“History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes”- M. Twain, Missouri native, is the figurehead for late 19th century America, and his quote sums up my motivations for retelling this period of our history. Over the course of Dusty Ideals, I hope to unveil the blossoming phase of our nation, when its ideas were most impassioned and acknowledged by the rest of the world. Our cultural influence has consumed the globe, since the Gilded Age, but along the way we've lost sight of the ideals that made us so popular; coming into the 21st century, we struggle to maintain a national identity at all. Though our nation’s history is fraught with missteps and contradictions, we must look to our past to remind us of our collective pursuit.
What makes this time so interesting is its duality between the ruthlessness of unbridled capitalism, and the triumphant growth of a nation. Its citizens grappled with the mechanisms of life practically, and employed them most effectively in the accumulation of wealth. The people were materialist, ignored the idyllic notions held by their grandparents, which led to a civil war, and sought to construct a nation of both personal and economic liberty. The industrial economy, Gilded leaders and taxpayers produced twenty-eight consecutive federal surpluses, the only generation in American history to leave behind a smaller debt than they inherited. However, the Gilded was no golden age, it was, as the name suggests, a time of cheap commercialization and forgerry. Ironically, this is also when The United States reached its highest cultural and aesthetic value; the nation was not yet on the world stage, wholly isolated, able to evolve philosophically and industrially, for its own sake. Many of our American icons were composed during this period, including Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, the Pledge of Allegiance, America the Beautiful, Semper Fidelis, and construction of the Statue of Liberty; on its podium, a bronze inscription titled “The New Colossus”, inviting those persecuted and oppressed to flock to American shores for comfort. The light cast by her torch reaches across the Atlantic, bringing her liberty to shores abroad, the absolute symbol of American expansionism. The Gilded Age is set between the end of Reconstruction, in 1877, and the assassination of popular, two-term president, William McKinley, in 1901. His successor, Theodore Roosevelt, was our champion of the Spanish-American War, who embodied the adventurous spirit of frontiersmen and gold-rushers alike, the cowboy-politician made real. Roosevelt would go on to reign in corrupt industry and government, providing a ‘Square Deal’ to hard working Americans. His progressive domestic policies lifted the economic weight crushing the impoverished classes of America, however, these policies wouldn't have been possible without the direct subordination of lesser nations during his days in office. This essay dives into the ethics of nation building during the late 19th century, the opportunities we capitalized on to exalt the nation to a world power, and how our culture has swayed from the intentions of our written ideals. A hero can only test his strength against an equally capable opponent; during adolescent America this opposition would come from the failing Spanish Empire. At the time, Spain claimed much of the territory in the western hemisphere, making them our direct competitor in the expansion of American influence. During the 15th and 16th century the Spanish Empire focused their efforts on land discovery and acquisition, allowing them first access to new materials found in the Americas, reaching its peak in the early 17th century and lasting another hundred years. Their decline began in the early 19th century as their global territory became overextended, leaving them militarily vulnerable. When the American colonies gained independence from England they inspired others in the west, under European colonial rule, to overthrow their existing rulers. Spain became the main target during this American upheaval. Simultaneously, Napoleon was busy conquesting much of Europe, causing political and economic instability throughout the continent. The Spanish Empire could no longer suppress rebellions occurring oceans away when a war was being waged at the nation’s doorstep. By the mid 1820’s much of South America had gained independence, and drastically limited Spain’s supply of precious metals, which fueled its military efforts internationally. Additionally, Spain could no longer afford Florida, ceding it to the U.S. in 1819, and lost the war for Mexican independence in 1821. The political and cultural rot within Spain was proving to be too much. The empire was in peril, Thomas Jefferson forecasted the fall of the Spanish Empire in the 19th century and planned for the seizing of its assets. The U.S. had taken an interest in Cuba, it served as the gateway to the Gulf of Mexico, benefiting us both economically and militarily. We attempted to purchase the island from Spain on two occasions, both offers were rejected. Other European nations shared this interest, prompting the U.S. to give Spain an ultimatum, if they were to relinquish control of Cuba it can only be for the benefit of the U.S., backed with the threat of war. To put a further halt to European expansionism in the west, President Monroe championed the Monroe Doctrine, a declaration of intent to become a player in global politics. Passed in 1823, the bill restricted all European conquests in the western hemisphere, any military act would be interpreted as a direct threat against the sovereignty of the United States. This effectively made Spain our primary adversary in the Americas. In turn, the U.S. would not interfere with existing European colonies. Initially, the doctrine was largely ignored in Europe; the still blooming nation lacked a formidable navy, and needed to sort out its own domestic affairs. As the nation grew, in the 19th century, the Monroe doctrine began to gain validity. The bill set a precedent for western isolationism that would last until 1941, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, drawing the nation into World War 2, its next test came at the height of the Cold War, ironically, during the Cuban Missile crisis. Middle century, the Spanish Empire was already in severe decline when a number of rebellions broke out in the Caribbean, and because rebellions are only failed revolutions, the Filipino and Cuban people began their fight for independence in 1895 & 1896, respectively. Rebel groups organized in Cuba and pushed Spain out of rural parts of the island. To further deter Spanish occupation the rebels took to destroying much of what made the land so valuable, its fields of sugar cane. They would rather see the land lay ruined than see it exploited by foreign invaders. This damaged relationships between rebel camps and everyday people. In an attempt to win over Cuban farmers, Spain implemented the ‘Reconcentration Policy’, a plan which called for the construction of small fortified villages to separate subservient farmers from militants. This strategy aimed to limit the flow of information and resources between rebel groups, divide the island into secure sections, and keep the rebellion from organizing and gaining trust of the greater Cuban population. Cubans had eight days to obey, those who remained outside of the camps were then considered enemies of the state and liquidated. Farmers faced equal pressure from the Cuban rebels, farms and homes would be burned to the ground if it was discovered a family was cooperating with the Spanish military. Life for the Cuban population grew appalling as families were either forced into these reconcentration camps, or shot by the opposing groups. By 1898 a third of the Cuban population was pushed into these camps, food and housing was scarce, famine and disease caused by the Reconcentration Policy, causing the deaths of roughly 400,000 people. Interest in the conflict by the American public was overwhelming; we sympathized with the freedom seeking Cubans. We had an incredible appetite for adventure, the conflicts were treated by our young men as the next Gold Rush, and was widely supported. The now wealthy and industrial United States sought to intervene on the Cubans’ behalf, aiding the rebels both financially and militarily, elevating tensions with Spain in the process. Spanish loyalists reacted by rioting in Havana, and destroying four printing presses that were critical of the Spanish occupation. In response, to protect American assets and lives in the region, the USS Maine was deployed to Havana Harbor in January 1898. In February of the same year, the USS Maine fell victim to a mysterious explosion, which sank the ship in the harbor, killing 260 men. The U.S. claimed a mine had been detonated beneath the ship's hull, a Spanish investigation suggested the explosion was caused by something inside of the ship, but the truth has been lost to history. The sinking of the USS Maine, with the sensationalized journalism of the day, sent the American public into a frenzy, demanding a retaliation from President McKinley. At the time much of the military power was held by the Congress, there was no federal military to raise. After the Civil War, the U.S. Army had shrunk to less than twenty-five thousand soldiers, and relied on the mobilization of each state’s National Guard, which swelled our forces to over two-hundred thousand. The people answered, nearly one-hundred thousand troops enlisted on the night of the attack on the USS Maine. Two months later Congress declared war on the Spanish, sending troops to Cuba to combat Spanish forces, and end the Cuban revolution. The Cuban revolutionaries were highly skeptical of our intentions with the island, fearful they would fall directly into U.S. control. To appease their concerns, in our declaration of war, we made it clear to the Cubans we had no desire to annex the island for ourselves but only fought on a humanitarian basis. Interestingly the Philippines and other Caribbean islands were left out of this liberty seeking resolution. In late spring of 1898, to further combat the Spanish Empire, the U.S. sent its Navy and Marines to the Philippines, to leverage a revolution that had been taking place for three years, a military advance done without consent of President McKinley. This forced the Spanish into a two front war, compounding their efforts to quell rebellions in both territories. The Spanish Pacific fleet was destroyed quickly in the campaign, after the Spanish failed to supply ammunition to their military, due to their territorial over extension. In August of that year, with the help of Filipino revolutionaries, the U.S. captured Manilla, Philippines, ending the Pacific campaign. After sixteen weeks of fighting Spain surrendered, signing the Treaty of Paris, ceding Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine islands to the U.S., and liberating Cuba, in keeping with our promise to the Cuban people. However, the U.S. almost immediately replaced Spain's position of authority in the newly acquired territories, sparking conflict with the revolutionaries who aided us in the effort to overthrow Spanish rule. Additionally, we feared another European power would come to capture the now unstable areas, this led to a U.S. occupation of the Philippines that lasted nearly fifty years. The American public justified our military actions under the ideas of Manifest Destiny, or ‘The White Man’s Burden’, in which the U.S. felt a sense of duty to enlighten and westernize indigenous populations, not only the American West but abroad. The racist connotations of these ideas are obvious, while the U.S. population felt it necessary to help these lesser peoples they became resentful when the discussion of statehood was raised. While the U.S. wanted to help these people, they had no business becoming full Americans. Soon after, the hypocrisy of our national identity, liberty, quickly became apparent. War with the revolutionary parties ensued, against the organized First Philippine Republic fighting would last for three years, in the more remote islands to the south, fighting with various rebel groups would last for fifteen years. Our drawn out fighting style is common against lesser developed groups, the industrial capabilities of the U.S. grants us incredible advantage in wars of attrition. The technological gap between the nations was obvious, like native Americans, the Filipinos were armed only with handheld blades, bows, and arrows, while the U.S. had graduated from rifled muskets of the Civil War, to repeating rifles like the Henry, Springfield, or Spencer. Shortly after the battle of Manilla the Filipino army understood they would not be able to maintain a direct confrontation with U.S. forces and resorted to guerilla style fighting. In our conflicts with Native Americans, settling the west, we developed methods to successfully combat these guerilla techniques Unlike the Napoleonic wars, which took place just a few decades early, warfare had lost all notion of honor, and military law was only written for European and American forces, they did not protect indigenous populations. The Industrial Revolution was an era of effective, pragmatic problem solving, this ethos was implemented in warfare, recognizing it as a statistical confrontation with life and death. Military success was reduced to quantifiable metrics, a cost benefit analysis. The value of human life, especially those of non-European descent were diminished to zero. New to tropical combat the United States’ borrow much of its strategy from Spain. Troops began to build fortified villages and walls to cordon off sections of jungle and island as secure areas, and curfews were established to differentiate obedient peasants from militants. We even paid Spain $20,000,000 to cover infrastructure the Spanish had built in their effort to stop the Filipino revolution. Our plan of action had become frighteningly similar to the Reconcentration Policy used by the Spanish in Cuba, condemning us to become the imperialist we sought to overthrow. Orders from military leaders shed all notion of integrity, allowing our troops to regress to the most barbaric behavior imaginable. As tactics became increasingly brutal, first hand accounts made their way back to The States, revealing to the American public the atrocities our soldiers were committing in the far east. “Last night one of our boys was found shot and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight; which was done to a finish. About 1,000 men, women and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger." - a soldier from New York state "We make everyone get into his house by seven p.m., and we only tell a man once. If he refuses we shoot him. We killed over 300 natives the first night. They tried to set the town on fire. If they fire a shot from the house we burn the house down and every house near it, and shoot the natives, so they are pretty quiet in town now." - Corporal Sam Gillis “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States." - Jacob H. Smith, Brigadier General These quotes, sourced from Miller's, 1984, “Benevolent Assimilation”, prompted U.S. soldiers to kill children as young as ten; any hope of moral redemption in this campaign was extinguished. At war's end the U.S. calculated their losses at 4,200 Americans and 20,000 Filipino combatants. The ambient death caused by the instability in a warzone is far worse, to be a willing combatant for your nation is an honorable position, but any victim of collateral damage is a tragedy. While the U.S. claims 34,000 civilians died in the conflict, international estimates range between 300,000 and a 1,000,000. Some sources state the democide, political cleansing, the U.S. took part in, killed nearly 150,000 civilians, 15,000 more at the hands of Filipino nationalist and the collapsed infrastructure caused a severe cholera outbreak that killed roughly 200,000 people, from lack of resources. Domestically, the conflict served as a proto-Vietnam war for the late 19th century, forcing the American public to question the ethics of American Imperialism. During the Vietnam war our success was calculated by the ratio of Vietcong lives extinguished compared to the lives of our sons, destroying any notion of qualitative success in the process. After the ethical advance fought for during the Civil War, the American public was ashamed of its atrocities in the east., confronting the United States with a critical moral dilemma, if our nation was founded on ideals of democracy and liberty, how were we able to ethically become a world power? This question has plagued our nation since its birth, having only 15 peacetime years in its 247 year history. The Philippines would become the first country to fall victim to a new mode of colonialism, American Imperialism. Under it, the ruling nation has no desire for the dominated population to conform to its customs or traditions, nor the gentrification of the newly gained land mass, their only requirement is to exist for the economic good of the U.S. What followed was a string of military interventions, carried out by the U.S. Marine Corps, in South & Central America. Private industry teamed with the Federal government to disrupt political and economic stability in the region., crashing the value of assets in the process. With exclusive rights to newly acquired tropical land, these companies established fruit farms and sugar cane plantations. Any threat to American assets, would receive retaliation from military forces. This 36 year stretch of conflicts became colloquially known as the Banana Wars; in 1921, the Small Wars Manual was published, a guidebook to American Imperialism. These aggressive tactics were codified, in 1946, with the passing of the Bell Trade Act. Written by Missouri Congressman C. Jasper Bell, the act set preferential tariffs on U.S. exports to the Philippines, fixed the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and Philippine peso to 2:1, and granted parity rights to U.S. citizens. The Gilded Age robber barons had set their sights abroad, Filipino resources could now be pursued with impunity, crippling any hope for the nation to gain economic independence, serving as the final insult to the isolationist intention of the Monroe Doctrine. This style of conquest would be implemented for the next hundred years, under the pseudonym of Military Industrial Complex or Neoliberalism. Though the United States gained significantly in its 19th century conflicts, it sold a portion of its soul in the process. The American Revolution was a confrontation with our master, the English monarchical empire, who we rejected and transcended, the Civil War developed the labor dispute further, reaffirming individual sovereignty, our nation’s maxim, globally. Finally, the Spanish-American War synthesized the recently divided nation, satisfying the master/slave dialectic, and ascending the U.S. to a world power. Spain was the necessary combatant to develop the civil solidarity needed to become a 20th century power, and by gaining possession of the Philippines and Caribbean islands, we now had the moral obligation to provide stewardship to these developing nations, committing us to the ‘White Man’s Burden’. Since the Philippine-American war resources have been reserved for those outside of our nation’s borders, distracting us from the development of our own nation, and entangling us in the customs and traditions of a global community. The ideals our nation were founded on are beyond us, from which, we’ve fallen short, creating a moral thirst in us that has lasted since 1898. What it meant to be an American was severely abused, for we could no longer state, in good faith, that our intentions were the propagation and expansion of liberty, but instead the works of an economic leviathan. The United States lost a large part of its aesthetic appeal transitioning into the 20th century. I consider the Spanish-American war to be the ‘golden hour’ of American culture, the feeling felt in the last moments of a summer's day, the moment the setting sun spares us from its harsh midday light, while stripping us of the day’s remaining warmth; a confrontation with the quickly advancing darkness. Its fading light seduces us into decadence, we indulge ourselves in what we know to be the end of a certain comfort and ease. While its citizens were conflicted by the moral hypocrisy found in this approaching darkness, our nation was showered with gifts from around the world, crowning the United States of America as the world’s “New Colossus''.
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Zachary MatthewsLiving among the ruins of a Gilded Age empire Archives
April 2023
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