coal in Egyptian waters because to do so would violate Egyptian and British neutrality.

Ordered to continue, Cámara’s squadron passed through the Suez Canal on 05-06 July. By that time, the United States Department of the Navy had announced that a US Navy “armoured squadron with cruisers” would assemble and “proceed at once to the Spanish coast” and word also reached Spain of the annihilation of Cervera’s squadron off Santiago de Cuba on 03 July, freeing up the US Navy’s heavy forces from the blockade there. Fearing for the safety of the Spanish coast, the Spanish Ministry of Marine recalled Cámara’s squadron, which by then had reached the Red Sea, on 07 July 1898. Cámara’s squadron returned to Spain, arriving at Cartagena on 23 July. Cámara and Spain’s two most powerful warships thus never saw combat during the war.

Making Peace

With defeats in Cuba and the Philippines, and its fleets in both places destroyed, Spain sued for peace and negotiations were opened between the two parties. After the sickness and death of British consul Edward Henry Rawson-Walker, American admiral George Dewey requested the Belgian consul to Manila, Édouard André, to take Rawson-Walker’s place as intermediary with the Spanish government.

Hostilities were halted on 12 August 1898, with the signing in Washington of a Protocol of Peace between the United States and Spain. After over two months of difficult negotiations, the formal peace treaty, the Treaty of Paris, was signed in Paris on 10 December 1898, and was ratified by the US Senate on 06 February 1899.

The US gained Spain’s colonies of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico in the treaty, and Cuba became a US protectorate. The treaty came into force in Cuba 11 April 1899, with Cubans participating only as observers. Having been occupied since 17 July 1898, and thus under the jurisdiction of the US Military Government (USMG), Cuba formed its own civil government and gained independence on 20 May 1902, with the announced end of USMG jurisdiction over the island. However, the US imposed various restrictions on the new government, including prohibiting alliances with other countries, and reserved the right to intervene. The US also established a perpetual lease of Guantánamo Bay.

Aftermath and Legacy

The war lasted 16 weeks. John Hay (the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom), writing from London to his friend Theodore Roosevelt, declared that it had been “a splendid little war”. The press showed Northerners and Southerners, blacks and whites fighting against a common foe, helping to ease the scars left from the American Civil War. Exemplary of this was the fact that four former Confederate States Army generals had served in the war, now in the US Army and all of them again carrying similar ranks. These officers included Matthew Butler, Fitzhugh Lee, Thomas L. Rosser and Joseph Wheeler, though only the latter had seen action. Still, in an exciting moment during the Battle of Las Guasimas, Wheeler apparently forgot for a moment which war he was fighting, having supposedly called out “Let’s go, boys! We’ve got the damn Yankees on the run again!”

The war marked American entry into world affairs. Since then, the US has had a significant hand in various conflicts around the world, and entered many treaties and agreements. The Panic of 1893 was over by this point, and the US entered a long and prosperous period of economic and population growth, and technological innovation that lasted through the 1920s.

The war redefined national identity, served as a solution of sorts to the social divisions plaguing the American mind, and provided a model for all future news reporting.

The idea of American imperialism changed in the public’s mind after the short and successful Spanish-American War. Due to the US’ powerful influence diplomatically and militarily, Cuba’s status after the war relied heavily upon American actions. Two major developments emerged from the Spanish-American War: one, it firmly established the United States’ vision of itself as a “defender of democracy” and as a major world power, and two, it had severe implications for Cuban-American relations in the future. As historian Louis Pérez argued in his book Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos, the Spanish-American War of 1898 “fixed permanently how Americans came to think of themselves: a righteous people given to the service of righteous purpose”.

The war greatly reduced the Spanish Empire. Spain had been declining as an imperial power since the early 19th century as a result of Napoleon’s invasion. The loss of Cuba caused a national trauma because of the affinity of peninsular Spaniards with Cuba, which was seen as another province of Spain rather than as a colony. Spain retained only a handful of overseas holdings: Spanish West Africa (Spanish Sahara), Spanish Guinea, Spanish Morocco, and the Canary Islands. With the loss of the Philippines, Spain’s remaining Pacific possessions in the Caroline Islands and Mariana Islands became untenable and were sold to Germany in the German-Spanish Treaty (1899).

The Spanish soldier Julio Cervera Baviera, who served in the Puerto Rican Campaign, published a pamphlet in which he blamed the natives of that colony for its occupation by the Americans, saying, “I have never seen such a servile, ungrateful country [i.e., Puerto Rico] … In twenty-four hours, the people of Puerto Rico went from being fervently Spanish to enthusiastically American…. They humiliated themselves, giving in to the invader as the slave bows to the powerful lord.” He was challenged to a duel by a group of young Puerto Ricans for writing this pamphlet.

Culturally, a new wave called the Generation of ’98 originated as a response to this trauma, marking a renaissance in Spanish culture. Economically, the war benefited Spain, because after the war large sums of capital held by Spaniards in Cuba and the United States were returned to the peninsula and invested in Spain. This massive flow of capital (equivalent to 25% of the gross domestic product of one year) helped to develop the large modern firms in Spain in the steel, chemical, financial, mechanical, textile, shipyard, and electrical power industries. However, the political consequences were serious. The defeat in the war began the weakening of the fragile political stability that had been established earlier by the rule of Alfonso XII.

The Teller Amendment, which was enacted on 20 April 1898, was a promise from the US to the Cuban people that it was not declaring war to annex Cuba, but to help it gain its independence from Spain. The Platt Amendment was a move by the United States’ government to shape Cuban affairs without violating the Teller Amendment.

The US Congress had passed the Teller Amendment before the war, promising Cuban independence. However, the Senate passed the Platt Amendment as a rider to an Army appropriations bill, forcing a peace treaty on Cuba which prohibited it from signing treaties with other nations or contracting a public debt. The Platt Amendment was pushed by imperialists who wanted to project US power abroad (in contrast to the Teller Amendment which was pushed by anti-imperialists who called for a restraint on US rule). The amendment granted the US the right to stabilise Cuba militarily as needed. In addition, the Platt Amendment permitted the US to deploy Marines to Cuba if its freedom and independence was ever threatened or jeopardised by an external or internal force. The Platt Amendment also provided for a permanent American naval base in Cuba. Guantánamo Bay was established after the signing of the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations in 1903. Thus, despite that Cuba technically gained its independence after the war ended, the United States government ensured that it had some form of power and control over Cuban affairs.

The US annexed the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. The notion of the United States as an imperial power, with colonies, was hotly debated domestically with President McKinley and the Pro-Imperialists winning their way over vocal opposition led by Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who had supported the war. The American public largely supported the possession of colonies, but there were many outspoken critics such as Mark Twain, who wrote The War Prayer in protest. Roosevelt returned to the United States a war hero, and he was soon elected governor of New York and then became the vice president. At the age of 42 he became the youngest man to become president after the assassination of President McKinley.

The war served to further repair relations between the American North and South. The war gave both sides a common enemy for the first time since the end of the Civil War in 1865, and many friendships were formed between soldiers of northern and southern states during their tours of duty. This was an important development, since many soldiers in this war were the children of Civil War veterans on both sides.

The African-American community strongly supported the rebels in Cuba, supported entry into the war, and gained prestige from their wartime performance in the Army. Spokesmen noted that 33 African-American seamen had died in the Maine explosion. The most influential Black leader, Booker T. Washington, argued that his race was ready to fight. War offered them a chance “to render service to our country that no other race can”, because, unlike Whites, they were “accustomed” to the “peculiar and dangerous climate” of Cuba. One of the Black units that served in the war was the 9th Cavalry Regiment. In March 1898, Washington promised the Secretary of the Navy that war would be answered by “at least ten thousand loyal, brave, strong black men in the south who crave an opportunity to show their loyalty to our land, and would gladly take this method of showing their gratitude for the lives laid down, and the sacrifices made, that Blacks might have their freedom and rights.”

In 1904, the United Spanish War Veterans was created from smaller groups of the veterans of the Spanish-American War. Today, that organisation is defunct, but it left an heir in the Sons of Spanish-American War Veterans, created in 1937 at the 39th National Encampment of the United Spanish War Veterans. According to data from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the last surviving US veteran of the conflict, Nathan E. Cook, died on September 10, 1992, at age 106 (If the data is to be believed, Cook, born 10 October 1885, would have been only 12 years old when he served in the war).

The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW) was formed in 1914 from the merger of two veterans organizations which both arose in 1899: the American Veterans of Foreign Service and the National Society of the Army of the Philippines. The former was formed for veterans of the Spanish-American War, while the latter was formed for veterans of the Philippine-American War. Both organisations were formed in response to the general neglect veterans returning from the war experienced at the hands of the government.

To pay the costs of the war, Congress passed an excise tax on long-distance phone service. At the time, it affected only wealthy Americans who owned telephones. However, the Congress neglected to repeal the tax after the war ended four months later, and the tax remained in place for over 100 years until, on August 1, 2006, it was announced that the US Department of the Treasury and the IRS would no longer collect the tax.

Post-War American investment in Puerto Rico

The change in sovereignty of Puerto Rico, like the occupation of Cuba, brought about major changes in both the insular and US economies. Before 1898 the sugar industry in Puerto Rico was in decline for nearly half a century. In the second half of the nineteenth century, technological advances increased the capital requirements to remain competitive in the sugar industry. Agriculture began to shift toward coffee production, which required less capital and land accumulation. However, these trends were reversed with US hegemony. Early US monetary and legal policies made it both harder for local farmers to continue operations and easier for American businesses to accumulate land. This, along with the large capital reserves of American businesses, led to a resurgence in the Puerto Rican nuts and sugar industry in the form of large American owned agro-industrial complexes.

At the same time, the inclusion of Puerto Rico into the US tariff system as a customs area, effectively treating Puerto Rico as a state with respect to internal or external trade, increased the co-dependence of the insular and mainland economies and benefitted sugar exports with tariff protection. In 1897, the United States purchased 19.6% of Puerto Rico’s exports while supplying 18.5% of its imports. By 1905, these figures jumped to 84% and 85%, respectively. However, coffee was not protected, as it was not a product of the mainland. At the same time, Cuba and Spain, traditionally the largest importers of Puerto Rican coffee, now subjected Puerto Rico to previously non-existent import tariffs. These two effects led to a decline in the coffee industry. From 1897 to 1901, coffee went from 65.8% of exports to 19.6% while sugar went from 21.6% to 55%. The tariff system also provided a protected market place for Puerto Rican tobacco exports. The tobacco industry went from nearly non-existent in Puerto Rico to a major part of the country’s agricultural sector.

In popular Culture

The Spanish-American War was the first US war in which the motion picture camera played a role. The Library of Congress archives contain many films and film clips from the war. In addition, a few feature films have been made about the war. These include:

• The Rough Riders, a 1927 silent film.
• A Message to Garcia, 1936.
• Rough Riders, a 1997 television miniseries directed by John Milius, and featuring Tom Berenger (Theodore Roosevelt), Gary Busey (Joseph Wheeler), Sam Elliott (Buckey O’Neill), Dale Dye (Leonard Wood), Brian Keith (William McKinley), George Hamilton (William Randolph Hearst), and R. Lee Ermey (John Hay).
• Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War, a 1999 television documentary from PBS.
• The Spanish-American War: First Intervention, a 2007 docudrama from The History Channel.
• Baler, a 2008 film about the Siege of Baler.
• Los últimos de Filipinas (“The Last Ones of the Philippines”), a 1945 Spanish biographical film directed by Antonio Román.
• Amigo, 2010.
• 1898, Our Last Men in the Philippines, a well-acclaimed 2016 film about the Siege of Baler.

Military Decorations

United States

The United States awards and decorations of the Spanish-American War were as follows:

• Wartime service and honours:
  • Medal of Honour.
  • Specially Meritorious Service Medal.
  • Spanish Campaign Medal – upgradeable to include the Silver Citation Star to recognise those US Army members who had performed individual acts of heroism.
  • West Indies Campaign Medal.
  • Sampson Medal, West Indies service under Admiral William T. Sampson.
  • Dewey Medal, service during the Battle of Manila Bay under Admiral George Dewey.
  • Spanish War Service Medal, US Army homeland service.
• Post-war occupation service:
  • Army of Puerto Rican Occupation Medal.
  • Army of Cuban Occupation Medal.

Spain

• Army Cross of Military Merit/Cruces del Mérito Militar – Spain issued two Crosses of Military Merit including one for fighters with a red badge and a red ribbon with a white stripe, and one for non-fighters with a white badge and a white ribbon with a red stripe. An example of the Silver Cross of Military Merit with the red emblem for fighters was issued on 18 July 1898 for good behaviour on the 11 May in defence of the fortress of El Faro and the Pueblo de Jagua on 11 May in the Battle of Cienfuegos.
• Army Operations Medal/Medalla Para Ejercito de Operaciones, Cuba.
• Medal for Volunteers/Medalla Para Los Volunatrios, Cuban Campaign, 1895-1898.
• Army Operations Medal for Valour, Discipline and Loyalty, Philippines, 1896=1898.
• Army Medal for Volunteers/Medalla Para Los Voluntarios, Philippines, Luzon Campaign, 1896-1897.

Other Countries

The governments of Spain and Cuba issued a wide variety of military awards to honour Spanish, Cuban, and Philippine soldiers who had served in the conflict.