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TAPE 24 CONT’D

BEGIN INTERVIEW

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Describe how Cuba was portrayed by the press, Rodriguez, and the amazons.

HOGANSON: I think one of the most remarkable things about the press coverage about the Cuban Revolution is the amount of favorable press coverage that was given to the mixed race Cubans by white American publications in a time when many white Americans were supporting African Americans' rights as citizens within the United States, but it was a time of a number of lynchings in the American South. So I think it's remarkable that there was so much favorable press coverage given to the Cuban revolutionaries. And one thing that I think characterizes much of this press coverage is that the Cuban fighters were portrayed as, ahm, chivalric heroes, as noble men, as shown by their actions, that they respected honor and virtue, that they were fighting for a noble cause, that they had a fraternal ethos. There's one story that was reported by Richard Harding Davis, who was a newspaper reporter who went down to Cuba and wrote a book about the revolution, which was, ah, the execution of a Cuban patriot who, he said, was known simply as Rodriguez, that he didn't have any -- any more of a name that was known. And when he was brought up in the front of the firing squad, ah, Davis said that -- that he was calm, that he was nonchalant. He smoked a cigarette in his final moments before his execution, and that the story, Davis said, showed that -- that the Spaniards could kill Rodriguez, but they couldn't scare him, that he went to death, ahm, in an absolutely fearless fashion. And Davis held him up as an -- as an example of the heroism of the Cuban revolutionaries. And then later in that same account, Davis described the Spanish soldiers and he described them as giggling, ahm, when -- when one of their fellows had done something oafish. And the contrast just couldn't have been more explicit. The Spaniards were -- were child-like, feminine, that they were giggling at themselves and that they didn't have the dignity and the -- the courage and -- and the maturity of the Cuban, ah, patriots, as exemplified by Rodriguez.

INT: Now why did the story have so much power at time in America?

HOGANSON: Well, I think ...

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, such stories had a great deal of power for several reasons. I think foremost was the sense that chivalry was lacking in the United States, that American men were assumed by many, jingos or just people who sympathized with the Cuban revolutionaries to lack the qualities that the Cubans were seen as embodying. The thought was that they didn't, ahm, have the same commitment to chivalric values, to honor, to respect for women, for the weak, for higher purposes besides money-making, that it was coming out of the Gilded Age, the sense was that American men were very greedy, they were commercial minded, that they were just, ahm, out to -- to make a quick buck, and that the Cubans were sacrificing their -- sacrificing their lives in hopes of attaining a nobler purpose. So that the -- I think the Cubans were seen as a foil for American men. Another context that helps explain why these stories had so much power was that of chivalric romances, that there was a lot of adventure writing in the late 19th century that was often -- these stories often, ahm, featured chivalric themes. So that even though they were set -- some of them or many of them are set in contemporary times, the language was that of medieval romances. And many of them featured characters who were American men who would go elsewhere, maybe to Latin American countries or imagined countries, where they would rescue distressed damsels and then bring the advantages of modern civilization to these places. But they would also prove their courtly attributes in the course of doing that. And I think that general context helps explain why the specific Cuban examples had such a powerful grip on people's imaginations.

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INT: Talk about the Cisneros story.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, the Cisneros story is -- is a great story. The -- the woman involved was a Cuban woman named Evangelina Cisneros who came from an elite Cuban family and was arrested on suspicions of aiding the Cuban revolutionaries. Well, the yellow press picked up on this, particularly the New York Journal. And they reported in sensational and lurid, often exaggerated, ah, stories that Cisneros had been arrested for resisting a Spanish officer who wanted to compromise her virtue. And they reported that she had been cast into a prison full of prostitutes, of low-class, degraded women, and that she was about to be sentenced to Ciuta, a Spanish penal colony in Morocco in North Africa, which, they said, was full of, ah, the robbers, the murderers, the ravishers of Spain, and that, indeed, she would be certain to lose her virtue upon arrival and then probably to perish within -- within the year. Well, these stories really struck a chord in the readership of the -- the Journal.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, the Journal reported that she was to be sentenced to Ciuta, a penal colony in North Africa which was supposedly full of the robbers, the murderers, and the rapists of Spain, where she would undoubtedly be ravished within the year and would probably die as a result. Well, these stories sold extraordinarily well. The circulation numbers for the Journal went up when it ran these headlines on -- on Evangelina Cisneros and her likely doom, ahm, first in Cuba, then in Morocco. And William Randolph Hearst, the brash young editor of the Journal, realized that -- that there was something in this. And he resolved to do something about it in hopes of raising circulation figures even higher. And the first thing he did is he had his reporters scattered across the United States, go out and solicit signatures from prominent American women on petitions that he had devised, begging for the release of Cisneros. And within 24 hours of drafting this petition, his reporters -- I think he had over 200 reporters who he put on the case -- cabled in what the Journal claimed were 15,000 signatures in favor of releasing Cisneros. But they also went out and solicited testimonials from prominent women on behalf of freeing Cisneros. So they had Verina Davis, who was the widow of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate -- ah, ex-Confederate president, ah, write a letter to the queen regent of Spain begging for her freedom. And they had Julia Ward Howe, the author of "The Battle Hymn of Republic", ah, write a letter to the Pope. She wrote an impassioned letter begging for Cisneros' release. They also solicited numerous testimonials, as I said, from -- from prominent women, including President McKinley's mother, who -- who added her name to the cause. Well, all this, ah, this continued to sell newspapers, but it didn't affect Cisneros' release. She continued to languish in this Cuban prison, and it riled up Hearst and his associates because one of the conclusions that people were starting to draw from -- from all this was that American men were inefficacious, that they couldn't secure Cisneros' release, and American women had to jump in with all their petitions and so forth to try to win her freedom. So Hearst commissioned the reporter, a man named Carl Decker, to go down and free her from prison. Decker went down to Cuba and he bribed the prison guards to release her, but this wouldn't have made good copy. So to -- to get better stories out of the incident and to exonerate the prison guards, he fabricated an elaborate rescue scheme which involved renting the house next door to the prison and then he put a plank between that building and the prison and he crawled over and he sawed the prison bars while the bribed guards looked in the other direction. And then he spirited Cisneros to freedom. In his published account of the episode, Decker said that he had one great anxiety when he went down to Cuba, which was that Cisneros wouldn't live up to her reputation, that she'd been marketed in the United States as this beautiful woman, as the-- sort of the -- the imprisoned princess, ahm, the typical damsel of the chivalric story who needed someone to come down and rescue her. And Decker was afraid she'd be ugly (Laughs) and that wouldn't sell newspapers. And then in his account after the rescue, he reported how over-- overwhelmed he was by her beauty and how relieved he was to see that she really did look like a fairy tale princess and he brought her back to New York City. And there were parades and receptions. She met McKinley, ahm, and generated a lot more attention. And the conclusion that the Journal kept drawing from this story was that Decker was the model man, the model American, that he was able to secure her release, he was chivalric, that he was a modern knight in shining armor. And, indeed, a number of women wrote in letters to the newspaper saying that they had thought that chivalry was dead, that it no longer existed in the United States, but that Decker had prove -- proven otherwise, that chivalry was still strong and thriving. And Hearst concluded in -- in a headline after the rescue that American men had rescued one Cuban woman and the question that now faced the nation was when would the United States free Cuba, holding up the Cisneros story as an allegory for the entire Cuban Revolution, or the entire Cuban situation. And it suggested that just as American men had proven their chivalry and capacities by going down and rescuing this one woman, if the United States became involved in the Cuban Revolution, then the nation as soon as whole could prove that it still had higher values than just commercial ones and was capable of performing great and noble deeds.

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INT: Characterize McKinley, starting with the 1896 election and work in the de Lomee letter.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, in 1897, Enrique Dupuy de Lome, the Spanish ambassador to the United States, wrote a letter to a friend, a private letter, that was intercepted by a Cuban revolutionary who sent it to the New York papers, and in the letter, which was then published, it was revealed that de Lome had called McKinley weak and had said that he "catered to the rabble". And he also made some comments about Spanish intentions in Cuba, how they were making promises they didn't intend to follow through on. But the newspapers picked up on this story and emphasized the first part, his statement that McKinley was weak, that aspersion on McKinley's manhood and character. Well, the interesting thing about the letter is that it generated such an outpouring of -- of rage that de Lome gave up his position and returned to Spain. Ahm, and American men were just really insulted that a foreigner had made such remarks about the American President, who was supposed to embody the character of all American men. But the irony is that McKinley's opponents had been making statements like that all along, that de Lome was not the first person to say that McKinley was weak or that he lacked backbone, because McKinley's political rivals had been saying that ever since he'd been involved in politics. McKinley had a long history of political activism, that he'd been a congressman and a governor of the State of Ohio before becoming President and in all those years there had been some questions about his manhood, which was not unusual for the time period, that all political leaders had to live up to certain expectations about manly character that were seen as being necessary for political leadership. But McKinley might have been particularly vulnerable to such charges of -- of lacking manhood, that he didn't embody the new standards of robust, aggressive manhood that were in the ascendance in the late 19th century. He adhered to older middle class standards of manhood that placed more value on self-control. He was a religious man, a home-loving man, a man who was solicitous ...

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, McKinley was a home-loving man, a domestic man, a religious man, a man who was solicitous of his invalid wife, and he -- he just didn't have the reputation as being a robust, aggressive man's man. He didn't like to go out and spend time in coarse male gatherings. He would rather be at home with his wife. One of the things that happened to him when he was President is he went fishing one day in his top hat and -- and fancy coat and in the course of fishing, to kind of participate in what was seen as a manly activity, he managed to capsize the boat and ended up ruining his -- his fancy and inappropriate, we might say, outfit. Well, despite this home-loving image that McKinley had, when he ran for President in 1896 he ran as a military hero. McKinley had served as a soldier in the Civil War and really took advantage of that in his political campaigns, that when he, ah, campaigned in 1896 he stayed at his home in Canton, Ohio, and delegations of supporters came to visit him. And they often came wearing military uniforms, singing military songs, accompanied by military bands carrying tattered banners from the Grand Army of the Republic, their Union Army, ah, posts. And they honored McKinley as a military man and said that because of his military service, he was fit to lead the country, that he might be, ah, a man supported by the trusts, by the great corporations, but because of his military service he had demonstrated that he had the fraternal characteristics and the manly character necessary to lead. Well, what happened, ahm, after the de Lome letter and just in the spring of 1898 as the war issue heated up, was that McKinley's detractors started to really undercut that military image that had accompanied his domestic image and said that he was really a weak man, that he lacked backbone, that he didn't have the manly character that was seen as necessary in a political leader because he didn't stand up and take a firm stance against Spain, that he didn't clamor for war like some of his associates, or other Republicans or men in Congress. And as a result, he was really pilloried not only by the press, but by congressmen, particularly Democrats who said that he didn't have the -- the character necessary to lead because he was a "chocolate eclair". That was Roosevelt's remark, or that he was a spinelish -- "spineless jellyfish" or just -- the most common statement was he lacks backbone, that he didn't have the attributes that the nation needed in its political leaders. Well, his supporters turned around and brought out his civil war record again and said, "But McKinley does have the characters -- characteristics that are needed in a political leader, that he has this valiant military record behind him." Well, his detractors then pointed out that he had won fame as a soldier in the Civil War for serving coffee to beleaguered troops. And his supporters had always said that that was a really heroic thing, that he had risked his life to bring the coffee to the troops under fire. But his detractors said that it was sort of a feminine thing, to do too, that cooking and serving coffee, which he had done as a commissary officer, really didn't display the kind of martial character that he had been claiming. And as he hesitated to go to war in the spring of 1898, then their interpretation of his military, ah, record and his character more generally became more accepted among the public as a whole and McKinley had to confront this sense that he was losing control, that he wouldn't be able to lead Congress anymore, that he would have to follow the nation into war instead of being a leader because he was dragging his feet on the war issue and didn't demonstrate the assertive character -- character that was expected in the nation's political leader in a time of crisis.

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END TAPE 024

BEGIN TAPE 025

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Describe reaction to McKinley's war message.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, McKinley, ah, delivered a war message on April 11 that did not -- it was not a resounding cry for war, that he still expressed hope that the nation could avoid war and find a peaceable resolution to the conflict. And his supporters, who were becoming frustrated at the lack of -- of clear call for war, ahm, continued to defend the President and to say that he -- he would eventually rise to the occasion and would utter that kind of cry for war. And his detractors said that this just showed what they'd been saying all along, that McKinley didn't have the manly character necessary to lead and that he was falling behind the more militant Congress and would have to, ahm, abdicate his leadership essentially because he was not marching in step with the masses of American men, who, they said, were calling for war and, indeed, eager to enlist. That men were starting to, ah, flood, ah, recruiting offices with applications to serve in the military and were -- were volunteering their services in hopes that there would be war. Well, one of the things that happened in the aftermath of the message was that on April 13th, as Congress was continuing to debate the war issue, one congressman, a man named Charles Brum, who was Republican from Pennsylvania ...

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, on April 13th, Congress cont-- was continuing to debate the war issue, and tensions were -- were high, that congressman were really becoming impassioned about whether or not to go to war. And in the course of the debate, one congressman, a man named Charles Brum who was a Republican from Pennsylvania, called one of his colleagues, Charles Bartlett, a Democrat from Georgia, a liar. Well, Congressman Bartlett reached for a large bound copy of the Congressional Record which was sitting on the desk before him and then, raising it aloft, he hurled it across the room at Brum. Well, according to the New York Times and other papers who reported on the incident, the House was immediately in an uproar. Some of the ladies who were watching from the gallery screamed. Congressmen, ah, started to crowd into the aisles. Congressmens, ah, Bartlett and Brum were trying to get at each other, leaping over desks, chasing each other around the floor of the House. And the speaker turned to the sergeant-at-arms and told him to restore order to the floor of the house. The sergeant-at-arms took the large silver mace and he went after them, but, according to the press reports, he was swept aside, that he was ineffectual and they said that another House employee was felled by a blow in the jaw. And then finally, ah, men who were identified as "muscular members of the House" were able to separate the belligerents and a semblance of order was restored to the floor of Congress. Well, in the ensuing discussion one Republican congressman stood up and said that the Republicans were overwhelmingly in favor of action, not talk. And his Republican colleagues applauded this pronouncement, the point being very clear that just as a man is insulted, if called a liar, for example, ahm, would respond physically, that he wouldn't countenance such insults to his name or his honor, ahm, without resorting to force, then the nation should have similar standards. And that in a time of crisis, rather than just talking incessantly looking for peaceable solutions like arbitration or negotiation, the point was that the nation should resort to action as well.

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INT: Characterize anti-imperialists in succinct terms.

HOGANSON: Well, the prominent anti-imperialists as a whole, were older than the prominent -- the most vocal imperialists. Perhaps the most, ah, prominent anti-imperialist in Congress was Senator George Frisbee Hoar, he was Republican senator from Massachusetts who was sev-- 72 years old in 1898. Hoar, ahm, like many of the older anti-imperialists, adhered to different standards of manhood than the up and coming, ahm, imperialists, who advocated more aggressive, assertive martial policies. Hoar had been an adult during the time of the Civil War and recalled that war with -- with great regret. He ...

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, Hoar, ahm, had been an adult during the time of the Civil War. He had not served in the war. He wasn't as enthusiastic about war as many of his younger colleagues in Congress, who thought that war was desirable as an end in itself. Hoar definitely did not agree with them. He, indeed, made, ah, talks at college campuses where he talked about, ahm, the -- the greatest virtues that men should try to cultivate, which he said were moral virtues, religious virtues, intellectual capacities and not the strenuous life, that he really disagreed with Roosevelt on the value of inculcating, ah, martial virtues or pursuing stenuosity for its own sake, that one of the things that happened in the -- the debate of the Philippines was that anti-imperialists such as Hoar allied themselves with the Founding Fathers, that he -- they took advantage of their age, their experience, and maturity and presented themselves as senior statesmen and said that they were best suited to speak for the principles of the Founding Fathers, for the principles of liberty and freedom, and that this was essentially what the Filipinos were fighting for and that, as the men who resembled the Founding Fathers, they were best qualified to stand with the Filipinos in favor of liberty. Well, the imperialists turned around and argued that, ahm, they were the people who best embodied the nation's, ah, values, that they said the nation was an up and coming nation, that it was a -- a youthful nation and, as younger men, they were better suited to represent the nation and determine its international, ahm, policies because they embodied the aggressive, assertive spirit that was, ahm, ahm, characteristic of the nation. Well, then they ran up against the argument that the anti-imperialists made that they stood for the nation's principles. And the way the imperialists responded to that was that the anti-imperialists, such as Hoar, might be older, they might be elderly, ahm, they might position themselves as senior statesmen, but that they really did not resemble the Founding Fathers because, to the contrary, they were feminine, they were female, that were antis, they punned on the word "anti-imperialist" and called the anti-imperialists, a-u-n-t-i-e-s, aunties. And a political cartoon said, ahm, "Espouse the imperialist cause," depicted the aunties in bonnets and dresses and referred to them as shrieking old women, who, rather than resembling the nation's founding fathers, only demonstrated qualities, ahm, that were denigrated in politics, that they argued they should be seen as elderly women and not as political leaders. And one -- one thing that we talked about before was just how, ahm, Hoar had known revolutionary era soldiers. As a youth growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, some of his neighbors were elderly revolutionary veterans. So when he talked about the Fathers and invoked the Fathers, he thought of these elderly men he had known in Concord, which really contrasts with, say, Theodore Roosevelt's invocations of the Founding Fathers, when he said they were robust men, they were virile men, they were war-like men who wouldn't have flinched from a struggle such as that in the Philippines because George Washington should be seen, above all, as a military hero, well, Hoar, when he thought of the Fathers, he thought of elderly men, of statesmen, of men who should be associated with liberty and freedom and not as martial heroes. And so he had a very different take on, ahm, not only the Founding Fathers, but also on the principles that should be guiding the nation.

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Contrast how the Cubans were portrayed in the press as opposed to the Filipinos.

HOGANSON: Well, the Filipinos were portrayed by the imperialist press in a very different way from, say, the way the Cubans had been portrayed prior to the US intervention in the Spanish-Cuban war, that early on, the Cubans had often been portrayed as these military heroes, as, ah, figures like George Washington who were fighting for liberty and freedom. But the Filipinos did not enjoy that kind of positive press coverage to the same extent, that what was more common was to portray the Filipinos according to three stereotypes. So the first was that of uncivilized savages, the implication being that they would need civilizing men to come in and to raise them out of their barbarity to civilized standards. The second stereotype was that of, ah, children. So the implication of that was that Uncle Sam would have to come in and establish a kindergarten, as some imperialists said, or the more optimistic ones said establish a college and that they would educate the Filipinos for self-government. Well, the third stereotype that the imperialists relied on was that of the -- the feminine figure. So that could imply, say, a beautiful filipina belle who would be looking for an American suitor to come in and, ahm, to -- to be the head of her household or to govern over her or to look after her through the marital relationship. But it could also just imply, ahm, that the filipina, ah, figure just wasn't capable of self-government and needed some kind of oversight by a nation, the United States, that was capable of looking after her best interests.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, the imperialists, leading imperialists such as Theodore Roosevelt ...

HOGANSON: Leading imperialists, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Albert Beveridge and, ah, Henry Cabot Lodge, had argued that US intervention in the Philippines would be a remedy for over civilization, for male degeneracy, that it would provide an opportunity for American men to build up their manly qualities. Well, anti-imperialists responded, as the course of the Philippine-American war went on, by saying that rather than serving as a remedy for male degeneracy, the US involvement in the Philippines was actually fostering degeneracy among the American soldiers who were serving in the Philippines. They pointed to a number of things. They pointed to incidence of tropical disease and they said that white men could not thrive in the tropics and would end up, ah, succumbing to disease or, ahm, to the climate. They pointed to the high incidence of venereal diseases and said that, ahm, American men were coming home diseased and that would, in turn, affect their wives, affect their children, and would lead to what was called a "deterioration in the blood". They also pointed to reports of American cruelties, to atrocities, and said that American soldiers were become more savage than their foes who they were supposedly sent to civilize, and that American men were burning villages, they were incarcerating Filipinos, they were torturing them to elicit information, and that instead of building up noble qualities associated with soldiers, the war was turning American soldiers into degenerate, ah, killers.

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INT: Talk about the reaction of the female anti-imperialists.

HOGANSON: Well, women were very visible and very active in the anti-imperialist movement. So part of that was that the anti-imperialists reached out to them. They encouraged women to attend their meetings, which they did in high numbers, and to donate money to the anti-imperialist cause. But part of it was that a number of American women thought that what was going on in the Philippines was inimical to their best interest. And perhaps the leading group of women who took a stance on what was happening in the Philippines was the Womens Christian Temperance Union, which was the largest single women's group of the time. Well, WCTU members were really upset with reports that were coming back on military canteens, which served alcohol in the Philippines, and they lobbied for legislation that would prohibit canteens in the Philippines and elsewhere in military, ah, bases from selling, ahm, spirits to the troops. They ran a number of stories in their newspaper, The Union Signal, on how home boys who were sent to the Philippines were coming home debauched, that their experience in the military, instead of teaching them to -- to be good men and citizens, was ruining them. Another thing that really upset WCTU members were the reports of sexually transmitted diseases and they were just appalled to find out that boys who they described as "pure boys" had left their -- their homes and their loving mothers and their, ah, strong, ahm, values and went to the Philippines and, instead, came home sick, diseased, depraved and, as a result, they mobilized their members to protest what was happening in the Philippines. And though they did not take an explicit stance against the war, the result of their anti-canteen and anti-prostitution efforts was to undercut, ah, the war effort.

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INT: In terms of the women nurses who served in Cuba, i.e., Clara Barton, describe what they did.

HOGANSON: Well, taking inspiration from women's war-time activism during the Civil War, women at the time of the Spanish-American War, ah, really mobilized to support the military, that a number of organized women raised money for the troops they provided supplies. So, for example, when troops were on trains going to different bases in the South, ah, they weren't provided with any kinds of snacks or food. So that it was women who would meet them at the train stations and provide them with groceries. Women organized diet kitchens which ...

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Women organized diet kitchens, ahm, which were, ah, kitchens that cooked different types of food, things like soups and gruels, for men who had been injured or were sick and couldn’t eat the standard Army fare of coffee and -- and hard tack. Women also served as nurses in the war, that under the direction of Anita Newcomb McGee, ah, women served the nurses in US military hospitals. They also provided nursing services under the auspices of the Red Cross. So the most famous woman was Clara Barton, a Red Cross leader who at first tended Cuban soldiers, because the American, ahm, military did not want her services. But when American servicemen saw the Cuban soldiers being tended to in tents, being provided with just top-notch care, ahm, and noticed that their own sick and wounded were lying uncovered in the rain without being able to consume the military rations that were given to them, they complained. And, as a result, Barton was then asked to also, ah, contribute her services to the US forces.

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DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: So there are different possibilities the US could have followed. One is it could just sort of positioned itself as like the pro-- protector to kind of keep like the Germans or the Japanese out without actually going in and fighting a guerrilla war for so long trying to impose its own rule, that it could have, you know, short of doing that, it ...

INT: Do you think there were other alternatives (Unintell.) at the time, given the situation?

HOGANSON: Well, the anti-imperialists all along provided a voice of dissent.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: They disagreed. They proposed different things. Some of them just proposed withdrawal and some of them proposed like a (Unintell.) withdrawal. And some of them, you know, had ideas more along the lines of (Unintell.).

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Talk about the election in terms of the anti-imperialist involvement ...

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: My take on the election of 1900 is it's hard to tell exactly what issues win elections. So that, you know, I guess in terms of us as historians figuring out like why McKinley won the election, it's hard to tell exactly what role the imperialism issue played in that. And then as far as the antis were concerned, you know, like a lot of the ones I traced were not necessarily just like political antis in Congress and so forth? So they -- they continued to protest against the war. You know, so in terms of what you're saying about disillusionment, I think they thought the struggle would be an arduous one, but they weren't necessarily disillusioned.

INT: It's my impression the anti movement basically dissolved after the election ...

HOGANSON: Yeah. I don't think they ever really did dissolve. You know, I see what you're saying about how it was a blow, that, you know, the expectation had been that they could solve -- resolve the issue faster. But ... I don't think they dissolved, but, you know, it more of a time of just regrouping or figuring out what to do next.

INT: Talk about the rejuvenation of the anti cause as a result of the Senate over the Philippines.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, when the Senate ran hearings on the atrocities in the Philippines, it really helped the anti-imperialist cause, that it underscored their point that the Philippines were causing degeneracy in American men instead of remedying the perceived problem of degeneracy. And they went out and solicited, ah, reports from American soldiers who had been serving in the Philippines about atrocities that they had witnessed, things like rape and killing filipino civilians and -- and prisoners. And then they also trumpeted the stories that came out of the atrocity hearings and so that these hearings just proved their point, which was that, ahm, the US involvement in the Philippines was debasing American men and that it was absolutely contrary to American principles of self-government.

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INT: Do you think if the United States did not have a colony in the Philippines that it would essentially have been taken over by a more brutal power?

HOGANSON: Well, one thing that imperialists said at the turn of the century was that the United States had an obligation to stay in the Philippines because if it did not, then another power, in all likelihood the Germans or perhaps the Japanese, would come in and take over the Philippines and would govern even more cruelly or not as well as the United States was doing it. But anti-imperialists at the time countered this argument and they -- they said that the very thought that the United States would be able to determine whether or not a people was capable of self-government was a very paternalistic thing to do and that was contrary to the founding principles of the nation, which were principles of self-government.

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Well, a number of leading imperialists, probably most prominent among them Senators Albert Beveridge and Henry Cabot Lodge, were very concerned about what they called "over-civilization" and they thought that a short and supposedly splendid Spanish-American war had served as a partial remedy for that, that it had enabled, ah, white, middle class and wealthy men to go forth and test themselves against a foe to build up the savage virtues. They thought that civilized men had to have a certain amount of that. And the problem was that the Spanish-American War was so short that they thought it would not provide a long-term remedy to the problem of male degeneracy. So they looked to the Philippines as a longer remedy, thinking that first the struggle to take the Philippines and then the challenge of governing the Philippines would enable these white, middle class and wealthier men to develop governing capacity and, ahm, manly character. They were influenced I think in making this argument by three things. So one, ahm, was they looked at British imperialists who published articles in US publications. And the greatest thing about empire, the British Empire, was that it built manhood. Empire made men. They also looked to American history. So they looked to westward expansion, and said that had been a crucible for American manhood and then, hence, American democracy. They also looked back to the Civil War and both of those men had grown up in the aftermath of the Civil War hearing their entire lives stories about the heroism and the martial capacities demonstrated in that war. And they thought that men of their generation needed a comparable challenging, especially since they thought the frontier was then closed and that wouldn't provide an outlet for men's energies. Well, the third reason they thought the Philippines would provide a remedy for male degeneracy, a cure to over-civilization, was the short Spanish-American War which lead to a number of testimonials about how the greatest thing about the Spanish-American War had been that it had demonstrated American manhood, that it had shown the watching world that American men were not just concerned with money-making and commercialism, but they still had the hardy military virtues and the -- the manly stuff in them and that they were capable of going in and demonstrating that in an international conflict.

DIRECTIONAL

INT: Did Lodge and Beveridge have second thoughts by 1903?

HOGANSON: So I think they ... they may have, but I think they -- they never really went on record by -- by retracting, I think, a lot of what they'd said before. And even Roosevelt, ahm ...

DIRECTIONAL

HOGANSON: Even -- even Roosevelt -- there were moments when in later US interventions in the Caribbean, ahm, he, I think, learned something from the Philippines, which was that he was a little bit more wary of becoming involved elsewhere. But, on the other hand, I think he never really lost his enthusiasm for war altogether and there were moments when he complained that he could not generate the same enthusiasm among a public for later Caribbean interventions as -- ahm, as he had been able to or the nation had been able to in 1898.

DIRECTIONAL

END INTERVIEW

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