OPPapers.com

The Unwept

The American people generally supported the government policy of expansion. There was great satisfaction gained in forcing Great Britain to recognize American nuisance in the Venezuela-British Guiana border dispute, and in enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine throughout Latin America. The Spanish presence in the Caribbean, especially on the nearby islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, had been disturbing Americans for many years. It was predictable, then, that a revolution by the native Cubans would find support in the United States and present an opportunity for expansion.

The United States had always had a deep interest in Cuba. Its location ninety miles south of Florida gave some Americans reason to consider the island’s potential as a United States territory. Many American business men were involved in trade with the Spanish colony’s lucrative sugar industry. Several American presidents, including James Polk, Franklyn Pierce and James Buchanan had proposed that the United States purchase Cuba from the Spanish, but each effort had failed.

During the nineteenth century, many of the European colonies in the Caribbean began to revolt. Cuba’s long history as a Spanish colony had begun with Christopher Columbus’s arrival in 1492. The Spanish quickly discovered Cuba’s agricultural value and built plantations to raise sugar cane, tobacco and coffee. They imported African slaves as well as enslaving native Tainos, to perform the back breaking labor of growing and processing the crops. Nearly 400 years later, the Cuban people, rich and poor, black and white, began to demand their independence. They wanted to create their own government and have control over their agrarian and natural resources.

The increasing popular demand, by the American people, to invade into Cuba, with the help of our press was astonishing. Publisher such as William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World battled for readers by printing the most...