Episode 004: Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

Introduction
In 1897 an Ohio Senator asked for a consular position for a supporter as a political favor. McKinley could only give him one to a place he had never heard of, in Manila of the Spanish Philippines.

Summary of the Episode
This episode starts with a brief biography of Alfred Theyer Mahan, the Navy captain who published the seminal work "The Influence of Sea Power upon History" which was highly influential in the United States and Europe.

Theodore Roosevelt was of a common philosophy with Mahan. We get a biography of his life up until his appointment to the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Department. And how he earned his reputation as a reformer. The man who appointed him was William McKinley and there's an account of the 1896 election between him and William Jennings Bryan.

Theodore Roosevelt served under Secretary John Davis Long, and made something of a habit of running the Navy department on his own terms when Long was out of the office. Such as appointing Commodore Dewey to lead the Asiatic Squadron in the far east.

Meanwhile, America was clamoring for war with Spain, partly in response to news of the excesses of Spanish concentration camps in Cuba. Partly fueled by the "Yellow Journalism" competition between Hearst's New York Journal, and Joseph Pulitzer's The World.

McKinley was keen on avoiding war, but after an inflamatory letter from the Spanish ambassador was discovered, and the infamous sinking of USS Maine in Havana harbor, congress declared war, against McKinley's inclination, and thus began the Spanish-American War.

Dewey's squadron, no longer able to stay in the neutral port of Hong Kong sailed to Manila Bay, for battle. The Battle of Manila, May 1st, 1898 was a decisive American victory over the Spanish fleet stationed there.

One More Thing
The Spanish-American War, especially actions in the Philippines are lightly covered in US history classes. A friend of the podcast's host once visited him, and they took a tour of USS Olympia, today a museum ship in Philadelphia. His friend confessed that he hadn't previously known that the US had fought a war with Spain. Ironic, since he was a graduate of one Theodore Roosevelt Middle School

People

 * President William McKinley
 * Alfred Theyer Mahan
 * Kaiser Wilhelm II
 * Theodore Roosevelt
 * Alice Hathaway Lee
 * Edith Kermit Carrow
 * Benjamin Harrison
 * Postmaster General John Wanamaker
 * Grover Cleaveland
 * Speaker Thomas Reed
 * Mark Hanna
 * William Jennings Bryan
 * Governor John Altgeld
 * Clarence Darrow
 * Secretary John Davis Long
 * Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
 * Vice President Garret Hobart
 * Frederick Remington
 * William Randolph Hearst
 * Joseph Pulitzer
 * Winston Churchill
 * General Valeriano Weyler
 * Commodore John Howell
 * Commodore George Dewey
 * King Alfonso XIII
 * Oscar Williams
 * Captain Charles Vernon Gridley

Works of Art

 * America the Beautiful
 * My Country Tis of Thee
 * The Star Spangled Banner
 * Columbia the Gem of the Ocean
 * The Music Man
 * The Naval War of 1812
 * George Washington's Farewell Address
 * The Influence of Sea Power upon History
 * There Will Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

Corporations

 * Columbia Pictures
 * Sony
 * Atlantic Monthly
 * The New York Times
 * The New York Journal
 * The World