33.8 America: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 24/31)

A major step in medicine occurred with the establishment in 1893 of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with a remarkable faculty, which included the pathologist William H. Welch who was among the first to introduce microscopy and bacteriology into the country, the great clinician William Osler and surgeon William S. Halsted. Within a few years Hopkins' former students and professors carried the Hopkins' system to all parts of the United States. (Ref. 125 )

On the political scene, RUTHERFORD B. HAYES was announced president in a disputed election by action of the National Electoral Commission by a strict party vote. Hayes refused to run again in 1880 and a "dark horse" GENERAL JAMES A. GARFIELD ran away with the nomination and finally the election. On his death by assassination 4 months later, his vice-president, CHESTER ARTHUR assumed office. Reform in the civil service commission regulation was made by law in 1883. Overall, some believe Arthur's was the best Republican administration between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, but in the 1884 election, the Democrat GROVER CLEVELAND won the office. But Cleveland made many enemies, being rude to the press, offending Union veterans, vetoing hundreds of pension bills and trying to stop the "free coinage" of silver under the Bland-Allison Act. Cleveland lost the next election (1888) to the Republican BENJAMIN HARRISON, who made a dignified but ineffective president and his Congress wanted no legislation other than raids on the treasury and hold-ups of the consumer. As a result, Cleveland was returned for a second term in the elections of 1892. There followed the worst industrial depression since the 1870s. It was a period of soup kitchens, ragged armies of unemployed and desperate strikes. The party in power is always blamed for all hard times, so in 1894 the Republicans won again, with WILLIAM McKINLEY defeating the "boy orator of the Platte", William Jennings Bryan.

The spanish-american war

In 1897 Cuba was in revolt against Spain's inept rule and American journalists, such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, in a race for circulation, played up some atrocities and Cuban concentration camps in the American press. Soon there was a cry to "do something" about Cuba. Just as a new Spanish premiere did promise Cuba a measure of home rule and reform, however, the U.S.S. Maine battleship was mysteriously blown up in Havana harbor, with heavy loss of life. The clamor for war with Spain then became more than the weak President McKinley could stand and in place of accepting a peacef ul solution already offered by Spain, which even included ceding Cuba to the U.S., McKinley allowed Congress to declare war in April of 1898. The American fleets immediately went to work, with one Atlantic squadron blockading Havana and another protecting the U.S. coast. Commodore Dewey took the Pacific fleet into Manila Bay in the Philippines and without losing a single man reduced the Spanish fleet there to junk. The obsolete Spanish vessels there were no match for the newer American ships. Even so, the United States Naval bombardments in both Manila and the later Santiago Bay of Cuba, proved embarrassingly inaccurate, leading to a world-wide effort to improve long-range gunnery. (Ref. 279 ) After 10 weeks of fighting the U.S. had wrested an American empire from Spain. The ground war to "save Cuba" was a popular one, but sad because of lack of preparedness of the continental forces. For every one of the 289 men killed in battle, 13 men died of disease. If the Spanish forces had been in any way organized and reasonably led, the ragged U.S. forces could never have invaded the island, but they did. Then when the Spanish navy sailed out of Santiago Bay to be destroyed by the guns of Admiral Sampson's Atlantic squadron in July of 1898 the war was over. At the formal Treaty of Paris in the fall of that year, both Cuba and Porto Rico, as well as the Philippines, became U.S. possessions. For the latter, this country did give Spain $2,000,000.