What started the spanish-american war?
The Spanish-American War of 1898 marked a turning point in American history. Within a few years of the war’s end, the United States was a world power, exercising control or influence over islands in the Caribbean Sea, the mid-Pacific Ocean and close to the Asian mainland. The conflict has sometimes been called “The Newspaper War,” largely because the influence of a sensationalist press — “Yellow Journalism” supposedly brought on the fighting. Key to a sense of rage propagated by the media were the events of February 1898, which culminated with the destruction of an American battleship, the USS Maine, in a Cuban harbor. The media sensationalized the events in February and the two months following until war began, prompting a debate that still rages — whether the press merely reflected the publi’s desire for war, or, in fact, actually fed it.
