Chapter 11: America and the World (18651900)
Summary
For two decades after the Civil War, the nation looked inward. Involved with westward expansion,
railroad building, political scandals, and economic dislocation, America was insular and mostly selfcontained. Secretary of State William Seward did acquire Midway Island and purchased Alaska in 1867,
however. Later, the United States took over part of the Samoan Islands (1889) and made an abortive
attempt to annex Hawaii (1893). Overall, however, the nation was content to focus on domestic issues
up until the 1890s.
Expansion in the 1890s
Expansionist ideas began to build in the 1890s. A “New Manifest Destiny” swept the nation. Writers such
as historian John Fiske and Congregational minister Josiah Strong promoted Anglo-Saxon superiority as a
force to spread both “civilization” and Christianity throughout the world. In a different vein, Alfred
Thayer Mahan linked sea power and expansion to domestic prosperity, national security, and
international commerce. These ideas meshed with the upheavals brought on by the Populist movement
and the Depression of 1893 to fuel internationalist and imperialist impulses to American foreign policy.
By the 1890s, the US was a regional power focusing its expansionistic/imperialist energies in the
Caribbean. In 1895, President Grover Cleveland rejuvenated the Monroe Doctrine when he pressured
Great Britain to arbitrate a boundary dispute with Venezuela. At the same time, the US became
concerned about the Cuban rebellion against Spain. With fifty million dollars invested in the Cuban
economy (especially the sugar and rum industries), and appalled by Spanish brutality in their crack-down
on Cuban rebels, the US demanded Spain end the turmoil or grant Cuba its independence.
The “Splendid Little War”
President William McKinley wished to avoid armed intervention in Cuba, but in 1898, the yellow
journalism of America’s newspapers (especially William Randolph Hearst’s and Joseph Pulitzer’s) were
pushing the nation and its elected representatives toward war. Further souring relations with Spain
were the DeLome letter that criticized McKinley’s leadership, and the mysterious destruction of the
battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898. By April, McKinley gave Spain an ultimatum—
end the rebellion, set Cuba free, or face war with America. The Spanish couldn’t accept those terms, and
on April 25, 1898, Congress declared war on Spain.
The Spanish-American War was a “splendid little war” for the US. The war was popular with thousands
of volunteers, such as Theodore Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” and African Americans who sympathized
with the plight of the Cuban people. America’s new navy (inspired by Mahan’s book and pushed through
Congress with Albert J. Beveridge’s influence) easily defeated the Spanish navy in the Caribbean and in
Manila Bay of the Philippines. By December 1898, America and Spain completed the Treaty of Paris, in
which Spain freed Cuba and ceded Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the US for twenty million
dollars.
Results of the War
The war had a downside, however. While the US guaranteed Cuba’s independence in the Teller
Amendment, America controlled Cuba’s domestic and foreign policies through the Platt Amendment for
many years to come. And when the Filipinos, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, discovered that they had
exchanged Spanish colonial rule for American, a rebellion ensued that cost 4,600 American lives and
those of over 50,000 Filipinos. Many Americans believed these imperialistic actions violated the nation’s
principles of liberty, freedom, and justice. While imperialists welcomed America’s greater political and
economic influence (and accompanying wealth) in the Caribbean and the Pacific; Social Darwinists
welcomed the opportunity to spread (what they thought was) their superior civilization and religion.
The United States tightened its control of the Caribbean region with Theodore Roosevelt’s Big Stick
Diplomacy and his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt warned Europe that Latin
America was not only closed to colonization (Monroe Doctrine) but that the United States would use its
military might to police the region and enforce standards of proper behavior by all nations. His
successor, William Taft, supported this approach with Dollar Diplomacy, which sought commercial
dominance of Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific for the US through America’s economic and
military power.
In Asia, the United States wanted a piece of the vast China market, yet America was unable to flex its
military power to force open markets in China. With the other major powers already claiming spheres of
influence throughout China, Secretary of State John Hay proposed cooperation among the nations. In
1899 and 1900, he issued two Open Door Notes, which called on all nations to maintain equal trading
rights in China while respecting its territorial integrity.
World War I
In 1914, a hundred years of European peace came to an end when Germany and the Central Powers
upset the “balance of power” by challenging France and England for dominance in Europe and in
imperialism world-wide. Sparked by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in the summer of 1914, longsimmering nationalistic disputes and rivalries brought the first general war in Europe since the time of
Napoleon.
The United States declared its traditional policy of neutrality at the outset of the conflict. Within three
years, however, America’s favorable trade and financial policies toward the Allies (Britain, France,
Russia, Serbia, …), British propaganda, Germany’s Zimmerman Note, and the Germans’ use of
unrestricted submarine warfare brought America into the war on the side of the Allies. While President
Wilson hoped America could work as a neutral to achieve “a peace without victory,” Germany’s
outrages against the US forced the president on April 2, 1917, to ask Congress for a declaration of war so
as to “make the world safe for democracy.”
America and its two-million-man army turned the tide of the war in favor of the Allies in 1917-1918.
Commanded by John Pershing, American troops repelled German advances in the summer and fall of
1918; and, on November 11, 1918, Germany surrendered. The US lost relatively few men (112,000), but
the other major combatants suffered over 10 million deaths in the four-year struggle.
Rejection of the League of Nations
The Big Four leaders gathered early in 1919 to settle the war issues. President Wilson wanted a League
of Nations to preserve world peace. He hoped that the treaty would adhere to his Fourteen Points for a
truly lasting peace; but, Britain and France were more interested in punishing Germany and expanding
their own Empires. The final version of the Treaty of Versailles was extremely harsh to Germany and
included only one of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the League of Nations.
Wilson faced a hostile Senate in July 1919, as he sought ratification of the treaty. Republicans opposed
both the treaty and the League of Nations. William Borah and his “irreconcilables” believed the treaty
compromised the American tradition of isolationism and neutrality and they opposed the treaty in its
entirety. Henry Cabot Lodge and the “reservationists” accepted the Leagues idea of collective security
but demanded more congressional control over America’s role within the organization so as to ensure
America’s sovereignty.
President Wilson, for many reasons, refused to compromise with his opponents and embarked on a
cross-country campaign to put public pressure on the Senate to accept the treaty without changes. In
September 1919, the tour ended tragically when Wilson suffered a paralytic stroke that left him
incapacitated for the six weeks that the Senate debated, and then rejected the treaty. The US never
joined the League of Nations and eventually signed a separate peace treaty with Germany.