By Keli Holt,
In the summer of 1898, the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry followed Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt into battle on the heights overlooking Santiago de Cuba. Known as the “Rough Riders,” the regiment drew recruits from across the country, including cowboys, miners, lawmen, Ivy League athletes and Native Americans.
New Mexico Territory supplied approximately 350 Rough Riders—the largest contingent from any state or territory in the West. The United States entered the conflict with the stated goal of helping Cuban rebels end Spanish colonial rule. By the time the war concluded, however, the United States—which had itself begun as a group of colonies—had acquired an overseas empire.
BACKGROUND
For centuries, Spain controlled large portions of North, Central and South America. Throughout the 1800s, however, countries including Colombia, Peru and Mexico fought for and won their independence.
By 1898, Cuba and Puerto Rico were Spain’s principal remaining colonies in the Americas. Spain also controlled the Philippines, Guam and other islands in the Pacific.
Christopher Columbus reached Cuba in 1492, and Spain began colonizing the island in the early 1500s. Havana eventually became an important stopping point for Spanish ships carrying goods and precious metals from the Americas to Europe. Because these treasure fleets carried enormous wealth, Spain’s European rivals authorized privateers—privately owned ships permitted by governments to attack enemy vessels—to pursue and capture them.
Cuba was far more than a port of call. Its soil and tropical climate supported the cultivation of sugarcane, which became one of the island’s most profitable crops.
Spanish colonists initially forced Indigenous Cubans, including the Taíno people, to work in mines and fields. Disease, violence, overwork and mistreatment devastated the Indigenous population. Colonists then turned increasingly to enslaved African labor. Over the following centuries, hundreds of thousands of Africans were forcibly transported to Cuba, while millions more were taken to other parts of the Americas.
From 1791 to 1804, enslaved and formerly enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue fought the Haitian Revolution. Their victory created Haiti and established the first independent nation governed by people who had freed themselves from slavery.
The collapse of Saint-Domingue’s plantation economy disrupted global sugar production. Cuban planters expanded their own operations to meet international demand, making Cuba one of the world’s leading sugar producers. The wealth generated by sugar helped strengthen the island’s economic ties to Spain and delayed independence long after most of Spain’s other American colonies had broken away.
Cuba lies only about 90 miles from Florida, and during the 1800s, the Cuban and American economies became increasingly interconnected. By 1894, nearly 90 percent of Cuba’s exports went to the United States. American investors also acquired growing interests in Cuban sugar, mining and other industries.
Expansionists such as Theodore Roosevelt believed the United States should play a larger role in Cuba’s future than distant Spain.
THE FIGHT FOR CUBAN INDEPENDENCE
Cubans had resisted Spanish rule for decades. The Ten Years’ War began in 1868 but ended in 1878 without achieving independence. Slavery was abolished in Cuba in 1886, and the independence movement continued to grow.
In February 1895, Cuban revolutionaries renewed the fight under leaders including José Martí, Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo. Spain responded with military force. Under Gen. Valeriano Weyler, Spanish authorities ordered many rural Cubans into guarded “reconcentration” camps in an attempt to separate civilians from the rebels.
Conditions in the camps were appalling, and large numbers of people died from hunger and disease.
As the conflict continued, Cuba’s economy and sugar production suffered. American business interests faced financial losses, while newspapers published dramatic accounts of Spanish brutality and called for U.S. intervention.
In January 1898, President William McKinley sent the battleship USS Maine to Havana to protect American citizens and interests. On Feb. 15, the ship exploded and sank in the harbor, killing 266 members of its crew.
The cause of the explosion remains uncertain. Although Spain denied responsibility, many American newspapers and politicians blamed a Spanish mine. Public outrage over the disaster helped propel the United States toward war.
THE ROUGH RIDERS GO TO WAR
Roosevelt was serving as assistant secretary of the Navy when the war began. He resigned his position and volunteered for Army service.
Although Roosevelt had served in the New York National Guard, he had limited military experience and no combat-command experience. He accepted a commission as lieutenant colonel of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry. His friend Leonard Wood, an Army physician and experienced officer, became the regiment’s colonel.
Thousands of men applied to join the regiment, but its ranks were limited to approximately 1,000. The Rough Riders trained in San Antonio, Texas, before traveling to Florida and sailing for Cuba. Because there was not enough room aboard the transport ships for most of their horses, they fought primarily as infantry.
When Wood was promoted to brigadier general shortly before the Battle of San Juan Heights, Roosevelt assumed command of the regiment.
On July 1, 1898, American forces attacked Spanish positions outside Santiago. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders joined regular Army units—including Black soldiers of the 9th and 10th Cavalry, known as Buffalo Soldiers—in advancing under heavy fire.
Roosevelt led his men up Kettle Hill, where New Mexico’s E and G troops were reportedly among the first Rough Riders to reach the summit. The regiment then joined other American forces advancing toward the neighboring San Juan Hill positions.
The capture of the San Juan Heights helped tighten the American siege of Santiago. Two days later, the U.S. Navy destroyed the Spanish Caribbean squadron as it attempted to escape the harbor.
War was also being fought elsewhere. In May, Commodore George Dewey’s fleet had defeated a Spanish squadron at Manila Bay in the Philippines. American forces later invaded Puerto Rico, while U.S. troops and Filipino revolutionaries fought Spanish forces in the Philippines.
A NEW AMERICAN EMPIRE
Spain requested peace negotiations in July, and a cease-fire took effect on Aug. 12, 1898. The Treaty of Paris formally ended the war that December.
Under the treaty, Spain relinquished its claim to Cuba, which the United States occupied until 1902. Spain ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States and transferred the Philippines in exchange for $20 million.
For a nation that had begun its life a little more than a century earlier as 13 colonies, the United States had become a global power with territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Roosevelt and other expansionists viewed this development as a natural extension of America’s growing economic and military influence. Other Americans strongly disagreed. Members of the emerging Anti-Imperialist League argued that ruling people overseas without their consent violated the principles on which the United States had been founded.
As the 20th century began, Americans faced a question that would shape the nation’s future:
Could a republic built from a struggle against colonial rule become an empire without abandoning its own ideals?
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