Name: ___________________________________

America as a World Power

DIRECTIONS: Below are the readings from todays carousel activity. Use them to complete the
graphic organizer that you started in class today.

1. Alaska
From the Civil War until the 1890s, most Americans had little interest in territorial expansion. William
Seward, the secretary of state under presidents Lincoln and Johnson, did envision American expansion into
Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Iceland, Greenland, Hawaii, and other Pacific
islands. But he realized only two small parts of this vision.
In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $72 million and occupied the Midway
Islands in the Pacific.
Alaska: The purchase of the resource rich territory turned out to be a great bargain for the United States.
Midway Islands: In 1903 Pres. Theodore Roosevelt placed the islands under the control of the U.S. Navy.
Also in 1903 the atoll (string of small closely spaced islands) became a link in the Hawaii-Guam segment of
the first transpacific submarine cable, and a cable station was established on Sand Island. The arrival of
transpacific aviation gave Midway new importance in 1935 when it was made a regular stop on the route
from San Francisco to Manila, Phillippines. In 1940 the U.S. Navy began work on an air and submarine base
there.

2. Hawaii
1. In 1893, a small group of sugar and pineapple-growing businessmen, aided by the American minister to
Hawaii and backed by heavily armed U.S. soldiers and marines, deposed (to remove somebody from
office or from a position of power) Hawaii's queen Queen Lydia Kamakaeha Liliuokalani.
Subsequently, they imprisoned the queen and seized 1.75 million acres of crown land and conspired to
annex (to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g. a country or state) the
islands to the United States.
2. On January 17, 1893, the U. S. conspirators announced the overthrow of the queen's government. To
avoid bloodshed, Queen yielded her sovereignty (authority) and called upon the U.S. government
"to undo the actions of its representatives." The U.S. government refused to help her regain her
throne. When she died in 1917, Hawaii was an American territory. In 1959, Hawaii became the 50th
state after a plebiscite (vote of all citizens) in which 90 percent of the islanders supported statehood.
3. The businessmen who conspired to overthrow the queen claimed that they were overthrowing a
corrupt, dissolute regime in order of advance democratic principles. They also argued that a Western
power was likely to acquire the islands. Hawaii had the finest harbor in the mid-Pacific and was viewed
as a strategically valuable coaling station and naval base.

4. After the bloodless 1893 revolution, the American businessmen lobbied (petitioned) President Benjamin
Harrison and Congress to annex the Hawaiian Islands. In his last month in office, Harrison sent an
annexation treaty to the Senate for confirmation, but the new president, Grover Cleveland, withdrew the
treaty "for the purpose of re-examination." He also received Queen Liliuokalani and replaced the
American stars and stripes in Honolulu with the Hawaiian flag.
5. Cleveland also ordered a study of the Hawaiian revolution. The inquiry concluded that the American
minister to Hawaii had conspired with the businessmen to overthrow the queen, and that the coup
would have failed "but for the landing of the United States forces upon false pretexts respecting the
dangers to life and property." Looking back on the Hawaii takeover, President Cleveland later wrote that
"the provisional government owes its existence to an armed invasion by the United States. By an act of
war...a substantial wrong has been done."

3.Spanish American War

The debate over America's global role intensified when Cubans began to fight for their independence from
Spain in 1895. Americans were sympathetic to Cuba's struggle for independence, but were divided about
how to help. The Republican speaker of the House did not want "to spill American blood," unless American
interests were directly threatened, whereas Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican assistant secretary of the
Navy, pushed for war against Spain.
Ultimately, however, the pressure of public opinion forced President McKinley into the war that made the
United States an international power. Newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph
Pulitzer worked up war fever among the public with reports of Spanish atrocities against Cuban rebels.
Then, Hearst's New York Journal published a leaked letter in which the chief Spanish diplomat in
Washington, Enrique Duby de Lome, described President McKinley as "weak" and a "petty politician."
Hearst publicized the DeLome letter under the screaming headline: "WORST INSULT TO THE UNITED
STATES IN ITS HISTORY."
Days later an explosion sank the U.S.S. Maine in Cuban's Havana harbor. A naval court of inquiry blamed
the explosion on a mine, further inflaming public sentiment against Spain.
After ten days of debate, Congress declared war, but only after adopting the Teller Amendment. The
amendment made it clear that the United States did not harbor imperialist ambitions, and it announced that
the United States would not acquire Cuba.
But after the United States defeated Spain, it set up a military government on Cuba and made the soldiers'
withdrawal contingent on the Cubans accepting the Platt Amendment. The amendment gave the United
States the right to intervene in Cuba to protect "life, property, and individual liberties." The 144-day war also
resulted in the United States taking control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

4.Philippines
On May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey had entered Manila Bay and destroyed the decrepit (old)
Spanish fleet. In December, Spain ceded (surrendered) the Philippines to the United States for $20 million.
On June 12, 1898, a young Filipino, General Emilio Aguinaldo, had proclaimed Philippine independence
and established Asia's first republic. He had hoped that the Philippines would become a U.S. protectorate
(state defended by another). But pressure on President William McKinley to annex (take over a territory)
the Philippines was intense. After originally declaring that it would "be criminal aggression" for the United
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States to annex the archipelago (islands), he reversed his stance, partly out of fear that another power
would seize the Philippines. Six weeks after Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay, a German fleet
sought to set up a naval base there. The British, French, and Japanese also sought bases in the Philippines.
Unaware that the Philippines were the only predominantly Catholic nation in Asia, President McKinley said
that American occupation was necessary to "uplift and Christianize" the Filipinos.
On February 4, 1899, fighting erupted between American and Filipino soldiers, leaving 59 Americans and
approximately 3,000 Filipinos dead. With the vice president casting a tie-breaking vote, a congressional
resolution declaring the Philippines independent was defeated. American commanders hoped for a short
conflict, but in the end, more than 70,000 would fight in the archipelago. Unable to defeat the United States
in conventional warfare, the Filipinos adopted guerrilla (irregular warfare that harasses and sabotages the
opponent) tactics. To suppress the insurgency (rebellion), villages were forcibly relocated or burned.
One General declared:
It may be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher
plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords.
U.S. leaders tried to transform the country into a showcase of American-style democracy in Asia. But there
was a strong undercurrent of condescension. U.S. President William Howard Taft, who had served as
governor-general of the Philippines, called the Filipinos "our little brown brothers." The Philippines were
granted independence in 1946.

5. The Caribbean and Central America

In 1904, Germany demanded a port in Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) as compensation for
an unpaid loan. Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president after William McKinley's assassination,
told Germany to stay out of the Western Hemisphere and said that the United States would take care of the
problem. He announced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine:
Several recent developments led Roosevelt to declare that the United States would be the policeman of the
Caribbean and Central America. Three European nations had blockaded Venezuela's ports, violating the
Monroe Doctrine's unilateral declaration that Europe should not interfere in the Americas. Further,
Roosevelt had recently gained the right to build the Panama Canal; he believed that any threat to the canal
threatened U.S. strategic and economic interests.
To enforce order, forestall foreign intervention, and protect U.S. economic interests, the United States
intervened in the Caribbean and Central America some 20 times over the next quarter century--namely, in
Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama. Each intervention followed a
common pattern: after intervening to restore order, U.S. forces became embroiled in the countries' internal
political disputes. Before exiting, the United States would train and fund a police force and military to
maintain order and would sponsor an election intended to put into power a strong leader supportive of
American interests.

6.Haiti
In July 1915, a mob murdered Haiti's seventh president in seven years. Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was dragged
out of the French legation and hacked to death. The mob then paraded his mutilated body through the
streets of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. During the preceding 72 years, Haiti had experience 102
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revolts, wars, or coups; only one of the country's 22 presidents had served a complete term, and merely four
died of natural causes.
With the European powers engaged in World War I, President Woodrow Wilson feared that Germany
might occupy Haiti and threaten the sea route to the Panama Canal. To protect U.S. interests and to restore
order, the president sent 330 marines and sailors to Haiti.
This was not the first time that Wilson had sent marines into Latin America. Determined to "teach Latin
Americans to elect good men," he had sent American naval forces into Mexico in 1913 during the Mexican
Revolution. American Marines seized the city of Veracruz and imposed martial law (control by armed
forces) .
In addition, the United States helped build about a thousand miles of unpaved roads and a number of
agricultural and vocational schools, and trained the Haitian army and police. It also helped to replace a
government led by blacks with a government headed by mulattoes. The U.S. forced the Haitians to adopt a
new constitution which gave American businessmen the right to own land in Haiti. While campaigning for
vice president in 1920, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had served as assistant secretary of the Navy in the
Wilson Administration, later boasted, "I wrote Haiti's Constitution myself, and if I do say it, it was a pretty
good little Constitution."
During the first five years of the occupation, American forces killed about 2,250 Haitians. In December
1929, U.S. Marines fired on a crowd of protesters armed with rocks and machetes, killing 12 and wounding
23. The incident stirred international condemnation and ultimately led to the end of the American
occupation.

7.Panama Canal
America's 1898 war with Spain made a canal seem essential. During the Spanish American War, the only
way for U.S. battleships to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean was to make an 8,000 mile journey
around Cape Horn at the tip of South America.
The canal was completed in the face of seemingly insurmountable political, medical, and technological
obstacles. The Isthmus of Panama was located in Colombia, which had rejected a U.S. proposal to build a
canal. "You could no more make an agreement with them than you could nail currant jelly to a wall,"
President Theodore Roosevelt said in response to the rejection.
A French adventurer, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, and an American lawyer, Nelson Cromwell, conceived of the
idea of creating the Republic of Panama. They persuaded Roosevelt to support a Panama. Bunau-Varilla
engineered a revolution and U.S. warships prevented Colombia from stopping Panama's attempt to break
away (In 1921, the U.S. paid an indemnity to Colombia in recognition of the U.S. role in the Panamanian
revolution). Bunau-Varilla repaid the United States for its assistance by signing a treaty on behalf of the
Panamanians, which gave the United States a zone stretching five miles from each bank of the canal in
perpetuity. Within the zone, U.S. laws, police, and courts ruled.
At its peak in 1913, the workforce consisted of 44,000 persons. West Indian workers were the canal's
unsung heroes. Each day, 200 trainloads of dirt had to be hauled away. More than 25,000 worked as canal
diggers--three times the number of Americans who worked on the canal. Between 1904 and 1915, some
5,600 lives were lost to disease and accidents. Most of those who died were from Barbados. The quinine
(drug) used to treat malaria left many workers deaf. Built at a cost of $387 million over a period of 10 years,
the Panama Canal was a declaration of America's coming of age in the world.
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