Chapter 22

Lyman Abbott

A prominent Protestant clergyman and editor, said that America was a divine instrument of Christian imperialism. It was, he said, "the function of the Anglo-Saxon race to confer these gifts of civilization, through law, commerce, and education, on the uncivilized people of the world." HE lambasted the anti-imperialists.

The Maine

A U.S. battleship that docked in Havana harbor on January 25th, 1898. It was on a courtesy call. Six days after the de Lome letter, February 15th, 1898, IT exploded and sank in Havana Harbor, with a horrible loss of 260 men. Although years later the sinking was ruled an accident caused by a coal explosion, those eager for a war with Spain in 1898 saw no need to withhold judgment. Upon hearing about the loss of THIS, the the thirty-nine- year-old assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, believed the United States "needs a war." The weight of outraged public opinion and the influence of Republican militants such as Roosevelt and the president's closest friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, eroded McKinley's neutrality. He was hesitant to start an actual war, which brought criticism.

John Fiske

A historian and popular lecturer on Darwinism, developed racial corollaries from Charles Darwin's ideas. In American Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History (1885), he stressed the superior character of "Anglo-Saxon" institutions and peoples. The English-speaking "race," he argued, was destined to dominate the globe and transform the institutions, traditions, language— even the blood—of the world's peoples.

Boxers (Fists of Righteous Harmony)

A new Asian crisis arose in 1900 when a group of Chinese nationalists known to the Western world as THIS rebelled against foreign encroachments on China, especially Christian missionary efforts, and laid siege to foreign embassies in Peking. An international expedition of British, German, Russian, Japanese, and American forces mobilized to relieve the embassy compound. Hay, fear- ful that the intervention might become an excuse to dismember China, took the opportunity to further refine the Open Door policy. The United States, he said in a letter of July 3, 1900, sought a solution that would "preserve Chinese territorial and administrative integrity" as well as "equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire." Six weeks later the expedition reached Peking and quelled THIS Rebellion.

Josiah Strong

Add the sanction of religion to theories of racial and national superiority to the ideas of John Fiske. In his best-selling book Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885), Strong asserted that the "Anglo-Saxon" embodied two great ideas: civil liberty and "a pure spiritual Christianity." The Anglo-Saxon was "divinely commissioned to be, in a peculiar sense, his brother's keeper." Asia offered an alluring target for American imperialism.

Teller Amendment

Added on the Senate floor to the war resolution, disclaimed any intention of the U.S. eventually taking control of Cuba. McKinley signed the war resolution, and a copy went off to the Spanish government. Never has an American war, so casually begun and so enthusiastically supported, generated such unexpected and far-reaching consequences.

Jones Act

Affirmed America's intention to grant the Philippines independence on an unspecified date.

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901

After the War of 1898, Secretary of State John Hay asked the British ambassador for such consent (to build a canal in Panama). The outcome was THIS. Other obstacles remained, however. From 1881 to 1887, a French company under Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had engineered the Suez Canal in Egypt between 1859 and 1869, had spent nearly $300 million and some twenty thousand lives to dig less than a third of a canal across Panama, still under the control of Colombia. The company asked that the United States purchase its holdings, which it did.

Panama Canal

After the War of 1898, the United States became more deeply involved in the Caribbean. One issue overshadowed every other in the region: TERM The narrow isthmus of Panama had first become a major concern of Americans in the late 1840s, when it became an important overland route to the California goldfields. The Bidlack Treaty (1846) with Colombia (then New Granada) guaranteed both Colombia's sovereignty over Panama and the neutrality of the isthmus. In the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) the British agreed to acquire no more Central American territory, and the United States joined them in agreeing to build or fortify a canal only by mutual consent.

American Anti-Imperialist League.

Against the backdrop of this nasty guerrilla war, the great debate over imperialism continued in the United States. In 1899 several anti-imperialist groups combined to form THIS. IT attracted members representing many shades of opinion. Andrew Carnegie footed the bills for the League; and on imperialism, at least, the union leader Samuel Gompers agreed with the steel king. Presidents Charles Eliot of Harvard and David Starr Jordan of Stanford University supported the group, along with the social reformer Jane Addams. The drive for imperialism, said the philosopher William James, had caused the nation to "puke up its ancient soul."

Captain Mahan

During the 1880s, HE had become a leading advocate of sea power and Western imperialism. In 1890, he published The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. A self-described imperialist, HE championed America's "destiny" to control the Caribbean, build an isthmian canal to connect the Pacific and the Caribbean, and spread Western civilization in the Pacific. His ideas were widely circulated in popular journals and within political and military circles.

Senator Albert J. Beveridge

An ardent imperialist, declared that "we are God's chosen people." The United States, he added, had a "sacred duty" to bring the blessings of American Christianity to the lands acquired from Spain. Others shared this notion of providential responsibility for the "backward" peoples of the world.

Water Cure

An old torture technique developed in the Spanish Inquisition during the sixteenth century whereby a captured Filipino insurgent would be placed on his back on the ground. While soldiers stood on his out- stretched arms and feet, they pried his mouth open, holding it in place with a stick. They then poured salt water into the captive's mouth and nose until his stomach was bloated, whereupon the soldiers would stomp on the prisoner's abdomen, forcing out of his mouth and nose all of the water, now mixed with gastric juices. This process would be repeated until the captive told the soldiers what they wanted to know—or he died. A Senate investigation revealed the scope of such atrocities, but the senators did nothing.

Yellow Peril

Behind the diplomatic facade of goodwill, however, lay mutual distrust. For many Americans the Russian threat in east Asia now gave way to concerns about THIS (a term apparently coined by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany). Racial animosities on the West Coast helped sour relations with Japan.

Senator Beveridge

Boasted in 1900: "The Philippines are ours forever. And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . The power that rules the Pacific is the power that rules the world."

J. A. Hobson

British economist who said that imperialism was "the most powerful factor in the current politics of the Western world.

First Sino-Japanese War

During the 1890s, the United States was not the only nation to emerge as a world power. Japan defeated China in THIS. China's weakness enabled European powers to exploit it. Russia, Germany, France, and Great Britain established spheres of influence in China by the end of the century. In early 1898 and again in 1899, the British asked the American government to join them in preserving the territorial integrity of China against further imperialist actions. Both times the Senate rejected the request because it risked an entangling alliance in a region— Asia—where the United States as yet had no strategic investment.

Foraker Act

Established a government on the island of Puerto Rico. The president appointed a governor and eleven members of an executive council, and an elected House of Delegates made up the lower house of the legislature. Residents of the island were declared citizens of Puerto Rico; they were not made citizens of the United States until 1917, when the Jones Act granted them U.S. citizenship and made both houses of the legislature elective. In 1947 the governor also became elective, and in 1952 Puerto Rico became a commonwealth with its own constitution and elected officials, a unique status. Like a state, Puerto Rico is free to change its constitution insofar as it does not conflict with the U.S. Constitution.

William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World

Events concerning prisoners of war in Cuba supplied dramatic headlines for newspapers and magazines. THESE TWO newspapers were at the time locked in a monumental competition for readers. Each wanted to outdo the other with sensational headlines about every Spanish atrocity in Cuba, real or invented.

Hawaii

HERE, Americans had a clearer field to exploit. The islands, a united kingdom since 1795, had a sizable population of American missionaries and sugar planters and were strategically more important to the United States than Samoa. In 1875, the kingdom had signed a reciprocal trade agreement, according to which Hawaiian sugar would enter the United States duty-free, and Hawaii promised that none of its territory would be leased or granted to a third power. This agreement resulted in a boom in sugar production, and American planters in Hawaii soon formed an economic elite that built its fortunes on cheap immigrant labor, mainly Chinese and Japanese. By the 1890s, the native Hawaiian population had been reduced to a minority by smallpox and other foreign diseases, and Asians quickly became the most numerous group. In 1887, Americans in Hawaii forced the king to convert the monarchy to a constitutional government, which they dominated. In 1890, however, the McKinley Tariff destroyed Hawaii's favored position in the sugar trade by putting the sugar of all countries on the duty-free list and granting growers in the continental United States a 2¢ subsidy per pound of sugar. This change led to an economic crisis in Hawaii and brought political turmoil as well.

John Hay

Halfway through the brief conflict in Cuba, HE, who was soon to be secretary of war, wrote a letter to his close friend, Theodore Roosevelt. In acknowledging Roosevelt's trial by fire, HE called it "a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune that loves the brave."

William H. Seward

In 1866, THIS secretary of state had predicted that the United States must inevitably exercise commercial domination "on the Pacific Ocean, and its islands and continents." Eager for American manufacturers to exploit Asian markets, HE believed the United States first had to remove all foreign interests from the northern Pacific coast and gain access to that region's valuable ports. To that end, he cast covetous eyes on the British colony of British Columbia, sandwiched between Russian America (Alaska) and the Washington Territory. Late in 1866, while encouraging British Columbians to consider making their colony a U.S. territory, HE learned of Russia's desire to sell Alaska. He leaped at the opportunity, in part because its acquisition might influence British Columbia to join the union. In 1867, the United States bought Alaska for $7.2 million, thus removing Russia, the most recent colonial power, from North America. Critics scoffed, but it proved to be the biggest bargain since The Louisiana Purchase. Acquiring key ports on islands in the Pacific Ocean was the major focus of overseas activity throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.

Samoa

In 1878, the Samoans signed a treaty with the United States that granted a naval base at Pago Pago and extraterritoriality for Americans (meaning that in Samoa, Americans remained subject only to U.S. law), exchanged trade concessions, and called for the United States to help resolve any disputes with other nations. German and British governments worked out similar arrangements with other islands in the Samoan group. These matters rested until civil war broke out in Samoa in 1887.

Wake Island

In 1898, the United States had also claimed THIS, located between Guam and the Hawaiian Islands, which would become a vital link in a future transpacific telegraph cable.

Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

In 1904, a crisis over the debts of the Dominican Republic prompted Roosevelt to formulate U.S. policy in the Caribbean. In his annual address to Congress in 1904, he outlined what came to be known as THIS. IT, in short, said that since the Monroe Doctrine prohibited intervention in the region by Europeans, the United States was justified in intervening first to forestall involvement by outsiders.

Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907

In 1906, San Francisco's school board ordered students of Asian descent to attend a separate public school. The Japanese government sharply protested such prejudice, and President Roosevelt persuaded the school board to change its policy, but only after making sure that Japanese authorities would not issue "visas" to "laborers," except former residents of the United States; the parents, wives, or children of residents; or those who already possessed an interest in an American farming enterprise. THIS, the precise terms of which have never been revealed, halted the influx of Japanese immigrants and brought some respite to racial agitation in California

Wilhelm II

In Morocco on March 31, 1905, the German kaiser, stepped ashore at Tangier and gave a saber-rattling speech criticizing French and British interests in North Africa. The kaiser's speech aroused a diplomatic firestorm. Roosevelt felt that the United States had a huge stake in preventing the out- break of a major war. At the kaiser's behest, he talked the French and the British into attending an international conference at Algeciras, Spain, with U.S. delegates present. Roosevelt then maneuvered the Germans into accepting his compromise proposal.

Taft-Katsura Agreement of July 29, 1905,

Japan's show of strength against Russia raised doubts among American leaders about the security of the Philippines. During the Portsmouth talks, Roosevelt sent William Howard Taft to meet with the Japanese foreign minister in Tokyo. The two men negotiated THIS in which the United States accepted Japanese control of Korea, and Japan disavowed any designs on the Philip- pines.

George Dewey

Just before war had been declared, Theodore Roosevelt, still serving as the assistant secretary of the navy, had ordered (without getting the permission of his superiors) Commodore George Dewey, commander of the small U.S. fleet in Asia, to engage Spanish forces in the Philippines in case of war in Cuba. President McKinley had approved the orders. HE arrived late on April 30th with four cruisers and two gunboats, and they quickly destroyed or captured all the outdated Spanish warships in Manila Bay without suffering any major damage themselves. HE was now in a bad position of the bay without any ground forces to go to shore. Promised reinforcements, he stayed while German and British warships cruised offshore like watchful vultures, ready to take control of the Philippines if the United States did not do so. Emilio Aguinaldo helped enter Manila in

Manila Bay

Located in the Philippines. The war with Spain lasted only 114 days. The conflict was barely under way before the U.S. Navy produced a spectacular victory in an unexpected location in the Pacific Ocean: THIS PLACE.

Hay-Herrán Treaty in 1903

Meanwhile, Secretary Hay had opened negotiations with Ambassador Tomás Herrán of Colombia. In return for acquiring a canal zone six miles wide, the United States agreed to pay $10 million in cash and a rental fee of $250,000 a year. The U.S. Senate ratified THIS but the Colombian senate held out for $25 million in cash. In response to this act by those "foolish and homicidal corruptionists in Bogotá," Theodore Roosevelt, by then president, flew into a rage. Meanwhile the Panamanians revolted against Colombian rule. Philippe Bunau- Varilla, an employee of the French canal company, assisted them, and reported, after visiting Roosevelt and Hay in Washington, D.C., that American warships would arrive at Colón, Panama, on November 2. The Panamanians revolted the next day.

Yellow Journalism

Newspaper's sensationalism as well as their intentional efforts to manipulate public opinion came to be called THIS. It was very popular when Cubans were being taken as prisoners. Newspapers would make conditions sound worse than they actually were. Hearst wanted a war against Spain to catapult the United States into global significance. Once war was declared against Spain, Hearst took credit for it. One of his newspaper head- lines blared: "HOW DO YOU LIKE THE JOURNAL'S WAR?"

George Frisbie Hoar

Of Massachusetts, a Republican, was the most vocal of the anti- imperialists. He infuriated President Roosevelt when he claimed on the Senate floor that the war-loving president had "wasted $600 millions of treasure. You have sacrificed nearly 10,000 American lives—the flower of our youth. You have devastated provinces. You have slain uncounted thousands of the people you desire to benefit. Your practical statesmanship has succeeded in converting a people who three years ago were ready to kiss the hem of the garment of the American and to welcome him as liberator . . . into sullen and irreconcilable enemies, possessed of a hatred which centuries cannot eradicate." In the end, however, the imperialists won the debate over the status of the territories acquired from Spain.

Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934

Offered independence after ten more years. The Philippines would finally become independent on July 4, 1946.

Valeriano Weyler

On February 24, 1895, insurrection again broke out as Cubans waged guerrilla warfare against Spanish troops. In 1896, THIS Spanish commanding general adopted a controversial policy whereby his troops herded Cubans behind Spanish lines, housing them in detention (reconcentrado) cen- ters so that no one could join the insurrections by night and appear peaceful by day. In some of the centers, a combination of tropical climate, poor food, and unsanitary conditions quickly produced a heavy toll of disease and starvation. Tens of thousands of Cuban peasants died in the primitive camps.

Judge William Howard Taft

On July 4, 1901, the U.S. military government in the Philippines came to an end, and HE became the civil governor.

Leon Czolgosz

On September 6, 1901, at a reception at the Pan- American Exposition in Buffalo, an unemployed anarchist named THIS approached the fifty-eight-year-old president (McKinley) with a gun concealed in a bandaged hand and fired at point-blank range. McKinley died eight days later, and Theodore Roosevelt was elevated to the White House.

Rough Riders

One prominent unit in Cuba was the First Volunteer Cavalry, better known as THIS, a regiment with "special qualifications" made up of former Ivy League athletes, ex-convicts, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Pawnee, and Creek Indians, and southwestern sharpshooters. Of course, THEY are best remembered because Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was second in command. Roosevelt did not care about the sordid backgrounds of some of THEM: "Wherever they came from, and whatever their social position," he wrote, they "possessed in common the traits of hardihood and a thirst for adventure" that he himself displayed. When the 578 THESE, accompanied by a gaggle of reporters and photographers, landed in oppressive heat on June 22, 1898, at the undefended southeastern tip of Cuba, they were the first American troops ever sent overseas. But chaos ensued upon their arrival, as their horses and mules were mistakenly sent elsewhere, leaving the Rough Riders to become the "Weary Walkers."

Philippine Government Act

Passed by Congress in 1902, declared the Philippine Islands an "unorganized territory" and made the inhabitants citizens of the Philippines.

The Sandwich Islands

Samoa and Hawaii, Americans wanted to aquire them because they were interested in Asian markets and both these islands had major harbors; Pago Pago and Pearl Harbor.

Treaty of Paris (Dec 10th, 1898)

Signed by the U.S. and Spain, ended the war between them, granted Cuba its independence, but the status of the Philippines remained unresolved. American business leaders wanted to keep the Philippines so that they could more easily penetrate the vast markets of populous China. Missionary societies also wanted the United States to annex the Philippines so that they could bring Christianity to "the little brown brother." The Philippines promised to provide a useful base for all such activities. American negotiators HERE finally offered the Spanish $20 million for the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, a Spanish- controlled island in the Pacific with a valuable harbor. By early 1899, THIS, ending the War of 1898, had yet to be ratified in the Senate, where most Democrats and Populists and some Republicans opposed it. Anti-imperialists argued that acquisition of the Philippines would corrupt the American principle, dating back to the Revolution, that people should be self-governing rather than colonial subjects. Opponents also noted the inconsistency of liberating Cuba and annexing the Philippines, as well as the danger that the Philippines would become impossible to defend if a foreign power such as Japan attacked. The opposition might have been strong enough to kill the treaty had not the Democrat William Jennings Bryan influenced the vote for approval. McKinley had no intention of granting the Philippines independence.

Act of Algeciras

Signed in 1906, affirmed the independence of Morocco and guaranteed an open door for trade there but provided for the training and control of Moroccan police by France and Spain. The U.S. Senate ratified the agreement, but stipulated that America remain committed to neutrality in European affairs. Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his diplomacy at Portsmouth and Algeciras. Despite his bellicosity on other occasions, he had earned it.

Treaty of Portsmouth

Signed on September 5, 1905, the concessions all went to the Japanese. Russia acknowledged Japan's "predominant political, military, and economic interests in Korea" (Japan would annex the kingdom in 1910), and both powers agreed to evacuate Manchuria.

de Lôme letter,

Stolen from the post office by a Cuban spy, HE called President McKinley "weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, besides being a would-be politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party." HE resigned to prevent further embarrassment to the Cuban government. The text was released by the New York Journal.

THE PHILIPPINE-AMERICAN WAR

The American effort to quash Filipino nationalism lasted three years, eventually involved some 126,000 U.S. troops, and took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos (most of them civilians) and 4,234 American soldiers. The nature of the war also cost the United States much of its professed benevolence. It was a sordid conflict, with grisly massacres committed by both sides.

Open Door Policy

The American outlook toward Asia changed with the defeat of Spain and the acquisition of the Philippines. Instead of acting jointly with Great Britain, however, the U.S. government decided to act alone. What came to be known as THIS was out- lined in Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door Note, dispatched in 1899 to his counterparts in Lon- don, Berlin, and St. Petersburg (Russia) and a little later to Tokyo, Rome, and Paris. It proposed to keep China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis. More specifically, it called upon foreign powers, within their spheres of influence, (1) to refrain from interfering with any treaty port (2) to permit Chinese authorities to collect tariffs on an equal basis, and (3) to show no favors to their own nationals in the matter of harbor dues or rail- road charges. As it turned out, none of the European powers except Britain accepted Hay's principles, but none rejected them either. So Hay simply announced that all the major powers involved in China had accepted the policy. THIS was rooted in desire of American businesses to exploit Chinese markets. When the Japanese, concerned about Russian pres- sure in Manchuria, asked how the United States intended to enforce the pol- icy, Hay replied that America was "not prepared . . . to enforce these views." So it would remain for forty years, until continued Japanese expansion in China would bring America to war in 1941.

Liliuokalani

The king of Hawaii's sister. She ascended the thrown in 1891, tried to eliminate the political power exercised by American planters. Two years later, Hawaii's white population revolted and seized power. The U.S. ambassador brought in marines to support the coup. As he cheerfully reported to the secretary of state, "The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it." Within a month a committee of the new government in Hawaii turned up in Washington, D. C. with a treaty calling for the island nation to be annexed to the United States. Cleveland sent a commissioner to investigate what was going on, the commissioner removed the marines and and reported that the Americans had acted improperly. Cleveland proposed to restore the queen to power in return for amnesty to the revolutionists. The provisional government controlled by the sugar planters refused to give up power, however, and on July 4, 1894, it created the Republic of Hawaii, which included in its constitution a standing provision for American annexation.

Emilio Aguinaldo

The leader of the Filipino nationalist movement, declared the Philippines independent on June 12th. Helped Dewey get forces to enter Manila on August 13th. The Spanish garrison preferred to surrender to the Americans rather than to the vengeful Filipinos. News of the American victory sent President McKinley scurrying to find a map of Asia to locate "these darned islands" now occupied by U.S. soldiers and sailors.

Dr. Walter Reed

The problem of disease in Cuba prompted the work of HIM, who made an outstanding contribution to health in tropical regions around the world. Named head of the Army Yellow Fever Commission in 1900, he proved that mosquitoes carried yellow fever. The commission's experiments led the way to effective control of the disease worldwide.

Root-Takahira Agreement

Three years after the Taft-Katsura Agreement of July 29, 1905, THIS, negotiated by Secretary of State Elihu Root and the Japanese ambassador, endorsed the status quo and reinforced the Open Door policy by supporting "the independence and integrity of China" and "the principle of equal opportunity for commerce and industry in China."

Theodore Roosevelt

War-loving assistant secretary of the navy, ordered a copy of Mahan's book for every American warship. Yet even before Mahan's writings became influential, a gradual expansion of the navy had begun. In 1880, the nation had fewer than a hundred seagoing vessels, many of them rusting or rotting at the docks. By 1896, eleven powerful new steel battleships had been built or authorized.

Philippe Bunau-Varilla

When the Panamanians revolted, Colombian troops, who could not penetrate the overland jungle, found U.S. ships blocking the sea-lanes. On November 13, the Roosevelt administration received its first ambassador from Panama, who happened to be HIM. He eagerly signed a treaty that extended the Canal Zone from six to ten miles in width. For $10 million down and $250,000 a year, the United States received "in perpetuity the use, occupation and control" of the Canal Zone. The U.S. attorney general, asked to supply a legal opinion upholding Roosevelt's actions, responded wryly, "No, Mr. President, if I were you I would not have any taint of legality about it." Roosevelt later explained that "I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on the [construction of the] Canal does also." The strategic canal opened on August 15, 1914, two weeks after the outbreak of World War I in Europe.

The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783

Written by Captain Mahan. In it, he argued that national greatness and prosperity flowed from maritime power. Mahan insisted that modern economic development required a powerful navy, a strong merchant marine, foreign commerce, colonies, and naval bases.

Cuba

in 1898 and 1899, such inhibitions collapsed, and the United States aggressively thrust its way to the far reaches of the Pacific. The spark for this explosion of imperialism lay not in Asia but HERE, a Spanish colony ninety miles southwest of the southern tip of Florida. Ironically, the chief motive was a sense of outrage at another country's imperialism. Americans wanted the Cubans to gain their independence from Spain. American sugar and mining companies had invested heavily HERE, in fact they traded more with THEM than Spain did.

Platt Amendment

n 1900, on President McKinley's order, Cubans drafted a constitution modeled on that of the United States. However, THIS was added to an army appropriations bill passed by Congress in 1901, sharply restricted the new Cuban government's independence, however. The amendment required that Cuba never impair its independence by signing a treaty with a third power, that it keep its debt within the government's power to repay it out of ordinary revenues, and that it acknowledge the right of the United States to intervene in Cuba whenever it saw fit. Finally, Cuba had to sell or lease to the United States lands to be used for coaling or naval stations, a proviso that led to a U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, which still exists today. Under pressure, the Cuban delegates added THIS to their constitution. But resentments against America festered. As early as 1906, an insurrection arose against the new government, and President Theodore Roosevelt responded by sending now Secretary of War William Howard Taft to suppress the rebels.