Document 1: Teller and Platt Amendments, http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/teller.html
“In April 1898 Senator Henry M. Teller (Colorado) proposed an amendment to the U.S.
declaration of war against Spain which proclaimed that the United States would not establish
permanent control over Cuba. It stated that the United States "hereby disclaims any disposition
of intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for
pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the
government and control of the island to its people." The Senate passed the amendment on April
19. True to the letter of the Teller Amendment, after Spanish troops left the island in 1898, the
United States occupied Cuba until 1902.
The Teller Amendment was succeeded by the Platt Amendment introduced by Senator Orville
Platt (R-Connecticut) in February 1901. It allowed the United States "the right to intervene for
the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the
protection of life, property, and individual liberty..." The Platt Amendment was finally abrogated
on May 29, 1934.”
Document 2: Henry Cabot Lodge, February 20, 1896 Boyer, American Nation in the Modern
Era, page 333.
“We know that they have formed a government; that they have held two elections…They have
risen against oppression, compared to which the oppression which led us to rebel against
England is a dust in the balance…No useful end is being served by the bloody struggle that is
now in progress in Cuba, and in the name of humanity it should be stopped…The responsibility
is on us; we cannot escape it. We should…put a stop to that war which is now raging in Cuba
and give to that island once more peace, liberty, and independence.”
Document 3: Senator Proctor Exposes Spain’s Brutality in Cuba, Vermont Senator Redfield
Proctor, March 17, 1898 after a visit to Cuba.
“I went to Cuba with a strong conviction that the picture had been overdrawn. I could not
believe that out of a population of one million six hundred thousand, two hundred thousand had
died within these Spanish forts…My inquiries were entirely outside of sensational
sources…What I saw I cannot tell so that others can see it. It must be seen with one’s own eyes
to be realized…To me the strongest appeal is not the barbarity practiced by Weyler, nor the loss
of the Maine…but the spectacle of a million and a half people, the entire native population of
Cuba, struggling for freedom and deliverance from the worst misgovernment of which I ever had
knowledge…”
Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Social Studies Document 4: Source: PBS, Crucible of Empire, http://www.pbs.org/crucible/
In 1896, General Weyler of Spain implemented the first wave of the Spanish “Reconcentracion
Policy” that sent thousands of Cubans into concentration camps. Under Weyler’s policy, the
rural population had eight days to move into designated camps located in fortified towns; any
person who failed to obey was shot. The housing in these areas was typically abandoned,
decaying, roofless, and virtually uninhabitable. Food was scarce and famine and disease quickly
swept through the camps. By 1898, one third of Cuba’s population had been forcibly sent into
the concentration camps. Over 400,000 Cubans died as a result of the Spanish Reconcentracion
Policy.
Document 5: US Recognition of Cuban Independence, 1898, Fordham University, Modern
History Sourcebook, www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1998Cuba-us-recog.html
A resolution passed in response to a message sent to Congress by President McKinley, April 11,
1898, asking for permission to intervene in Cuba. As was often to be the case in the twentieth
century the professed anti-colonialism proved to be a useful tool in extending US power.
Joint Resolution for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding
that the Government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba,
and to withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the
President of the United States to use the land and naval forces of the United States to carry
these resolutions into effect.
Whereas, the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the Island of
Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States,
have been a disgrace to Christian civilization, culminating, as they have, in the destruction of a
United States battleship, with two hundred and sixty-six of its officers and crew, while on a
friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and cannot longer be endured, as has been set forth by the
President of the United States in his message to Congress of April eleventh, eighteen hundred
and ninety-eight, upon which the action of Congress was invited: Therefore,
Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in
Congress assembled, First. That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be,
free and independent.
Second. That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the Government of the United
States does hereby demand, that the Government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and
government in the Island of Cuba, and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban
waters.
Third. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to
use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the
United States, the militia of the several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry these
resolutions into effect.
Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Social Studies Fourth. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise
sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Islands except for the pacification thereof, and
asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the
Island to its people.
Approved, April 20, 1898.
Document 6: U. S. Intervention in Cuba, 1898, Patterson, Thomas C., “U. S. Intervention in
Cuba, 1898: Interpreting the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War,” OAH Magazine of
History, Spring, 1998, pages 5-6
…As its power grew, the United States became increasingly interested in China, where the opendoor policy was in the making; in the Pacific, where Hawaii was drawn into the U. S. vortex; and
especially in Latin America, where U. S. influence flowed most dramatically.
The impressive ascent of the United States in the international system and the imperialists’
vigorous rivalry for spheres of influence, particularly evident in Asia and Africa, gave real
urgency to American participation in the great-power game – an urgency that infused the war of
1898. The United States feared that it might be left out of the international race for territory and
especially that other imperialists would cut them off from the markets necessary to America’s
economic health. It seemed urgent to Americans that they act boldly in international relations or
suffer economic – and hence social and political – distress at home…
By 1898, the United States largely dominated the Western Hemisphere, turning it into a
dependent region in uneasy relationship with a towering hegemon. The United States saw the
Western Hemisphere as a system or unit – unique, different, and vital to U. S. security and
prosperity and in need of constant vigilance and control. Latin America was seen as a ‘natural
market” for U. S. goods, and as fertile ground for implanting American core values of democracy
and constitutional government in order to develop nations modeled after the United States, which
would become allies of the United States.
One of the consistent goals of U. S. foreign policy in the nineteenth century was the eviction of
European influence from the Western Hemisphere. The United States-sponsored Pan American
movement in the 1880s, for example, sought to rally Latin America around the United States in
order to blunt the “competitive European metropole powers.” In the crisis over Venezuela, the
message rang loudly: get out and stay out. The war against Spain in 1898, then, lay in regional
context as the latest decision to oust Europe from the Western Hemisphere…
Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Social Studies