William McKinley was assassinated before completing his first term of office as U.S. president in 1901 "after leading the nation to victory in the Spanish-American War," noted the White House Historical Association.
That's the war perhaps best known for the slogan, "Remember the Maine," the U.S. war cry over the battleship sunk in Cuba, an incident that reportedly set off the conflict. But Taina Caragol wants you to know that there's a lot more to the story.
In 1898: Visual Culture and U.S. Imperialism in the Caribbean and the Pacific, Caragol and co-editor Kate Clarke Lemay outline changes that took place that year as the U.S. claimed sovereignity over Puerto Rico, Philippines, Guam and temporarily occupied Cuba. That was also the year that the United States annexed Hawaii as a territory.
The 1898 book also serves as a catalog for an exhibition-- held at the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. for 10 months through February 2024.
That exhibition added pictures and text to what happened in those countries beyond what the gallery already had in place: the lauding of Theodore Roosevelt and George Dewey as war heroes.
Caragol told Steve Tarter that noted historians Kristin Hoganson, Healoha Johnston, Jorge Duany, Theodore Gonzalves, Neil Weare and Paul Kramer all contributed to 1898.
What you get in 1898, along with graphics you might expect from a display at the National Portrait Gallery, is a picture of U.S. empire-building, taking over Spanish colonies and asserting their own needs ahead of the people living in Cuba and the Philippines, countries that had been fighting their own wars of independence for years.
In the case of Hawaii, five years before formally annexing the island nation, the United States helped overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy that ruled the country.
Such U.S. involvement in the affairs of other countries drew criticism from Americans like W.E. B. Du Bois, Jane Addams and Mark Twain, the book noted.
"This isn't who we are (as a nation)," Twain complained at the time, said Caragol.
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