The Spanish-American War was a 1898 clash between the United States and Spain that finished Spanish frontier run in the Americas and brought about U.S. securing of regions in the western Pacific and Latin America.
The war started in the Cuban battle for freedom from Spain, which started in February 1895.
Spain's mercilessly harsh measures to end the defiance were graphically depicted for the U.S. open by a few shocking daily papers, and American sensitivity for the Cuban radicals rose.
The developing prevalent interest for U.S. mediation turned into an obstinate tune after the still-unexplained soaking in Havana harbor of the American warship USS Maine, which had been sent to secure U.S. nationals and property after against Spanish revolting in Havana.
War Declared
Spain declared a peace negotiation on April 9 and speeded up its new program to give Cuba restricted forces of self-government.
Yet, the U.S. Congress soon subsequently issued resolutions that announced Cuba's entitlement to freedom, requested the withdrawal of Spain's military from the island, and approved the utilization of power by President William McKinley to anchor that withdrawal while denying any U.S. plan for attaching Cuba.
Spanish-American War Begins
The resulting war was pitiably uneven, since Spain had prepared neither its armed force nor its naval force for a far off war with the imposing intensity of the United States.
Commo. George Dewey drove a U.S. maritime squadron into Manila Bay in the Philippines on May 1, 1898, and demolished the tied down Spanish armada in a comfortable morning commitment that cost just seven American sailors injured. Manila itself was possessed by U.S. troops by August.
The slippery Spanish Caribbean armada under Adm. Pascual Cervera was situated in Santiago harbor in Cuba by U.S. observation. A multitude of standard troops and volunteers under Gen. William Shafter (counting Theodore Roosevelt and his first Volunteer Cavalry, the "Unpleasant Riders") arrived on the drift east of Santiago and gradually progressed on the city with an end goal to compel Cervera's armada out of the harbor.
