Americans seemed to like being a world player at the turn of the last century (the end of the 1800s).  Hey, Cuba was right next door to Florida. Check out the map to the left.  Trouble is, Spain had held Cuba since the days of Columbus.  So if we wanted to grab Cuba, we would have to get in a fight with Spain. Sam was young and strong, coming into his full manhood, so, hey, why not?

Journalists--the guys who write for magazines and newspapers--had started to get involved in yellow journalism.  That is a term you should know. Yellow journalism is exaggerating the news to lure readers.  Two large newspapers at the time, William Randolph Hearst's  New York Journal, and Joseph Pullitzer's New York World were in competition.  They wanted to sell newspapers.  So their reporters made stories more dramatic to get people to read. They told Americans how bad the Spanish government in Cuba was.  They told about how they were harming innocent people, including children. This was meant to entice Americans to want to go to war with Spain over Cuba. It certainly helped to bring sympathy towards the Cubans, and distaste for the Spanish.

We did go to war with Spain, and after some victories, we sat down at the peace table, but we did not exactly get Cuba.  We got some other countries.  Answer the questions below...the answers can be found on these links and others you might want to google.

• The de Lome letter
• The sinking of the Maine
• The first battle of the War
• Teddy Roosevelt's involvement with the Spanish American War
• Treaty of Paris, 1898