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American Naval Preparations for War with Spain, 1896–1898

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

John A. S. Grenville
John A. S. Grenville
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

The historical debate over the Spanish-American War of 1898 is being reopened on both sides of the Atlantic. Until comparatively recently historians gave confident answers to the questions of the causes and consequences of the war. Moral assumptions about America's true mission were never very far from the surface of the interpretations which had won general acceptance in the United States. America's involvement in world affairs and more especially the acquisition of an empire was viewed as a perversion of her mission. There existed a consensus of opinion among historians that President McKinley and his administration were not in control of policy; that they were swept forward by a tide of public feeling, by political considerations, and by Congressional pressures they found impossible to resist. It was believed that war had been foisted on the American people by those who manipulated public opinion, by mass hysteria cleverly fomented by sectional interests, by the newspapers, by business pressure groups, and by jingo senators. Responsibility for the acquisition of the Philippines was uncritically ascribed to a junior member of the administration, Theodore Roosevelt, who when Assistant Secretary of the Navy, it was alleged, had plotted the whole thing with his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Rigorous research is challenging every one of these assumptions. The strategic aspects of American foreign policy, and more particularly the influence of naval officers on national policy, have been seriously studied by only a few historians, whose work has as yet little affected the ‘classical’ textbook versions of American policy before the war with Spain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 1968 , pp. 33 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

page 33 note 1 For some recent interpretations which view the war from fresh standpoints: Morgan, H. Wayne, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Lafeber, Walter, The New Empire, An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860–1898 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; May, Ernest R., Imperial Democracy, The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961Google Scholar); Grenville, John A. S. and Young, George B., Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy. Studies in Foreign Policy, 1873–1917 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Morison, Elting E.'s, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1942)Google Scholar throws valuable light on the attempts to reform the navy.

page 34 note 1 The war plans are printed as an appendix to this article. They once formed part of the files of the Office of Naval Intelligence, now housed in the National Archives, Washington, D.C., but they were at some stage separated from these files. I am most grateful to Dean Allard of the Division of Naval History, Department of the Navy, for bringing their existence to my attention. I would like to express the general appreciation of historians to the Division of Naval History, headed by Admiral E. M. Eller, which is preserving and making naval records available in conjunction with the staff of the National Archives.

page 34 note 2 Grenville, and Young, , Politics, Strategy and American Diplomacy, pp. 372–6Google Scholar.

page 35 note 1 War Plan recommended by the Board, 17 December 1896, printed in the appendix.

page 35 note 2 The distinguished American scholar Elting E. Morison, in Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy, was the first historian to appreciate the importance of Admiral Luce. See also Grenville, and Young, , Politics, Strategy and American Diplomacy, pp. 15–32Google Scholar, for a detailed account of the struggle over the Naval War College.

page 36 note 1 Note by Hilary Herbert, 2 March 1897, attached to the war plan of 17 December 1896.

page 37 note 1 War Plan recommended by the Board, 30 June 1897, printed in the appendix.

page 38 note 1 Barker to Navy Department, 15 September 1897, Navy Department, Miscellaneous letters.