Why Did The Us Influence With Spain

The United States intervened with Spain because of the explosion of the Maine in Havana and because the Spanish treated the Cubans horribly. At first the United States attempted to settle matters peacefully by negotiating a contract between Cuba and Spain. However, they did not come to a consensus because Spain wanted Cuba to be part of the Spanish empire, but the Cubans wanted full independence. The United States ended up getting pulled in the conflict, and eventually took the Cuban’s side because they wanted to promote democracy and eliminate the Spanish’s barbaric actions on the Cubans. The tensions grew into a war known as the Spanish -American war, which consisted of battles in Cuba and the Philippine islands, another Spanish colony. In the eastern front, Commodore George Dewey and the United States Navy sailed to Manila Bay and quickly defeated the Spanish fleet. The quick defeat surprised McKinley, who ordered Dewey to hold on to the Philippines for now. In the February 2, 1899, the war ended in the Treaty of Paris between America and Spain, where United States pays twenty million to Spain for the Philippines. Only …show more content…
During an interview, President William McKinley explained his thought process for his decision to keep the Philippines. He argued that the disastrous consequences of allowing Filipino independence outweighed the right of self-governance, and decided that “that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.” From the start, President McKinley shows that the Philippine-American war was not motivated by democracy, but by racial reasons. He deems the Filipino people as inferiors and the Americans as superiors by planning to change the “savage” characteristics of Filipino people to characteristics that America approves