PRESENT DAY

"Hostilities formally began when Spain declared war on the United States on April 24th, 1898. Across the country regiments began to form. Theodore Roosevelt immediately resigned as assistant secretary of the navy, ordered a fancy uniform, and accepted a commission as lieutenant colonel of a volunteer calvary regiment soon to become famous as the Rough Riders" (America, p.639).

Perhaps the most publicized and well-known volunteer fighting force from the Spanish-American war is Theodore Roosevelt's famous "Rough Riders." Roosevelt had been the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but resigned in order to form a volunteer calvary regiment to fight in the Spanish-American war. With the help of Colonel Leonard Wood, Roosevelt began publicizing the regiment and recruitment. Thanks to his notoriety and colorful nature, Roosevelt's new regiment had twenty three hundred men volunteer in the first twenty-four hours, but only a fraction of them could be accepted.

Due to his lack of combat experience, Roosevelt initially positioned himself as Lieutenant-Colonel of the new regiment, relegating command duties to Colonel Leonard Wood. The regiment was made up of men from all over the country, with all different backgrounds ranging from Ivy-league educated to ranch-hands. The common thread that landed all these men in the Rough Riders was their ability to ride horses and shoot, as well as their physical fitness. The regiment was organized in San Antonio, TX and set sail for Cuba on June 14th, 1898. Unfortunately, due to poor organization and logistics, the Rough Riders arrived in Cuba on June 22nd without any of their horses.

Only two days after arriving in Cuba, the Rough Riders saw action in the field, during the Battle of Las Guasimas. Shortly thereafter, Colonel Leonard Wood was promoted to Brigadier General and Roosevelt was made Colonel of the Rough Riders. The Rough Riders would become famous through Roosevelt's writings of the war afterwards, and the amazing bravery and tenacity of the Rough Riders, particularly in the famous battles of "Kettle" and "San Juan Hill," positioned just outside the city of Santiago. Led by Colonel Roosevelt, the Rough Riders took Kettle Hill, and continued on to San Juan Heights. Along with help from the Ninth and Tenth Regiments, the "Buffalo Soldiers," and other regiments of the U.S. Army, the Rough Riders took the city of Santiago. It was a major achievement in the war, and directly contributed to the surrender of the Spanish.

The Rough Riders were quickly sent back to the United States in order to escape the tropical diseases beginning to take hold of the troops. They were shipped back to Montauk, Long Island, where they received a hero's welcome. By this time, the Rough Riders had been highly publicized in the United States and were already becoming legends in their own right. Roosevelt was nominated for a medal of honor (although he did not receive it at the time, he was awarded it in 2001, posthumously) and was elected Governor of New York later that year. He would serve as Vice President to William McKinley and eventually became the President of the United States when McKinley was assassinated in 1901.

Theodore Roosevelt Association
Library of Congress
Spanish American War Centennial

"The Atlanta Compromise" is the term that coined a speech made by the famous African-American civil rights leader, Booker T. Washington, in 1895 at the Atlanta Exposition. Washington, who thought "the agitation of the question of social equality an extremist folly" (America, pg. 605) stressed the development of economic equality first, whereby social equality would follow.
In the speech he detailed what he felt to be the reason for the African-American man's troubles as having "began at the top instead of at the bottom; that the seat in congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill..." (Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, pg. 106) While he expounds upon this statement for the remainder of the speech, this statement represents his feeling that by having sought social equality only, the African-American man had neglected developing economic equality, and ultimately achieved neither.
By appealing to the southern white man's quest for industrial growth, he argued "nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward" (Up From Slavery, pg. 108) while listing the virtues of his people as a quality, hardworking people. He argued that looking to foreign born workers instead would be a hindrance to the south's prosperity. Having linked the prosperity of the white and the African-American man, his message was well received. He went on to establish the Tuskegee Institute as a testament to these views.

¡CUBA LIBRE!

José Martí, born in 1853 in La Habana, Cuba, was a poet, a revolutionary and is known as Cuba's National Hero. He was sentenced to 6 years of hard labor at the age of 16 for his political activity and later was exiled to Spain. He also lived in the United States where he was able to mobilize support for the Cuban revolution among Cuban exiles. He was a founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and spoke out against U.S. imperialism in Latin America. In 1895, he was shot and killed during an invasion of Cuba, giving his life to help make Cuba free. His dream was realized, but not until after his death. In 1898, Spain gave up control of Cuba as a provision of the Treaty of Peace of Paris between the United States and Spain, ending the Spanish-American War. The Cuban Republic was instituted in 1902, but did not return to home rule until 1909.
The day before he died, Martí said in a letter that it was his duty “to prevent, by the independence of Cuba, the United States from spreading over the West Indies and falling, with that added weight, upon other lands of our America. All I have done up to now, and shall do hereafter, is to that end… I have lived inside the monster and know its insides.”
As a student of Spanish literature, I have read Martí's poetry and see him as more than just another revolutionary fighting for his country. He, like Cuban exiles today, longed to see a "Cuba Libre" - a free Cuba. His longing for his homeland is seen and felt in his poem "Dos patrias" (Two Homelands) from his collection of poems, "Flores de destierro" (Flowers of Exile), written during his exile, and his identity as a son of Cuba is clear in the poem "Soy un hombre sincero" from the collection, "Versos sencillos".
Interesting note: an adaptation of this poem was set to music in 1929, called "Guantanamera", and due to Martí's status as National Hero, became an unofficial Cuban anthem. It was made popular in the United States later in the 20th century by The Sandpipers.

"The object of government is the welfare of the people."
"This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare." - Teddy Roosevelt

On August 31, 1910, Teddy Roosevelt delivered his famous speech, known as the "New Nationalism" speech. The main issue of the speech was human welfare. He believed that it the government's chief responsibility was to protect people and property, but if there had to be a choice, the welfare of the people should come first. His agenda for public welfare included these goals: 1) a federal child labor law; 2) regulation of labor relations; 3) a national minimum wage for women.
Roosevelt gave this speech about a year and a half after he had left office as President of the United States and and about a year and half before he tried to win his party's nomination in 1912 (in which he was defeated by Taft).
This speech is important in that it shows Roosevelt's progressive philosophy of the need for reform, as we read in "America" on page 621: "This formulation unleashed Roosevelt's reformist bent."

"By the time of Cleveland's inauguration, farm foreclosures and railroad bankruptcy signaled economic trouble. On May 3rd, 1893, the stock market crashed." (America, pg. 588) This crash led to a depression, which in effect left the country with an unemployment rate of over 20 percent. The democrats, who had gained power in the House of Representatives and governorships, "bore the brunt of the responsibility for the economic crisis." (America, pg. 592) From this crisis arose the hard focus on the silver question, and the bimetal standard became a critical issue as many were calling for more money to be put in circulation. The depression and dwindling money supply also led to the gold purchase by J.P. Morgan and other private bankers to replenish the country's gold supplies. Other events spurred by the Panic of 1893 include the Pullman Strike and Coxey's Army marching on Wasbington.

"These favors came via a system of boss control that, although present at every level of party politics, flourished most luxuriantly in the big cities. Urban political machines like Tammany Hall in New York depended on a loyal grassroots constituency, so each ward was divided into a precinct of a few blocks" (America, p. 556).

In the days of the ultra-powerful and corrupt political machines, perhaps the most powerful in all of the United States was Tammany Hall, located on 14th Street in Manhattan. Associated with the Democratic party, Tammany Hall was founded in 1786, but did not gain it's real political power until after Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828.

Tammany hall was known for its influence in the vast immigrant community in New York City. Among other nationalities, Tammany Hall helped many Irish Americans rise to power in politics. The "spoils system" of the times allowed Tammany Hall to control much of New York City through patronage, political support and other corrupt practices. Fernando Wood was the first Tammany Democrat mayor, elected in 1854. In 1860, the infamous William "Boss" Tweed became chairman of the New York county Democratic Party and the leader--known as "the Grand Sachem"--of Tammany.

Tammany Hall remained powerful in New York City all the way through the early twentieth-century, up until the 1930's. The Great Depression took a heavy toll on Tammany, and in 1932 friend of Tammany Hall, and Mayor of New York City, James Walker was forced from office. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president and under his famous "New Deal," he removed most all of Tammany's power, including their mayor, helping Republican Fiorello LaGuardia become Mayor in 1934.

University of Albany: "Boss Tweed" and the Tammany Hall Machine
Elanor Roosevelt National Historic Site

INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION ~

The name most closely associated with Industrial Education is that of Booker T. Washington, the founder of the Tuskegee Institute. Washington espoused the philosophy that black people needed not only to learn academics, but to become skill in industrial labor, such as farming, carpentry, brickmaking, etc. to assure them a job when they returned to their communities. When he founded the Tuskegee Institute, he had his students do all the manual labor of building the buildings for the school, from digging the foundation to making and laying the bricks to installing the electrical fixtures. His critics, among them W.E.B. DuBois, claimed that he was contributing to keeping African-Americans subordinate to whites in the social order by training them to be manual laborers. Booker T. Washington felt that he was teaching his students not only self-reliance but "how to lift labour up from mere drudgery and toil, ...to love work for it's own sake. ....how to make the forces of nature - air, water, steam, electricity, horse-power - assist them in their labour." (Up from Slavery, Ch. X)