gorkay,
This “naked territorial” grab, as you call the Spanish-American War, really was America’s “stage debut” as a global power. The U.S.S. Maine was probability not destroyed by Spanish mines, but that was simply one reason to enter. Had that not occurred, the U.S. would have entered a the Cuban War of Independence anyway, since “yellow journalism” was doing a great job at diluting the public, and men such as Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood were not going to sit around while a revolution was happening 200-miles off the coast of Florida.
The Spanish-American War made the U.S. a global power in three major ways:
1) The U.S. became a naval power. Dewey’s victory over the Spanish Fleet at Manila Bay was not a coincidence or an accident; it was the first real showing of America’s naval power. The Europeans saw this as well, and began to beef up their own navies.
2) This new need for naval power, coupled with unparalleled economic growth under President McKinley, led the United States to become #1 in world steel production. Thus, the U.S. was an economic superpower as well as a naval power.
3) Without the Spanish-American War, the Panama Canal may have never been built and the nation of Panama may never have existed. The need of getting troops from the West to Cuba was stalled by a trip around the tip of South America. This war sped up the want of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama.
Few presidents have had as much effect on both world and economic policy as McKinley, whether you like the Spanish-American War or not, this can not be denied.
As for there being no “progressive reform” under McKinley, this is not actually factual. In fact, McKinley began the policy of “trust busting”. U.S. Industrial Commission on Trusts, which interrogated Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Charles M. Schwab, and other captains of industry. Teddy the Trust Buster took the findings of McKinley’s Administration and applied them to his own war on monopolies. Also, business expansion has happened under presidents, and they are all considered “above average” presidents.
Finally, Mark Hanna did controll McKinley’s rise to the White House, no doubt of that. However, McKinley became independent of Hanna soon after becoming president. Hanna opposed the Spanish-American War, all trust reform, and especially Theodore Roosevelt running with McKinley in 1900. McKinley, up in the White House, generally ignored Hanna, over in the Senate. “McKinley’s Brain” was generally his own and that of his cabinet, for Mark Hanna had fallen out of his loop. McKInley bowed to Hanna only twice as president by enforcing the gold standard and rasing tariffs. No writer can go on Countdown and peddle a book called “McKinley’s Brain: The Story of Hanna” because by 1897, Honest Bill McKinley was free from his wims.
I don't think that the beginning of American imperialism is anything to celebrate. Most of our foreign-policy problems (and quite a few of our domestic ones, for that matter) can be traced back to it. I don't buy the portrayal of McKinley as a trust-buster, either.
One thing I do admire McKinley for is how gently and kindly he treated his wife, Ida, who suffered from epilepsy.
