Puerto Rican Campaign - Prelude To The Puerto Rican Campaign

Prelude To The Puerto Rican Campaign

In 1890, Captain Alfred Thayler Mahan, a member of the Navy War Board and leading U.S. strategic thinker, wrote a book titled The Influence of Sea Power upon History in which he argued for the creation of a large and powerful navy modeled after the British Royal Navy. Part of his strategy called for the acquisition of colonies in the Caribbean Sea which would serve as coaling and naval stations, and which would serve as strategical points of defense upon the construction of a canal in the Isthmus.

This idea was not new, since William H. Seward, the former Secretary of State under the administrations of various presidents, among them Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, had stressed that a canal be built either in Honduras, Nicaragua or Panama and that the United States annex the Dominican Republic and purchase Puerto Rico and Cuba. The idea of annexing the Dominican Republic failed to receive the approval of the U.S. Senate and Spain did not accept the 160 million dollars which the U.S. offered for Puerto Rico and Cuba.

Captain Mahan made the following statement to the War Department:

Since 1894, the Naval War College had been formulating plans for war with Spain. By 1896, the Office of Naval Intelligence had prepared a plan which included military operations in Puerto Rican waters. Not only was Puerto Rico considered valuable as a naval station, Puerto Rico and Cuba were also abundant in a valuable commercial commodity which the United States lacked: sugar.

Following the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor, Cuba, the United States forwarded an ultimatum to Spain to withdraw from Cuba. In response, Spain broke off diplomatic relations with the United States, and on April 23, 1898, Spain declared war. On April 25, the U.S. Congress declared that a state of war between the United States and Spain had existed since April 20. One of the United States' principal objectives in the Spanish-American War was to take control of Spanish possessions in the Atlantic — Puerto Rico and Cuba — and their possessions in the Pacific — the Philippines and Guam.

On April 27, U.S. ships, the monitor USS Puritan, the armored cruisers USS New York, and the USS Cincinnati, bombarded the Spanish fortifications at Matanzas Bay in Cuba and, by July 16, an armistice was signed at the Arbol de La Paz (a large ceiba tree) by U.S. and Spanish forces. The United States then dispatched its fleet to Puerto Rico. Two prominent leaders of the Puerto Rican section of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, Dr. Julio J. Henna and Roberto H. Todd, had written to U.S. President McKinley asking that Puerto Rico be included in whatever intervention was planned for Cuba as early as March 10. They even provided the U.S. government with information about the Spanish military presence on the island.