In Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars, Kristin L. Hoganson argues, “To fully understand the descent into war, we need to understand how contemporaries viewed the precipitating incidents, what seemed to be at stake in their diplomatic and political wranglings, and what assumptions they brought to their high-level meetings – and to do that, we need to understand something of their culture” (pg. 3). She continues, “Late-nineteenth-century Americans commonly believed that their political system ultimately rested on manly character, something defined in different ways but generally in reference to contrasting ideas about womanly attributes” (pg. 3). Of her methodology, Hoganson writes, “Adding gender to the existing framework buttresses a variety of current explanations and offers some thematic unity for the whole mélange. It does not, however, fundamentally change our understanding of the conflicts. Using gender merely to embellish existing explanations may mean treating a potential cornerstone as if it were mortar” (pg. 13).
Examining the debate over the arbitration treaty between the U.S. and Britain, Hoganson writes, “Arbitration opponents were not necessarily jingoes, and jingoes were not necessarily treaty opponents, but jingoes and arbitration opponents generally shared certain assumptions about male character and government. Just as jingoes believed that the nation’s foreign policy should rest on demonstrations of force and militant standards of honor, many arbitration opponents hoped to prevent arbitrationists’ seemingly feminine values from triumphing in politics” (pg. 20-21). Turning to Cuba, Hoganson writes, “The key to the Cubans’ appeal can be found in the numerous press accounts that treated them and their cause sympathetically: many of these portrayed the Cuban revolutionaries in chivalric terms…Nineteenth-century Americans often viewed Cuba metaphorically, as a maiden longing to be rescued by a gallant knight” (pg. 44).
Hoganson writes of the inciting incidents of the war, “Assertions that men from various walks of life valued honor as a standard for individual and national behavior made it clear that a man who denied that honor was at stake or who hesitated to defend it would no longer represent American men” (pg. 82). She continues, “The certitude that honor was at stake made it politically foolish to argue that a naval accident of uncertain provenance was insufficient grounds for war, because honor made the issue seem essential to the preservation of American manhood and the American political system” (pg. 84). Further, “The coercive use of gender ideals in political debate made war seem imperative to the reluctant congressmen who joined their jingoist fellows in voting unanimously for war” (pg. 87). Explaining the change in American attitudes toward Cuba, Hoganson writes, “The shift in public opinion can be explained by American men’s disappointment with the martial capacities of the Cuban revolutionaries, regardless of their race or class status. Lacking familiarity with the guerilla warfare that Cuban men had been waging, American soldiers concluded that the Cuban insurrectos were cowardly and dishonorable” (pg. 109). In this way, “the Spanish-American War had fostered a climate in which political capacity seemed even more closely connected to military prowess than it had been at the start of the war” (pg. 117).
To understand the decision to hold the Philippines as a colony, Hoganson writes, “The desire to take and govern the Philippines, it is necessary to turn the spotlight from perceptions of the Filipinos to American self-perceptions. Imperialists’ comments on American men and American democracy indicate that they wanted to govern the Philippines not only because they doubted the Filipinos’ governing capacity, but, just as important, because they doubted their own” (pg. 138). Hoganson relates this to Roosevelt’s call for strenuous living, writing, “Most strenuous of all was war, and close behind lay empire” (pg. 144). This was not an easy task, however. Hoganson writes, “During the course of the Philippine-American War, it began to appear that imperial policies were not, as the imperialists had pledged, building American manhood. To the contrary, a growing number of Americans began to believe that imperial policies were undermining the character of American men” (pg. 180). Both imperialists and anti-imperialists invoked manhood. Hoganson writes, “Whereas imperialists often reasoned that the nation needed to build martial virtues in American men because government rested ultimately on force, anti-imperialists stressed that the nation needed to foster intelligence and civic virtue because governments rested on those qualities” (pg. 193). ( )