Slow Boats, Fast News, Short War: American Correspondents in the Spanish-American War (Part 1 of 2)

Greetings, readers! I will be continuing my thread of the history of American war correspondents. I'm now up to the 1890's and the Spanish-American War (Cuban phase, 1898). My overall goal is for the reader to better understand how such journalism has evolved, and especially how these reporters have shaped the public understanding, and memory, of America's wars. I have chosen to break this large topic into two parts: the first, on the background of the war and of its journalism, and the second about the war itself (which only lasted a few months), and about three important people who covered it. I'm dividing it because the press coverage of the war, short as it was, was on a scale far larger than for any previous American war, and, importantly, that coverage had far fewer restraints than most wars (the only arguable exception being Vietnam). I also go into depth because this is a war little-known to most Americans (unless you live in Guam or Puerto Rico- because the war is the reason you live in the United States!). After this two-parter, I will take a break from this journalism theme- to inaugurate my other major focus (current environmental issues). Along the way, I'll be examining, and criticizing, 2 common myths or stereotypes about this war:

1- 1st part- that American journalists pushed an unwilling government into it (in other words, the war wouldn't have happened without newspaper pressure);

and 2- 2nd blog part- that (future president) Teddy Roosevelt and his unit, the Rough Riders, were primarily responsible for American victory over the Spanish in Cuba (hint- here the press does play a crucial role).

To recap, and for those reading my blog for the first time: by the late 1800's, American newspaper journalism was at its peak. There was improved printing technology, the ability now to incorporate more and better illustrations (including vivid, and slanted, editorial cartoons and comics- in color!), and fast transmission of news over great distances through both land telegraph and telephone lines and submarine cables. And, most important of all, Americans, increasingly literate and aware of the world beyond their borders, simply read a LOT of newspapers: morning, evening, weekly, etc.- and had thousands to choose from (as well as thousands of magazines of all sorts). This boom, of news reporting and news reading, by the late 1890's intersected dramatically with a developing political crisis- about the island of Cuba.

Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean and located at its closest point just 90 miles from Florida (which at this time was experiencing its first big development boom), at this point still belonged to Spain, as it had since 1511, and as did its smaller neighbor, Puerto Rico. Its two well-known products were sugar (it was one of the world's great producers) and tobacco (used for its famous cigars). American slaveowners had coveted the island before the Civil War, and it had only recently emancipated its slaves (in 1886). Spain, which in its heyday had ruled most of the Western Hemisphere, was now a shadow of its imperial glory; its only other major remaining colonial possession was the island chain of the Philippines in East Asia. As for the Cuban people, whether of the middle and upper classes (of primarily European descent), or the very impoverished working class (mostly descended from African slaves), the majority by now wanted no more Spanish exploitation. By now there had already been one major rebellion, the Ten Years' War (1868-1878). The Spanish had won, but only after promising greater self-government.

So- how did the U.S. get involved in the island in the 1890's? It was in fact actions by Congress about trade policy that pushed Cuba into its second rebellion (and which in turn eventually drew the U.S. into its first major war since the Civil War ended in 1865). Those two actions had to do with- sugar (for millennia one of humanity's most popular commodities!). The first action was the McKinley Tariff of 1890. A wide-ranging effort by Republicans to cut down foreign business competition, it (somewhat surprisingly) included elimination of the taxes on imported sugar and molasses. This move was great for Cuba (though disastrous for Hawaii, then an independent kingdom, which had had an exclusive tax-free sugar agreement with the U.S.). The McKinley Tariff triggered a boom in the island's sugar industry (though short-lived), as its sugar entered the huge U.S. market without any tax. American money flowed into the island, developing its infrastructure (ports, railroads, sugar farms); by 1898 that investment had reached $50 million. The next development was the migration of Cuban resistance leaders into the U.S., forming a committee (the "Junta"), based in New York City. This time, unlike the previous revolt, the resistance included a charismatic and idealistic leader, Jose Marti.

And at that point Congress carried out its second action affecting Cuba. In 1893, for complex reasons, the U.S. economy was suddenly hit by its worst economic crisis before the 1930's (the "Panic of 1893"). A Democrat, Grover Cleveland, had just been elected, and his party decided that a way out of the crisis was, through the Wilson-Gorman Tariff, to reverse tax policy (reducing import taxes, or tariffs, to, hopefully, boost American businesses by increasing exports). Again, in a seemingly contradictory move, the law included a new tariff in 1894- on sugar! All of a sudden, Cuba's economy, which was now 90% dependent on exports to the U.S. (mostly sugar), faced a new tax, making its sugar more expensive for Americans. Unemployment soared across the island, and the public resentment of Spain, already considerable, soared too. The result was a new rebellion in February 1895 (and the tax on foreign sugar, including Cuban, was doubled in August 1897, following the election of Republican William McKinley).

Ordinary Americans, have, since the success of their own anti-colonial Revolution, always had significant emotional sympathy for other anti-colonial movements (though the actions of the U.S. government have been a different story). In 1895, such empathy, for the "poor Cubans" so close by, translated into a surge of "filibuster" boats- small fast craft carrying guns for the rebels (and often reporters) into the island from Florida. At the very same time, a different kind of "revolution" ignited, within American journalism, thanks to one William Randolph Hearst.

Hearst, the privileged young heir to a massive mining fortune, had found his calling on the West Coast, in turning around the struggling San Francisco Examiner. His success was due to going all-out for sensationalizing the news: big headlines, combined with short punchy stories about scandals of any and every sort (known by 1898 as "yellow journalism"- for more see the video below). Heavy use of illustrations appealed to the ever-larger non-English-speaking immigrant population. In November 1895, as the Cuban revolt spread (and took the form of mass burning of cane fields), Hearst "went national," going to the press capital (New York City) and buying another struggling paper, the Journal. He immediately poured his (unmatched) wealth into a circulation "war," especially with the biggest paper in the city, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. That "war" included, as well as the same sensationalizing, immediate offers of big salaries to Pulitzer's top talent in every department (capped by $50,000 for Pulitzer's editor!). Having lured away a lot of his competition, Hearst saw immediate potential in constant (and by no means wholly factual) stories about the sufferings of the Cuban people. Those sufferings were genuinely magnified by the actions of the new Spanish commander, Gen. Weyler, who, arriving in February 1896, forced hundreds of thousands of civilians into camps surrounded by barbed wire and guards, to deprive the rebels of support (soon known by the new term of "concentration camps"). The result was predictable: a huge surge in deaths, due to poor diet and diseases. As well as sending reporters (as Pulitzer did too) to cover the reconcentrados in the camps, and to interview rebel leaders, Hearst was particularly interested in stories that emphasized mistreatment of (young and pretty) women.

The most notable example is the story of Evangelina Cisneros. She was 18, the daughter of a rebel leader whose whole family had been imprisoned. After she apparently resisted advances from the prison head, she was transferred to a jail with much worse conditions for trial, facing a possible sentence of 20 years. By this point, in August 1897, American public interest in Cuban stories had dropped significantly, as the military situation was a stalemate (both Marti, the rebellion's intellectual leader, and Maceo, its most successful general, had been killed). Hearst was characteristically dramatic in the way he seized on the Cisneros case, telling his employees:

Get up a petition to the Queen Regent of Spain for this girl's pardon. Enlist the women of America. Have them sign the petition. Wake up our correspondents all over the country. Have distinguished women sign first...We can make a national issue...That girl must besaved if we have to take her out of prison by force... (in Nasaw)

Not only did he get the signatures of prominent women, but he did follow up with direct action, sending reporter Karl Decker to break Cisneros out! Decker used Hearst's money to gather a group of conspirators, and they made a large enough opening in her cell wall for Cisneros to wriggle out. Disguised as a male sailor, she walked right down to the Havana waterfront and, with fake papers, got on a ship bound for New York. Hearst, who had kept the story on his front pages throughout, organized a rally of tens of thousands in Manhattan on her arrival; she even met with Pres. McKinley! Decker's jailbreak story ran in installments for weeks, magnifying public attention to Cuba (and Hearst's circulation).

(Evangelina Cisneros, C.S. Forbes & C.R. Cummings, 1897, The Vermonter, Public Domain.)

In the midst of Hearst's hype, the situation in Spain and Cuba dramatically changed. The Spanish prime minister who had sent Weyler to crush the revolt was assassinated, and the new liberal government recalled the brutal general, and offered to negotiate with the rebels (it also gave Puerto Rico its first parliament). However, the rebels were set on Cuban independence, and the violence continued; the economy now on the verge of collapse, the rebels controlling most of the countryside, and the Spanish the cities. The revolt story again threatened to slip out of the news, though Cubans loyal to Spain did demonstrate in Havana against the change in policy. Concerned about the protesters' possible threat to the huge American investment in Cuban businesses (and also to apply not-very-subtle pressure on Spain), the McKinley government, fatefully, sent a warship, the USS Maine, on a "friendly visit" to Havana.

Then two very dramatic and unexpected events, close in time, propelled the U.S. toward military confrontation with Spain. First, the Cuban rebels stole a private letter written by the Spanish ambassador to the U.S., Depuy de Lome, which referred to McKinley as "weak, vacillating, and venal." They promptly gave it to Hearst's Journal, whose headlines, from Feb. 9, 1898 on, made the most of the insult. Then, on the night of Feb. 15, an enormous explosion, resembling Carnival fireworks, detonated off downtown Havana. The entire stern section of the Maine, containing coal, gunpowder, and crew quarters, shattered, sending shrapnel and flame across the dark water. Windows were smashed and electric power instantly went down in the nearby city. Several American reporters were having dinner in the neighborhood, and rushed to the waterfront. Sailors from a nearby American ferry, joined by ones from the Spanish navy, pulled survivors from the wreck- mainly the officers (whose quarters were in the bow). Including those who died from their injuries, 268 Americans perished of the 350 aboard. One of the reporters, George Bronson Rea, got the most important story of the tragedy, by interviewing the traumatized Captain Sigsbee (who dictated his official report). The Maine explosion would turn out to be the biggest news story since the assassination of Lincoln in 1865. At the time, American attention, press and public, focused on one issue only: what had caused the explosion?

(Murat Halstead, reporter, "Our Country in War," (1898) on Wikimedia, Public Domain.)

Hearst and Pulitzer had their own answer, improbably, within 48 hours of the tragedy: it was a Spanish mine, detonating (thanks to a wire connected to the shore) beneath the ship (see below for a typical cartoon of the time). Day after day, their papers told the same story: the destruction was deliberate and treacherous (other papers were much more cautious, such as the New York Times, then a press pygmy, but being revived by its new publisher, Adolph Ochs, with its sober slogan, "All the News That's Fit to Print"). The public response was overwhelming and predictable- patriotic outrage. Big crowds gathered in the vaudeville theaters, the entertainment centers of the day, to watch (mostly crudely staged) motion pictures, made by inventor Thomas Edison's film company, of warships and of the wreck as it was explored by divers. While the U.S Navy started an investigation that lasted for weeks, Hearst's papers covered every aspect, including the mass funeral. Hearst also started the mode of press coverage that would characterize the war, by starting to hire dozens of reporters, photographers, and filmmakers, and putting them on rented small boats ("dispatch" or "press" boats), based in Florida. As the circulation of their papers passed 1 million apiece, he and Pulitzer also put great pressure on McKinley to confront the Spanish government. McKinley, the last president to have had Civil War combat experience, resisted that pressure for most of the spring, saying "I don't propose to be swept off my feet by the catastrophe." The assistant secretary of the Navy, one Theodore Roosevelt, was not going to wait for the official conclusion on the cause; he had been eager for war all along, and now took advantage of every absence of his boss to prepare and move warships to be ready for a war declaration.

(F. Victor Gillam, Judge, May 7, 1898- Public Domain.)

On Mar. 21, the Navy Court of Inquiry announced its verdict: that the explosion had been caused by another explosion outside the ship, so presumably a mine (the Spanish investigation ruled it was internal; a 1911 investigation by our Navy that it was external, and one in 1974 by the U.S. again that it was internal, due to coal dust igniting and setting off the neighboring ammunition- the conventional view today). After Spain failed to completely fulfill an ultimatum from McKinley for a ceasefire and move toward giving independence, the president asked Congress for a declaration of war, which it did, on Apr. 19 (though with a significant minority voting against, and with one condition, the Teller Amendment, that the U.S. would not add Cuba to its territory). The first shots were fired by the U.S. Navy, on Apr. 22. Hearst celebrated by setting off fireworks from the roof of his Manhattan headquarters, and on the front page put: "How do you like the Journal's war?". The Spanish-American War, or what could also be called the "correspondents' war," had begun.

So- about Myth#1- did Hearst's and Pulitzer's nonstop coverage "cause the war", as is often repeated today? Hearst obviously DID want to take the credit, but there's really no evidence. For one, there's no surge of letters to McKinley, or any other indication that the vast majority of Americans were convinced of the need for war, and pressuring their government accordingly. Also, other major papers, before the declaration, denounced the "yellow" papers as grossly unethical, and/or opposed American intervention. The most that can be said is that the two big papers created a "favorable environment" for the politicians to make the war decision.

That's it for this first part! On to colorful stories about the actual war coverage next time (with the usual bibliography). And a reminder too that I'll be blogging about a current environmental issue soon! As always, I welcome feedback!