February 15, 1898 – Would-be Saboteurs Caught aboard USS MAINE

Shortly after nine o’clock in the evening, a group of men were caught attempting to sneak aboard the USS Maine while it rested in Havana Harbor, defending American interests during the Cuban insurrection. The five men were carrying with them explosives and were believed to have been headed toward the storage of the ship’s powder charges for its six-inch and ten-inch guns. The discovery had been nearly happenstance as one man coughed too loudly and the crew on patrol thought to double-check.

The men were separated and questioned, and each gave wildly different stories. Crewmen leaked the investigation, and rumors exploded into news. Fueled by yellow journalism, the men were believed to be saboteurs from Spain, attempting to knock America out of its defensive position with Cuba; or, Cubans hoping to spark a war between the United States and Spain; or, mercenaries hired by the U.S. government to blow up their own ship and instigate a war that would bring in a wealth of captured territory for a new empire. Some even said that they had been hired by newspapermen Hearst or Pulitzer to precipitate a reason to sell more papers, but these rumors did not appear in print.

The whole of America rose up in anger over the ordeal, but there was no consensus on how to act. Some demanded war with Spain, others demanded war with the Cuban revolutionaries that America had previously supported, and still others demanded the Maine to leave Havana and the US wash its hands of the whole matter. President McKinley weighed his options carefully and finally decided to bring the diplomatic ordeal with Spain to an end as quickly as possible. He dispatched orders to Admiral Dewey in Hong Kong to sail toward the Philippines (also fighting for its independence) in case anything got out of order. Congress and the President worked together to create a reasonable ultimatum for Spain, ignoring many of Republican Senator Redfield Proctor’s demands for war. The Spanish government weighed its options and finally decided to concede in Cuba and the Philippines

In exchange for a massive gift of “dollar diplomacy” (to be paid back by bonds from the new Cuban and Filipino governments), Spain would grant its colonies their independence. America, meanwhile, would gain valuable coaling stations and naval bases. The Pilón-Woodward Treaty that summer ironed out the diplomatic details, and the cries for war were silenced. Several Americans, such as Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, spoke out that the nation had not acted valiantly enough, but for the most part the populace had come to ease with international relations. Other imperial-minded Americans called for expansion into the Pacific rather than merely opening markets, such as conquering the Philippines rather than holding content with bases at Manila and Luzon. Letters from Sanford Dole the newly formed Republic of Hawaii offered the islands to McKinely.

Hawaii would become the new battleground as many politicians and businessmen hoped to support it as a new territory. However, the American Anti-Imperialist League formed around such famous members as Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Samuel Gompers, and Senator George Boutwell. Their collective clout broke up the imperialist calls prominent in the press, and America returned to a sense of dollar diplomacy as McKinely refused Dole’s offer. Hawaii would later be returned to the Hawaiian Royal family, and it retains close political ties to the United States to this day.

The divided Republican Party in 1900 would result in the narrow election of President William Jennings Bryan and Vice-President Dewey, heralded as the man who won the Philippines its independence without firing a single shot. Dewey received a great deal of political criticism for his comment that "Our next war will be with Germany," which was proven correct some eighteen years later.

“Remember the Maine!” became a popular cry among Navy security as they patrolled in the early twentieth century. A policy of stringent observance of any possible attack became the norm, which proved effective in the detection of the Japanese carrier fleet approaching the base at Pearl Harbor in 1941.


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In reality, the Maine suffered a grave explosion that destroyed the front third of the ship with the rest sinking almost immediately. Only 94 of the 355 crew survived, and the spirit of revenge rose up from America, urged on by the New York Journal’s cry for war. The widely successful Spanish-American War brought a new age of expansionism to the United States with gains in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

January 8, 1885 – William Randolph Hearst Killed in Traffic Accident

Just one term short of his graduation from Harvard, William Randolph Hearst was killed in a traffic accident. He was son of George Hearst, the mining engineer who had made his millions in California during the Gold Rush and investments afterward. While the death of an industrialist’s son is historically little more than tabloid pop culture, William was given a headline, three-page obituary in the San Francisco Examiner, a newspaper the elder Hearst had purchased (though rumor holds he won in a poker game) in 1880. From the glowing report the “would that it were” speculations of Hearst’s survival in the obituary painted a young man who would rise to lead his nation out of corruption and into a bright new age of liberty and enlightenment.

According to eye-witnesses, however, Hearst seemed to be more of a trouble-maker than a golden boy. He played pranks through his youth and was a notorious frustration to his teachers. While attending Harvard, he gifted several professors (specifically ones he did not like) with chamber pots made of gold featuring engravings of their names. The impropriety toward faculty called Hearst into a behavioral review, but, after much deliberation and supposed bribery, Hearst was allowed to continue his schooling. While wandering drunkenly through Cambridge, Mass, with friends, he halted to vomit into a public trash can, then stumbled into the street where he was struck by a car, dying shortly thereafter of injuries.

George Hearst went on to serve as US Senator from California until his death in 1891. The famous Examiner, which Hearst had used to fuel his political campaigns, folded shortly afterward. His wife Phoebe Apperson Hearst, now widowed and childless, turned his great fortunes and investments toward charities following her faith of Baha’i. She followed her husband in dead in 1919 during the influenza epidemic, but her many philanthropic agencies continue to today.

Of course, as life goes on with so many deaths, life continued without William Randolph. The United States continued expansionism but never slid back into its barbaric ways of imperialistic invasion. In 1898, after an accidental explosion of the USS Maine nearly caused war between the US and Spain, the investigative journalistic talents of Joseph Pulitzer were nationally recognized and stand as one of the hallmarks of American journalism, known worldwide for its precision and fairness as well as its expense.

During the debates of the criminalization of marijuana in the 1930s, solid scientific study based in this journalism overcame anti-Hispanic suspicions and industrial influence. Marijuana was to remain legal, though routinely cautioned against by the Surgeon General much like alcohol and cigarettes. Suggestion of banning marijuana returned in the 1950s and ‘60s, but was generally met with Vice-President Nixon’s opinion, “We don’t want another Prohibition.”

While refraining from international war, the US did, however, broker a treaty between Spain and Cuba, freeing it and several other colonies such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines by making loans based on bonds sponsored by the newly found nations. Rather than a costly military empire, the United States would build a commonwealth of economically tied satellites, a strategy accelerated by the Cold War into a worldwide influence that some pundits describe as the “American Empire” and others as the “Pax Americana.”


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In reality, William Randolph Hearst was expelled from Harvard after the golden chamber pot incident. His father gave him the San Francisco Examiner as something to do, and Hearst leaped into creating his publishing empire. A populist, Hearst reduced the price of his papers to one cent and used exciting, often “yellow” journalism to move copies. He would employ many of America’s greatest writers such as Jack London and Mark Twain and become deeply invested in politics, later being instrumental in activities such as expansionism, Free Silver, and the criminalization of marijuana. His life, including his decades-long involvement with actress Marion Davies, would be inspiration for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, a film Hearst would refuse to advertise in his papers. Through Hearst’s influence, Citizen Kane would be booed at the Oscars and not gain recognition for another two decades, long after Hearst’s death in 1951.

July 1, 1898 – Defeat at San Juan Hill

A great loss that could have ended the Spanish-American War earlier came at San Juan Hill. American General William Rufus Shafter's plan to take Santiago de Cuba depended upon securing the San Juan Heights overlooking the city. Also seeing the importance of the heights, Spanish General Arsenio Linares held only a small number of men in reserve in Santiago, placing nearly 10,000 troops to defend the heights.

The American direct attack on Kettle Hill with two divisions was pushed back at great cost of American life. A second assault successfully took Kettle Hill thanks to heavy fighting by buffalo soldiers of the 10^th Cavalry, but nearby San Juan Hill would not be taken, despite the assault lasting late into the evening. Eventually the Americans would fall back, regroup with Lawton's 2nd Division (which had been dispatched to take the stronghold at El Caney) on July 2, and take the lesser-defended Santiago despite its precarious position. The threat of assault from San Juan would keep the American defenders pinned, and the war in Cuba would stagger on through many more months.

During the fighting, an amiable and excitable New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt led a group of volunteer cavalry, the Rough Riders, collected from cowboys and Ivy League polo players. The men were held in reserve until the second assault, when Col. Roosevelt led the charge up the hill himself (arguably misinterpreting orders to reinforce as orders to advance). Roosevelt was killed in a counterattack on his north flank along with many of his comrades, a story that was much reproduced in the American newspapers, furthering the growing dissatisfaction with the war.

With the war not yet over in 1900, angry and dispassionate voters turned many of the Republicans out of office in the elections, instead favoring the Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan. President Bryan would be credited with ending the war, though the Spanish had already begun to show desires of peace under McKinley's administration. Tragedy struck the nation in September of 1901 when anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated Bryan at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. Vice-President Adlai Stevenson succeeded the president, taking up his policies of giving independence to the Philippines and busting up many of the nation's corrupt monopolies and trusts.

The American public's distaste with the Spanish-American War furthered its sense of isolationism. In the next decade, the United States would not participate in Europe's Great War (1914-1920), except in increasing American Naval power after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. Instead, the US focused on domestic affairs such as Women's Suffrage and the Prohibition Movement. The 1920s brought strong, but not unparalleled, economic growth to the US as Europe rebuilt, only to fall into the Second Great War in 1939. Meanwhile, the US enjoyed two decades of domestic peace, with newspapers desperate for any interesting event, even the short 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in which Clarence Darrow successfully defended the teaching of evolution on grounds of Free Speech.

Although giving aid to Allied Powers, the United States would remain out of the war until 1942, despite public outcry over 1941's British Landing where German troops devastated southern England before finally being rebuffed in a reversal of Dunkirk. Japan, which had conquered nearly unchecked in the Pacific through the 1930s (such as its speedy defeat of the Philippines), would draw in America with its Invasion of Hawaii on June 2, despite continuing guerrilla combat in British Australia. Eventually, Hitler's 1943 Operation Barbarossa would bring the USSR onto the side of the Allies, and GWII would be won with combined atomic arsenals of the United States and Soviet Union in 1945.

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In reality, General Arsenio Linares did not reinforce San Juan Hill, meaning only 760 Spanish troops held the heights against nearly 15,000 Americans and 4,000 Cubans. The Americans won the decisive battle handily, giving a great deal of positive press for the war as well as young Colonel Roosevelt, who would eventually be given the Medal of Honor. With TR's gusto, skill, and fame, the Republican party would add him as vice-president to the 1900 ticket with McKinley.