'The Splendid Little War' and U.S. Foreign Policy

Ihave been through one war,” President William McKinley told a friend. “I have seen the dead piled up, and I do not want to see another.” Reluctant though he may have been to intervene in Cuban affairs, in the spring of 1898, barely a year into McKinley’s presidency, the United States did go to war with Spain, and American ships not only prowled the Caribbean but steamed into the Philippines’ Manila Bay, where Adm. George Dewey smashed the Spanish fleet. McKinley may have been unenthusiastic, but his young assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, was delighted. He’d been hoping for a war: “I think this country needs one,” he said. War builds character, Roosevelt thought, so he quickly finagled a military commission and raised a cavalry unit, famously called the “Rough Riders.” “Holy Godfrey, what fun!” Roosevelt exclaimed during the Battle of San Juan Hill.