Why Did The Us Pursue The Declaration Of War

In the primary source, the Declaration of War (1898) by William McKinley from the textbook “For the Record” by Emory Shi and Holly Mayer, we can see why the war was necessary to declare being directed towards the Congress of the United States. There were many different reasons why the United States sought to pursue the war in Cuba, however, it can be briefly summed up in three points. For one, due to the high amounts of capital invested into Cuba by America, the government pursued the war, hoping to see that there would be a return on the investment if peace in the region were attained. Secondly, there was rampant violence in the area due to the militants, thus to protect residents from the brutality of the war, the United States pursued the
This is important because it summarizes the two most important points of why the US intervened. Finally, the US government believed that this was a constant threat to peace in the United States, which is mentioned further down in the text. In my opinion, the reasons were not enough to warrant intervention. When we look at these cases, the United States rarely goes to war to stop brutality, but rather they go when there is personal benefit involved. In this case, the invested money was the main cause of the war with other reasons being stated to persuade the citizens that the intervention was necessary. Of course, due to the escalating tensions between the Spanish government and the United States, President McKinley tried to persuade the US to go to war with Spain. For one, McKinley did this by bringing up the naval damage done to a US ship in Cuba. The text states, “... The Spanish government can not assure safety and security to a vessel of the American Navy in the harbor of Havana on a mission of peace, and rightfully there.” (Emory 88). By doing this he was able to correlate that the termination of the hostilities between the government of Spain and the Cubans would help to make Cuba a more secure and stable