How did the army mobilize for the spanish american war ? What were the army actions in the Philippine insurrection . What was the army role in developing the Panama Canal ? And what was the significance of walter reed's discovery of the causes of yellow fever for answers to these questions and more army history insights . Stay tuned . Welcome to the U . S . Army history and Heritage podcast . The official podcast of the United States Army Center of Military History . The center of Military History , writes and publishes the army's official history , manages the US Army Museum enterprise and provides historical support throughout the U . S . Army . Hello everyone and welcome to the United States Army history and Heritage podcast . I'm lee Reynolds , the strategic communications officer for the Center of Military History . In this episode , we're examining the US army role in the spanish american war and the development of the Panama Canal . I'm speaking today with CMH historian . Dr Matthew Marge's welcome mat and thanks for joining me . Thanks for thanks for having me . I'm glad to be here again . Great . Yeah , thanks for coming on back . And so for those who don't know Dr marge's uh he works with the U . S . Army Center of Military History as the historian for the office of the Chief of Staff of the Army . He's been with CMH since 2017 . Prior to taking his current position , he worked as a researcher in the histories division . His area of expertise is late 19th century and early 20th century military professionalization . Perfect for this time period for these next couple of episodes . So we got the right guy here , that's for sure . So he graduated with a PhD from Iowa State University in 2016 . His dissertation , America's progressive army , how the National Guard grew out of progressive era reforms , won the caress award for outstanding dissertation in 2017 . And awesome achievement . Congratulations . He's currently converting his dissertation into a manuscript for publication . Dr marge's has written articles on african american service during World War One and numerous book reviews . He recently published a chapter on consolidating gains during Operation Market Garden during World War Two in an Army University Press volume on large scale combat operations . Well , that's a lot anything , anything , I'm missing their math . All right , perfect . Well , let's roll right into it then . So let's start with an overview of the strategic information , what led to a american involvement in the spanish american war and how prepared was the army at the start of the war ? Yeah , so there were a lot of kind of strands going on at once . Um , and this is during , you know , post the post Civil war period . The aren't the United States is kind of in this , you know , continental expansion , Frederick Jackson Turner writes that the frontier has ended . Um , and so there's , there's a lot of things going on , including what was perceived as a crisis of masculinity due to industrialization and so there was this element in society led by people like Theodore Roosevelt who was not of course president yet . Um but people this kind of hawkish element who believed that America was losing its spirit and it needed to kind of almost expand or die , That wasn't their words , but that was kind of the idea . Um So there was definitely an imperialistic kind of fervor that was growing on top of that . There was also the actual situation in cuba . Um where you had the spanish um particularly under General Valliere , No whaler who begins in the mid 18 nineties , this re concentration policy . So there was a popular uprising in cuba , there was a Cuban push for independence against the spanish . Um And so a lot of americans saw this as sort of a more of the american spirit , right ? The revolution against european imperialism , colonial rule , that those types of . Absolutely ! So there was there was a little , there was support in the United States popular support at least for the Cuban kind of rebels . Um And so these are all kinds of strands that are kind of coming together all at once . Um with the election of William McKinley , his predecessor , Grover Cleveland had kind of taken a a hands off approach to the to the situation . Um He is going to be much more involved and there's he's kind of taking that Imperialistic push and in February , that was it was 18 96 election , so he was inaugurated in 1897 . Um and the U . S . S . Maine is kind of the catalyst , right ? The U . S . S . Maine explodes in off the coast of cuba in february of 18 98 . So why was the main they're the main was there as sort of a show of force in a way . Um And the explosion at the time , they just simply blamed it on spanish mine . Uh We know now that there was a boiler problem and it was actually not caused by an enemy mine , but that was the initial sort of announcement . Um And then shortly thereafter there's some commentary in spanish press basically saying , you know , William McKinley doesn't have the gall to do anything . Uh he that gets back to him . Um and so in April of 1898 is when the US starts to build up its its forced their its presence there mostly naval and then war is finally declared on April 21 , 1898 . Um Okay and then because of the main that you know , I remember there's talk of yellow journalism right ? So there was this fervor . This imperialistic fervor I guess with the administration , but then the newspapers just took it and ran with it . Yeah . Absolutely . And they ran with the story again there's a lot of journeying up of of popular support for this . Uh There's also another element that sometimes gets overlooked but this is this is shortly after um the white man's burden is released . Um That that concept of you know anglo Saxon imperialism to oversee this this heavily racist heavily you know , but it's based on this pseudo science that in general , european people were they had to kind of oversee and and support um basically people of color in these and and and so a lot of americans just sort of saw it as their duty to help the Cuban almost as though the Cubans were like a like Children is how they kind of saw it . Um So again very very kind of heavily racist but that's also playing into this . And of course newspapers and articles and journals are just running with that . And then the , remember the maine ? Yeah absolutely . So okay so war is declared And how is the , how ready is the army to to go on over there ? And the US the United States Army in 1898 is woefully unprepared for any overseas undertaking . Uh the army strength had been capped by Congress in the year . It had diminished after the civil war just reduced reduced reduced to the point that by 1898 the army strength is capped at 26,000 officers and men . So 26,000 . So that is the size of the regular army . Now there is the militia , there's about 100 and 15,000 give or take um men in the militia across the country . Now something we'll talk about maybe later or in another segment is the militia was in various states of readiness . So some states were pretty good . Some states not so much . And on top of that in 18 98 there was no way to just simply federalize the militia . The president like today , the President could just say the National Guard is now federalized . They couldn't do that yet . There was no way to just incorporate the militia into the army . So it's generally in a , in a huge state of just complete , like they just were unprepared for this . Um and so one of the big questions is going to be just , how do they build the army and how do they get it ready for this ? So how do they , you know what , how do they put that in motion ? Because we go from 26,000 and then 115,000 I think said in in the militias , Did we even call it the National Guard then ? Or was it still militia ? They called themselves the National Guard . It really , there was nothing national about it yet that's gonna come in 1903 . but the , the association with militia had gotten so bad in the 18 seventies . The people just associate the militia with a bunch of drunks on , On weekend duty that states kind of started calling themselves the National Guard uh kind of out of the French model of the French National Guard . But there was nothing national about it . Right . All right . So how did we mobilize ? How did we get to the and and and talk about what the ultimate force was that went into the war . So there's a couple questions of how to do it . And um Congressman John 80 hull from Iowa introduces one bill that would have raised the size of the regular army to about 120,000 . Um but it didn't incorporate the militia in anyway . And you had mentioned that they call themselves a National Guardia ? Well , there was the National Guard Association um which had formed earlier and they were basically officers from around the states and they were effectively a lobbying group at the time . Um and they were completely opposed to this measure , of course , because it didn't involve the militia at all . Uh So that kind of gets thrown out . And what's replaced with it today , after war is declared on april 22nd . The art , the mobilization act passes . This is basically an updated version of the Civil War style mobilization , where President McKinley calls for 60,000 Volunteers . Congress authorizes the regular Army to expand up to 60,000 . The volunteer system was based on state quotas . Um There's so much enthusiasm that a few days later a few weeks later , I guess McKinley will actually expand that to 125,000 volunteers . And these are these are kind of federal volunteers where they're volunteer soldiers with federally supported officers . So the most famous , of course of these would become the first U . S . Volunteer cavalry , the rough riders . Um , and but what they also allow for is for states to basically offer up their existing militia regiments as volunteers so they can say , okay , our state quota is 13,000 . Well we have a militia of 10,000 . So we're going to offer up our militia as volunteer soldiers . And And then we only need to raise 3000 more . That works unless those militiamen say no because again they can , they can refuse , there's no federal way to force them into service . And there's a couple of cases , particularly this happens in Iowa where they're volunteered and they say , well , we'll only go if we can stay as a regiment . You know , you can't break us up . We're we're staying as the as the fourth Iowa infantry units and the federal government says , well we don't need you as a red , we need your we need to spread people out . So there's this back and forth . Um , and basically the mobilization becomes just a complete debacle . Uh , they have some mobilization stations set up across the country um , kind of strategically located to try to , the idea is to funnel people into these kind of encampments . Um For example , one is at Chickamauga Georgia kind of funnel them there , um , have them in camp for a while and then transport them down to Tampa Bay to disembark for cuba everything just gets bogged up . It just becomes a fiasco . Um , transportation supply , just the logistics of it completely break down and Tampa Bay becomes just the sight of complete chaos as all these men material are just streaming into uh , Tampa Bay and basically a town that has like three rail lines . And so the railroads are just completely backed up . It was , it did not go well and but eventually , how many people were raised eventually , I mean the , the ultimate sai , I mean 125,000 volunteers do come through . So the army will at the time go from again at 26,002 by the time , uh , basically by the time the , the actual war ends , the size of the army is up to about 100 and 20,000 and then it's going to reduce back down . Um , and a lot of those volunteers are going to be allowed to go home , but it will , it does expand pretty rapidly . So it sounds to me the way you've explained it that there when we need , we realized we needed to raise an army . They went back to the Civil War model is what it looks like or sounds like . Yeah , they kind of went back to what they knew . And part of the reason for that is there were no federal laws , there was no equivalent at the time of today that the National Defense authorization act . Um , that just didn't exist . So there was no federal process , there was no known process for for raising the army in a kind of a systematic manner because prior to this , the only time the United States ever had to do this was during the Civil War mexican war and they were able to do it through volunteers . So I guess the point of this is using history to guide to guide them , you know , and we see that recurring over and over and over again . But so was there anything innovative about this process ? Not much . It was again , the process of mobilization was kind of backward . What it's going to do though is this is going to put the Secretary of War Russell Alger really in the hot seat ? Um and a lot of the problems and this is something I think we're going to talk about more in another segment . Um but a lot of the problems of the mobilization , a lot of the Shortcomings , they expose the lack of kind of a systematic process . And so what's going to come after the reforms that come in the early 20th century ? Uh Russell Alger even being being replaced by like a route that's all as a result of this . So as we're entering the conflict , talk about the weapons , um what what rifles were we using ? What um any new artillery pieces ? What was the technology like ? Yeah , so the technology had come a long way since the civil war . The United States was slow to adopt a lot of that . Um by 1898 the regular army and a lot of the militia was using the krag jorgensen rifle which was the first time the U . S . Army ever adopted a smokeless powder magazine fed bolt action rifle . Um It was fairly functional . That was what most of the army had . At least the Regular Army used that rifle . Machine guns were really not on the really not quite there yet but gatling guns were certainly popular in the US Army . One of the one of the places where the army was actually well behind the curve was with artillery field artillery . Um The U . S . Army had not adopted a modern field piece yet . The french the the Europeans . Um We're using kind of you know if you think of the french 75 millimeter artillery piece right that's out now . Um Which is a has a recoil mechanism . Its uses smokeless powder . All these things . The U . S . Was still using um basically older style field artillery with black powder and that's gonna be a problem . During a couple of the battles in cuba actually because the spanish are actually though they are a much smaller force . They're actually much better equipped because they're using modern european artillery pieces . Um Some militia units will go to war using older model Springfield's which they weren't the single shot muzzle loaders anymore . They were breech loaders but they still used black powder . Um So there's there's a gamut of kind of the technology . Okay , so there was standardization yet in the regular force . Not yet , they're trying to get there , but there's just a lot of in this again is one of the supply and logistics issues where there's just a lot of debate over what they needed . And when the army was mostly a frontier force , mostly constabulary between the end of the civil war in 18 98 why do they need to spend all this money on these modern field pieces ? Why do they need , why does Congress need to spend all this money on updating an army when there's no more frontier ? So it's really , the army would love to have these modern things . Um , but Congress was really a little stingy when it came to funding . So now let's talk about the actions in cuba , what was the strategy and the tactics used there and , and talk about some of the key battles . So basically the army is going to kind of fight 1/19 century style war . The idea is being , you know , capture , capture the capital , defeat the enemy forces in the field and and capture territory . Uh , yeah , The war actually starts in the Philippines . The first major battle is a naval battle . This , you've probably heard of , you know , Commodore George Dewey's battle at middle of May , that's going to be in May of 1898 . So only a few days after war was declared , um which is a complete um american victory there . Dewey is going to go on to Emilio Aguinaldo who's who's in exile in Hong kong . He was a filipino rebel leader . He's going to bring him back into the Philippines . That's gonna be something we'll talk about in a few minutes . But in cuba the idea is again land basically capture a landing zone and then move inland and move on Santiago . Uh When they land Major General William R Shafter is put in command of the fifth Corps which will oversee operations . Um He's expecting kind of a fight . The landings actually go pretty smooth getting on the ships in Tampa Bay , getting them from Tampa Bay to Cuba but not so much . But once they landed there the landings were pretty pretty smooth . There wasn't a lot of resistance there . And this is off of the uh the towns are actually um uh Siboney and um I can't remember the other , they're not quite to Santiago . Yeah they got to move inland to get to Santiago and Guantanamo Bay . This is where Guantanamo Bay . Yeah the Marines , the Marines had landed . Guantanamo Bay actually a little earlier . Um and they had captured that area . Um and so that's that's basically the situation . It's they start landing in 20 like the end of june 22nd , 23rd june um There's a small skirmish on june 23rd near Simone . And basically what that's gonna do is General joseph Wheeler , Major General joseph Wheeler , who is the commander of the cavalry division . Now , joseph Wheeler was actually a confederate general during the Civil War . Uh he like General Shafter are are definitely up in age . Um he was brought back to be a general of volunteers in this kind of effort of reconciliation , right ? Showing the , okay , the civil war is behind us . Now look , even a former confederate is now fighting wearing the United States Army Blue . Um He kind of ignores some of the orders . It's not quite sure whether it's him or whether it's some of the people under him , but he was sort of told , hey , be kind of cautious as you move from the landing area inland , we don't want , you know , avoid a major conflict because Shafter really wanted to make sure his entire army was there . The entire fifth corps had landed before any engagements brought on wheelers troops under him . The cavalry divisions , including the first cavalry , first US cavalry ruff Ryders , which were commanded by Colonel , then Colonel Leonard Wood . Theodore Roosevelt was actually his second command though he was kind of the face of the , of the regiment . Um they're gonna move a little further than they probably should have . They kind of ignore some skirmish ear's . They kind of ignore uh the Philip the Cuban or the spanish Scouts and on the 24th they're going to be ambushed in what will become known as the Battle of Last Seamus . Uh it's a draw . Um because the spanish are so outnumbered , they will , they will retreat . Um but they actually inflict more casualties than the US did . Um And that's kind of the first sort of clash of any kind of sizable forces . Um But regardless of that , in early July um Shafter is ready to move . So about 15,000 us regulars and volunteers will start moving towards Santiago and they're going to move inland through these jungles . Yellow fever malaria is in credit . The rates of are incredibly high . Um and they are going to engage in to kind of key battles in both fought on july 1st . Uh the battle of one that we all kind of the more famous one san juan hill and the second is El Caney or El Khani . Um Shafter hopes to capture Elkann first . He wants that to be basically a rear point of operations . He's going to send Brigadier General Henry Ware , Lawton with his division , their lot and outnumbers there's about , He has about 6900 men , there's about 500 Spanish regulars and another 100 or so loyal to Spain Cubans . Um They are going to hold out so lot of attacks multiple times and the spanish are well entrenched and they hold out basically , they only kind of break after multiple taps when they effectively run out of ammunition . And this is one of those points where where I mentioned the artillery . Lawton's artillery is using black powder . Those become targets because the well entrenched spanish can simply get in their trenches , look for the powder and then target their their artillery which is using smokeless powder on the black powder . So counter battery . So basically counter battery fire . And some of the tactics at the time and the doctrine that the U . S . Army had was that artillery batteries would be embedded with infantry regiments . So the infantry would be basically huddled around the artillery rather than in front of it or behind it . And so casualties start to mount because the counter battery fire was just basically hitting the infantry that was huddled around the and that's going to happen both there and at san juan Heights as well , a little more um casualty rates there . But but even though Shafter wanted to capture Elkann first , he orders the attack on on the heights at san juan Hill . Um This is where , you know the two the two major fights , San juan hill , kettle hill . Uh Some of the famous actions are going to happen here . Right ? The rough riders captured kettle hill . Um I think he's a captain , but john j Pershing is there ? He's with the 10th , 10th cavalry , which is the buffalo soldiers and all black regiment . They're gonna suffer extremely high casualties . Um Was the ninth there too . Is it just 1/10 of the buffalo soldiers ? Believe the 10th , I can't , I could be wrong on that though . Don't quote me on that one . Um But he they're going to suffer incredibly high casualty rates especially among the officers . Um And part of it was because of their location , they were kind of bogged down . They're not getting good orders to move and it's sort of like we're here and again the spanish artillery is just raining on them . Um The kind of the weapon that's going to be the most effective for the U . S . Is gonna be the gatling gun . Once for example they capture kettle hill . Uh And the rough riders again that was kind of Leonard wood and Theodore Roosevelt were kind of like we're sitting ducks where we are we have to decide are we gonna pull back or attack this hill and it's like let's attack the hill . So did they attack san juan or kettle hill ? They were on kettle hill actually but once they capture capture that they're able to put artillery are not artillery but gatling guns and things up there and then that's going to allow them to kind of have a better position . Um And after a while the spanish will just simply due to being outnumbered will retreat and that kind of opens the way To Santiago . So Shafter is going to order his troops to move in at the same time . The Navy is going to basically block the exits from Santiago . So as the Spanish trying to retreat . The Navy basically blocks that and they're forced to eventually capitulate . Um the fighting just around the heights though , there's gonna be basically on the us side about 200 killed and another Roughly 1200 wounded in the day and a half of fighting on the heights around . So when you say the spanish capitulated was that all their forces in cuba was ? So , so it's gonna be CUba at the time . Um They're going to , you know , after the battle of Santiago , which again is mostly a naval battle on july 3rd . Uh then it just becomes sort of formulaic , there's general Shafter is in Santiago , There's negotiations going on and over the next month they're going to work out spanish capitulation . Uh There's US troops who landed Puerto rico as well . There's a lot less intense fighting there , but there are some skirmishes . Um This is going to involve Puerto rico . Uh And then the same is kind of going on in the Philippines . There's actually a some ground combat going on there . Um As I mentioned though , remember Dui brings Aguinaldo back . So the Cuban or the Filipino rebels are definitely supporting the US work there . Um And by december Of 1898 , the Treaty of Paris is signed but for all intents and purposes what William McKinley would call his splendid Little War . The Cuban asked the Cuban part of the Spanish American War is is over by August of 1898 . So that was relatively quick . So from from mobilization to deployment to winning those battles . It was that was really quick . Yeah really from april to end of april the end of august . Um and and that's gonna of course feed into this this kind of idea of you know the american um the abilities of the military to do this and part part of the part of their ability to do it so quickly even though it was basically an undertrained unprepared force was that they just vastly outnumbered the spanish . There's numbers of people . All right . So then um at least in that part of the world America gains an ally in cuba . We we get Guantanamo bay . This is I think it's important to know because Guantanamo was in today . It's still in the news a lot . So yeah and and actually there was there were some congressional dealings going on here and one of the one of the the way to get the authorization for allowed even was that um they agreed right away to not annex cuba . Because some of the criticism right off the bat was oh they're just doing this to gain cuba . Well no they wrote in there that they could not annex cuba . But they do they do uh negotiate to maintain Guantanamo bay . This is how the U . S . Gains territory in the this is how they gain Puerto rico Guam and the Philippines because from basically then until World War two the Philippines ostensibly under U . S . Control . So now let's shift a little bit more to the Philippines . Um You talked about dewey and that there was some limited action . What was the army roll going on in the Philippine at the time ? So the army is going to shortly after the battle of Manila . The army is going to send over start sending over over soldiers um by the thousands are going to go on these on these ships from basically disembarked from san Francisco uh refit either in hawaii or Guam and then move up into their these troops that were used in cuba . Not you not usually no these were these were soldiers who typically did not see action in cuba . They were mobilized specifically for um this purpose and in some cases there were soldiers who were slated to go to CUba . But because the war there , the fighting there ended so quickly they were sent to san Francisco and would come in the in the subsequent waves uh into the Philippines after the war is over . Um So let's say there's there's some there's some fighting around uh there's some limited combat action . Um But by december of 18 98 . Uh the war is declared over the spanish cede control of the Philippines . Um And basically by this point it becomes a U . S . Territory . The question becomes what to do with it . And this is where the subsequent problems are going to develop Renaldo and other Filipinos believe that the United States was there to rid them of this spanish colonial overseer . Uh They did not expect the United States to stick around once they defeated uh spanish . Um And what was the american intentions ? There were the american intentions really were to open up better trade corridors to East Asia . Um That's really what a lot of this was about . It was about having the ability to set up basing operations to have these easy markets to East Asia , particularly with china . This is right around the same time the boxer rebellion . Um So there's all these these different kind of moving pieces and really what the U . S . Intentions are is to open up the pacific today . We call the kind of the pacific theater . But this this would include again the Philippines , hawaii Guam all these territories , the United States is kind of is kind of annexing out there in an effort to really advance trade opportunities . So that's what they're really wanting to do . What was there an attempt to annex the Philippines ? Well this was sort of not so much annexation as it was , the territory was seated in the in the treaty of paris . So it now becomes a U . S . Kind of protectorate . Um And so it's not annexation in the same way that hawaii was annexed but it's sort of this is ours now and we're going to use this area as we see fit . Um And that's what's going to kick off what becomes known as the filipino insurrection which will go in from 18 early 18 99 um until 1902 officially . Um And and again it was sort of two days before the senate actually ratifies the treaty of paris on february 18 99 is when Aguinaldo's forces first attack uh U . S . Soldiers stationed there because it's kind of like it just it changes to them . It's just another imperial foe . Yeah . So um what would happen with the insurrection and what was the army role because it didn't Pershing also play a role at this time . He's gonna be , he's gonna go a little later but he will eventually find himself in the Philippines uh as a lot of others the kind of the who's who of the early 20th century army will be there . Um The role of the army is basically to try to put down the insurrection . Uh US forces are gonna go in . It's gonna be known as the the official there's kind of two phases . From an american perspective of the insurrection . The first phase is Aguinaldo is trying to wage a conventional war . He's trying to raise raise a filipino army to fight against the U . S . Army in conventional sort of static combat and that it is a complete failure on their side . The the american . The the U . S . Army is able to just the soldiers were able to basically completely achieve victory in every in every major battle that will come from this . Um So the second phase is really when they go into this prolonged guerilla style conflict what we would think today more of a an insurgency um That type of fighting and the U . S . Official program is gonna be known as a benevolent assimilation . The that was that was that major General Elwell Otis came up with that . He was the first kind of commander there . He would eventually become the military governor of the Philippines . Um He's actually be replaced by Arthur Macarthur Douglas's father , Arthur Macarthur Jr um And the idea is basically we're going to fight the insurrection and treat it very harshly . So in the if you're an insurrectionist you're going an insurgent you're going to be rooted out , we're gonna fight you um as we were anywhere . And then but the benevolent side of it is but we're gonna do these great things for the Philippines . We're gonna build roads and schools and hospitals and it sounds vaguely familiar . Yeah it's right the words kind of change the nation building at the same time for winning hearts and minds . Another phrase . Um And that's what the attempt is made . Um And it really does have an effect . It really does work . Um When Arthur Macarthur comes in and replaces Otis in 1900 he's going to authorize general Frederick Funston to lead an expedition which ultimately captures Aguinaldo . Um And basically by that point uh the insurrection just kind of starts to kind of wayne down . It's officially declared over in 1902 . Though it's not really , there's still some parts , particularly the the southern Philippine Islands where there's a large Morro or Muslim population there , they're gonna be they're gonna hold out for much longer . There's gonna be , that's where that's where general Pershing will find himself in 1901 . Um And there's some atrocities committed on both sides . Uh Some of these are well documented . Um But effectively the insurrection portion of it , the official insurrections over by 1902 but the U . S . Is going to be remained pretty heavily occupied in the Philippines for some time to come . I mean over the next from 1902 until really the eve of american entry into World War One . Uh If you're a soldier in the Regular Army , there's a pretty good chance you're going to do a rotation through the Philippines . Um It's and they sent , they even created a volunteer corps to go specifically . You would volunteer for service in the in the Philippines . And now with the spanish american war in the Philippines direction . Um Is this the army , I mean this is America expanding overseas and there have been diplomatic things and um but is this now , you know the army as a um as it overseas um element . It really is the beginning of that . It's not just the , I mean of course the Navy Marine Corps are involved in this as well , the Marine Corps especially in in kind of the caribbean area . Um But yeah this is really the start of a permanent presence of the U . S . Army in overseas territories and really I mean that's gonna be from this period onward . Pretty constant . There's not really , I don't think there's ever a moment um After 191898 where there aren't US soldiers permanently stationed somewhere overseas because you also mentioned the boxer rebellion . So um I know we didn't plan on that . But can you briefly describe what happened there because that was the same time frame . It's the same timeframe . This is the boxer rebellion was effectively another case of the same thing but in China um mostly the it wasn't really against american imperialism there as it was against a british and european imperialism I think it was seven different nations . And and and they're gonna request multiple support and the U . S . Is going to throw some support behind it again because of the idea of wanting these access to these um these ports . And uh the U . S . Is going to have a limited contingent of soldiers who go over . There's a few operations that they are engaged in . Um at the end of the day . This is how for the next 100 years the british gained um Hong kong um And it's it's considered a victory for the kind of the european and american sides . Um there's a , it's not a heavily , it's not , we're not talking , you know , tens of thousands of american soldiers here . We're talking to small kind of overseas contingent and I think the battles , it was like three months or something . Yeah , a few medals of honor . Yeah , they're great at the time . That was the only medal you could get . So as well . So yeah , the medal of honor was the only medal for valor that was issued . So there weren't a lot of other options . But I believe that the , the american contingent was sent from the Philippines . So they took folks from the Philippines over to the boxer rebellion and then three months later they all , I think most of them returned back . But interesting to know that the same timeframe because I think that was the spring and summer of 1900 . Yeah , that's all going on right around . All right , well , good . Well , so at the end of the conflict , the spanish american war , the Philippine insurrection . How did the army change ? What were um , what were the lessons learned and how did we move forward ? What's gonna happen ? And this is kind of , I don't want to get too deep into this because I think we'll talk about this in their time , but uh the the , as , as I mentioned earlier , Russell Alger is out as secretary of war , he is replaced by elihu root , a lawyer . Uh not a lot of military experience . Not any military experience actually , but um , he understands legalities , he understands bureaucracy and he's going to push over the next few years from 18 99 through about 19 0304 . A series of reform efforts that are going to completely reshape the way the United States Army functions , it's going to include creating a general staff for the first time . It's going to include building up the army war college . It's going to include improving the branching schools . So for artillery , infantry , etcetera , it's going to involve reforming the National Guard and creating a way for the National Guard to actually be part of the federal system . And um , it's also going to involve breaking , trying to break the hold of the bureau system because at the time , the bureau , so quartermaster , transportation in general , all those kind of that there were seven kind of independent army bureaus that all had a commanding general or they all had a general and they were all sort of independent of , there was no central structure holding it together . And so there was a lot of infighting and a lot of like competing for resources , which that , that's gonna , that's part of the reason that the supply , transportation , logistics , all that was blocked down . So yeah , a lot of lessons learned from the spanish american war and now the need to maintain more of an army . So after the war we didn't go back down at 26,000 , right ? The , the army is going to be steady At about 60,000 . Um it's never , it's not ever fully , it's authorized at 60 , about 60,000 . Um , but it's gonna stay about 60,000 authorized soldiers until the eve of World War I where that authorization strength is going to go up . Um , it doesn't really get again , it doesn't quite get filled at the time . I mean , if you think about it , the army is not a great job , It's not like it was today , um , its officers to get a certain modicum of respect . They're coming from West Point , they're , they're treated as sort of , you know , this , this kind of a more noble profession in a lot of ways , but for a lot of soldiers , it's not a lot of enlisted men , it's not really the place to be , it's a tough life . Um , a lot of immigrants , a lot of uh , I think english is the second language for a huge portion of soldiers . Um , a criminal element . This is a time when you could get away from , you know , you do something shady , you can go to jail right , or just join the army and change your name and disappear for a while and give you the opportunity to be all you can be , Yeah , there we are . Alright , well now , um , shifting gears a little bit because during the same timeframe , there were a couple of other significant things that were going on in the army was was heavily involved in or or um took a major leading role medicine you mentioned earlier in CUBA the problems with yellow fever and malaria and that in fact , I think we had more deaths in CUBA during the spanish american war uh from disease than we did from combat . Oh and and by a wide margin um at one point there was during the , after the major combat operations that ended , it was estimated there was about 75% of the remaining occupation force that was unfit for duty due to illness . Um and the illnesses were pretty much all tropical diseases . Yellow fever , malaria . Um so it was bad , it was a bad situation . Uh part of the reason that the withdrawal from CUBA happened so quickly is because of the disease . Um and what's gonna happen is is so walter reed and a team of doctors are going to the army doctor , an army medical doctor , army surgeon and he's going to go in and he's going to test a theory that was actually put forward by a Cuban . It is an expert . I don't know experts the right word but Carlos Finlay and what Finley theorized was that mosquitoes or bugs were carrying the pathogen that cause that caused yellow fever because up until then they thought it was what human contact , they thought it was human contact , they thought it was um this is kind of the era still of me asthma , bad air caused by um filthy , you know water that gets in the air . So all the precautions that we were taking weren't really doing anything . Not really . Sometimes in some cases they actually didn't some ways help . Like if you're if you're doing we're really concerned about sanitation , you're gonna limit you're going to limit the mosquitoes . But they were so what did help ? They didn't realize why it was helping . Um But this is the time this is only a few years after louis Pasteur comes up with you know , germ theory . So people are starting to come around to this idea that people get sick not because of bad air , but because there are actual bacteria or viruses that you can't see that cause disease . So that's going to play into this . And so yeah , walter reed and his medical team are going to are going to prove that it is mosquitoes , a specific type of mosquito that carries yellow fever . And later on that's going to be discovered as well that the parasite that a certain type of mosquito carries is what causes malaria . Um So over so the U . S . Army is going to create a yellow fever commission in 1900 and over the next few years they're going to go about uh and they're going to basically wage war against mosquitoes . Um And they all but eradicate yellow fever in cuba and later in Panama over the course of a few years , just by once they discover that it's the mosquitoes that are causing the disease . They can then go about trying to eradicate the mosquitoes . Yeah , and this is , I think some of the first times that we start seeing mosquito nets , you know , around sleeping areas fumigating , getting rid of water that doesn't need to be around . Absolutely , yeah , I'm at the mosquito net is going to become a general issue item in the Philippines after this . Well , you know , um serving overseas and tropical areas , I was always issued a mosquito net . So it's still to this day . Um , so a lasting impact not just for the military but for for the world . So um , a huge advance for disease control throughout the world . Um , so yeah , so a really important aspect I just wanted to bring out , but then also our involvement in Panama at the same time . So if you can just talk about that . Yeah , so Panama was prior to early 20 century was part of Colombia . Um and there had been french efforts to try to build a canal for years um to basically minimize the time between the two oceans for shipping and trail . Um due to those diseases we just mentioned , it was very difficult to get this job done and France effectively abandons the problem . Uh Now President Theodore Roosevelt after William McKinley's assassination seized the opportunity to want to take control of that project . The problem is the Colombians aren't really too keen on that . Um , but there is a Panamanian independence movement that Theodore Roosevelt mostly again a naval effort but certainly supports , let's just say . And and right , and when warships show up on the on the coast and uh , you know , you know , basically tell the Colombians , you know , we're on the Panamanian side . You might not necessarily have to shoot a lot of rounds to help . And I think this is when that term gunboat diplomacy came into effect as well . Yes . And so Basically the US is going to gain the approval of the new Panamanian government again sometimes through gunboat diplomacy , but to to build this canal . Um , so the court of engineers , the Army Corps of Engineers is going to overtake the project . Um , it doesn't , there's some problems there at first kind of slow moving in 1907 . Um , uh , George W Goethals . General Goethals is going to replace uh , I can't remember his first , his first name is escaping now with gorgeous um he's gonna replace him as kind of the man in charge in the in in Panama and he's going to see the project through to completion . It will be completed by 1914 . Um , It's it's not the army , there's not a lot of soldiers building the canal , right ? It's it's the Corps of Engineers overseeing the project . Um , Most of the work is being done by the Panamanian population sometimes under fairly harsh conditions . Gate Hills is going to ease that a bit . Um , part of the reason it was slow moving was because his predecessor was a little more harsh . Gate was going to kind of understand a little bit of how to balance uh , work versus , you know , kind of the intensity of it and things like that . Yeah . In a way . Yeah , absolutely . Um , and , but it is , I mean , you can't , no one can deny the success of the pride of the results that by 1914 , um , the canal is open and it's in under american control until the , I think 1979 is the administration . Okay , great . Well , good . You know , thanks so much . And you know , for this time period , is there anything else that you can think of that we didn't cover ? No , I think that about covers what we wanted to talk about . All right , well , terrific . Thanks so much . But before we close , it's time for our segment called who a trivia . So what piece of significant army trivia about this time period , can you share ? Yeah , I don't know how , how , who this is , but I'll just say that when we talk about the Philippines , something I think a lot of people don't realize that we kind of touched on a little bit , but the governors and the military commanders in the Philippines over from 1900 or so till about 1914 became a veritable . Who's who of the army . So john j Pershing Hugh l scott uh j franklin bell , adnoc Chaffee , arthur , macarthur , right . They're all going to serve in in that area . So all the early chiefs of Staff of the Army , all the commanders who go to World War One , the kind of the senior commanders , they all had some time uh kind of learning some operational capacity in the Philippines . So it's just , I think that it's just how important that was , is something a lot of people don't , don't realize is something that a lot of americans kind of tend to overlook . But the filipino insurrection and the subsequent kind of occupation was key for developing a lot of the leadership in the army . It's interesting because by comparison , you know , we often look at the war with Mexico as the training ground for the civil war leaders . Yeah , absolutely . Yeah . Alright , great . Well , good . Well thank you so much uh matt for your discussion insights today about the spanish american war and and um Panama canal and walter reed . Um although I think very , very important aspects of army history and if anyone wants to learn more about the spanish american war . Panama or walter reed or learn more about army history in general , then I encourage you to explore our website at history dot army dot mil . And if you want to experience army history every day , then visit our social media on facebook twitter and instagram , please join us every week for this podcast where you'll get more in depth discussions as we cover topics from all errors of U . S . Army history examining battles , soldier experiences , equipment , weapons and tactics . Thanks for joining us today on the United States Army history and heritage podcast for the Center of Military history , I'm lee Reynolds and until next time we're history . The views expressed in this podcast reflect those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views policies or opinions of the U . S . Army or Department of Defense . For more information about the army's proud history and heritage , go to history dot army dot mil .