You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [46]
President McKinley and Secretary Long, favoring a quiet diplomatic solution to the Cuban problem, were caught unprepared by the jingoistic tide supporting war with Spain. Though Roosevelt had been publicly silent on the issue for several months, others among the yellow press had taken up the conspirator’s cause. Still, the administration held to the standard of benign acts of distant diplomacy and refused to publicly dignify the propaganda.
For several months the situation remained relatively stable. It seemed as if the entire situation might blow over, but in an unexpected and much-debated event, word reached the naval department that one of her ships, designated USS Maine, had exploded while at anchor in Havana Harbor.
With the apparent loss of hundreds of sailors, McKinley was sickened and Roosevelt found new hope. Enflamed by rhetoric critical of the quiet stance of the McKinley administration, the American public put their faith in the reported belief that a Spanish mine had detonated against the vessel’s hull (recently dis-proven but still debated to this day) and cried for repayment with Spanish blood. The McKinley administration, however, viewed the entire journalistic endeavor as an absurd escapade undeserving of correction or commentary. The White House, viewing the Maine situation as a coincidental seaborne accident, looked upon the situation as diminishing further in international and national importance with each passing day.
Similarly, after the chiding of a few months prior and apparently sufficient quiet penance on behalf of his adjutant without a repeat incident, Secretary Long deemed Roosevelt’s zeal sufficiently curtailed to mind the Department of the Navy for a single day while he took a much-needed rest. However, before partaking of a brief respite, on February 25, 1898, Long explicitly ordered Theodore Roosevelt not to do anything without first checking with either himself or the president. Having properly admonished his subordinate, the secretary of the navy promptly departed and eagerly embraced his well-deserved rest.
Acting Secretary Roosevelt made the most of his newfound temporary power and anxiously seized the opportunity presented him. First, he cabled the commander of the Asiatic Squadron, Commodore George Dewey, with orders to keep his vessels well stocked with fuel and provisions and, in the event of war, directed him to make best speed for the bulk of the Spanish fleet, moored in the Philippines, and send them to the bottom. Roosevelt then cabled similar Atlantic-based target instructions and rally points to Dewey’s South Atlantic and European-based counterparts. Finally, the acting secretary also ordered the acquisition of as much coal as the United States could obtain from Far East markets, requisitioned the stockpiling of extra ammunition, the creation of guns from several naval yards, sent messages to Congress calling for the immediate authorization to enlist an unlimited number of seamen, and urged the New York adjutant general to commence planning for the transport of war supplies should hostilities soon erupt. Knowing the Spanish Empire and his journalistic admirers would be watching, Roosevelt calculated the brazen moves would add sufficient fuel to the fire and possibly provoke Spain into making the proper antagonistic move to validate the onset