Splendid Little War

John Hay -- "A Splendid War"

Secretary of State John Hay once wrote to Theodore Roosevelt that the Spanish-American War had been "a splendid little war" (Fried, 1998). It was an opinion shared by many Americans at the time. The three-month war -- declared in April 1898 and over by August -- had few American casualties and helped open up many foreign territories for the United States.

The war began with the Cuban Revolution. Spanish rule in Cuba was fiercely opposed by Cuban rebels who were routinely dehumanized, degraded and mistreated in the country throughout the late 19th Century (Lovett, 1997). Spanish general Valeriano Weyler instituted many concentration camps to contain insurgents and suppress the threat of rebel uprisings. The camps were scenes of indecency and deplorable living conditions where death, starvation and malaria and typhoid epidemics were rampant. The suffering of Cubans was deemed a social...
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