The Cross of War: Christian Nationalism and U.S. Expansion in the Spanish-American War

Introduction

3 Intro­ duc­ tion When Abra­ ham Lin­ coln de­ livered the words of the Get­ tys­ burg Ad­ dress, as many as ­ fifty-one thou­ sand men had just fal­ len in one of the many cat­ as­ trophic bat­ tles of an in­ dis­ put­ ably cat­ as­ trophic war. To lo­ cate mean­ ing in these ­ events—mean­ ing ­ worthy of such sac­ ri­ fice—was the ­ president’s un­ en­ vi­ able task. This war, in ­ Lincoln’s for­ mu­ la­ tion, was to test ­ whether a na­ tion such as Amer­ ica, “con­ ceived in lib­ erty” and ded­ i­ cated to the equal­ ity of hu­ man­ kind, “can long en­ dure.” The only fit­ ting trib­ ute to the sac­ ri­ fice of the dead, he­ argued, was for the liv­ ing to re­ solve that “this na­ tion under God shall have a new birth of free­ dom, and that govern­ ment of the peo­ ple, by the peo­ ple, and for the peo­ ple shall not per­ ish from the earth.”1 Amer­ ica, Lin­ coln had writ­ ten to Con­ gress a year ear­ lier, was the ­ world’s “last best hope.”2 Not sixty years later an­ other ­ American pres­ i­ dent, stand­ ing on the prec­ i­ pice of an­ other cat­ a­ s­ trophic war, sent an­ other rous­ ing mes­ sage to Con­ gress. Woo­ drow Wil­ son, in what be­ came known as his “War Mes­ sage,” ­ called the na­ tion to arms on bat­ tle­ fields thou­ sands of miles away in a war that could make the world “safe for de­ moc­ racy.”3 Both pres­ i­ dents be­ lieved that Amer­ ica, in the prov­ i­ dence of God, ex­ isted for the sake of the world and that their re­ spec­ tive wars fac­ tored di­ rectly into the suc­ cess or fail­ ure of Amer­ ica’s glo­ bal pur­ pose. But ­ Lincoln’s war was a war of pres­ er­ va­ tion, to pro­ tect the pur­ ity of the ­ nation’s lu­ mi­ nous ex­ am­ ple and to en­ sure that this ex­ am­ ple would sur­ vive in­ tact. ­ Wilson’s war, by ­ contrast, was not pri­ mar­ ily for the sur­ vi­ val of Amer­ ica but for the sur­ vi­ val of de­ moc­ racy­ abroad, Amer­ ica’s gift to the world. What had ­ emerged dur­ ing those inter­ ven­ ing­ decades was a no­ tion I shall call mes­ sianic inter­ ven­ tion­ ism. The bur­ den of this book is to show that its emer­ gence had a great deal to do with an often for­ got­ ten lit­ tle war with Spain in 1898. To study this sense of na­ tional pur­ pose is to study ­ American na­ tion­ al­ ism. My under­ stand­ ing of na­ tion­ al­ ism leans upon the work of Liah Green­ feld, who de­ scribes na­ tion­ al­ ism as a style of ­ thought or ­ self-perception that “lo­ cates the 4 E Introduction­ source of in­ di­ vid­ ual iden­ tity ­ within a ‘peo­ ple,’ which is seen as the ­ bearer of sov­ e­ reignty, the cen­ tral ob­ ject of loy­ alty, and the basis of col­ lec­ tive sol­ i­ dar­ ity.”4 The con­ tent of a given na­ tion­ al­ ism takes shape over time and by nego­ ti­ a­ tion, so that na­ tion­ al­ ism var­ ies from place to place. But na­ tion­ al­ ism al­ ways con­ sists of those ­ traits by which in­ di­ vid­ u­ als de­ fine them­ selves as a peo­ ple ­ marked off from the peo­ ples of the world. Near the heart of na­ tion­ al­ ism lies ideol­ ogy, by which I mean the set of be­ liefs and val­ ues that give mean­ ing to a so­ ci­ ety and its ex­ pe­ ri­ ences.5 And in ­ American na­ tion­ al­ ism ideol­ ogy has ­ played an es­ pe­ cially vis­ ible role. Lack­ ing the rel­ a­ tively ­ static tri­ bal, geo­ graph­ i­ cal, or ec­ cle­ sial ties of more ven­ er­ able na­ tions, ­ American na­ tion­ al­ ity has al­ ways ­ relied upon the force of ideas for any sense of co­ her­ ent and co­ he­ sive iden­ tity.6 Among its sev­ eral ideo­ log­ i­ cal ­ streams, ­ American...