Wars That Shaped the Nation

Wars That Shaped the Nation. The Spanish-American War. , On April 25, 1898, Congress declared war against Spain after the USS Maine blew up under mysterious circumstances in the port of Havana, Cuba. The U.S. raised an expeditionary army to liberate Cuba and the Philippines from Spanish rule. After a sharp clash at San Juan Hill, the Spanish surrendered Cuba on 17 July. The Spanish surrendered Manila on 13 August after a naval battle in which Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet, but for the next three years, Filipinos resisted American rule. The war expanded U.S. possessions and the Army overseas, and established America’s role as a world power in the twentieth century., West Pointers played significant roles at all levels in the conduct of the war. Joseph Wheeler, Jr. (USMA 1859), a Confederate General in the Civil War served as Corps Commander in Cuba. John J. Pershing (USMA 1886), later the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, saw his first combat as a lieutenant in Cuba., The three trophies from the war represent the accelerating change in weapons technology at the end of the nineteenth century. These weapons typify the complete conversion to steel, the breechloading and rifled weapons that followed the Civil War, and the tremendous increase in range and firepower of weaponry in general.