What was the Spanish American War about anyway?

Question

It was so on going. Stop, then start again. We didn't
study it really.

Answer 1

The Spanish American war was about America fighting for it's independence from Spain.

That said, it is likely that you mean the United Statesian Spanish war. That was a war of expansion fought by the United States against Spain. In that war we took Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and other small islands from Spain.

Answer 2

Causes of the War

Demands by Cuban patriots for independence from Spanish rule made U.S. intervention in Cuba a paramount issue in the relations between the United States and Spain from the 1870s to 1898. Sympathy for the Cuban insurgents ran high in America, especially after the savage Ten Years War (1868–78) and the unsuccessful revolt of 1895. After efforts to quell guerrilla activity had failed, the Spanish military commander, Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, instituted the reconcentrado, or concentration camp, system in 1896; Cuba's rural population was forcibly confined to centrally located garrison towns, where thousands died from disease, starvation, and exposure.

Weyler's actions brought the rebels many new American sympathizers. These prorebel feelings were inflamed by the U.S. “yellow press,” especially W. R. Hearst's New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, which distorted and slanted the news from Cuba. The U.S. government was also moved by the heavy losses of American investment in Cuba caused by the guerrilla warfare, an appreciation of the strategic importance of the island to Central America and a projected isthmian canal there, and a growing sense of U.S. power in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. There was an unspoken threat of intervention. This grew sharper after the insurgents, refusing a Spanish offer of partial autonomy, determined to fight for full freedom.

Although the majority of Americans, including President McKinley, wished to avert war and hoped to settle the Cuban question by peaceful means, a series of incidents early in 1898 intensified U.S. feelings against Spain. The first of these was the publication by Hearst of a stolen letter (the de Lôme letter) that had been written by the Spanish minister at Washington, in which that incautious diplomat expressed contempt for McKinley. This was followed by the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, with a loss of 260 men. Although Spanish complicity was not proved, U.S. public opinion was aroused and war sentiment rose. The cause of the advocates of war was given further impetus as a result of eyewitness reports by members of the U.S. Congress on the effect of the reconcentrado policy in Cuba.

Answer 3

The Spaniards had brutal dictatorships in Cuba and the Philippines, and we warned one Cuban general, known as the butcher, not to kill innocent people, but he did it anyway, so we declared war to stop the brutality. The war spread from Cuba to the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and we took those lands from the Spaniards. We still have Puerto Rico, but Cuba and the Philippines were declared independent long ago.

Answer 4

A WAY FOR THE U.S.A. TO STEEL LAND, AND CREATE AND IMPIRED