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Article: Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- June 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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###JOHN J. MILLER
Mr. Miller is NR's national political reporter and the author of The Unmaking of Americans, just published by The Free Press.
AT 5:22 A.M. on May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey uttered words that would go down in American history: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." The Spanish - American War began at that moment. By noon, Dewey had smashed the Spanish navy's Pacific fleet at Manila Bay.
In Washington, D.C., President William McKinley was excited and perplexed. "When we received the cable," he wrote, "I looked up [the Philippines'] loca- tion on the globe. I could not have told where those darned islands were within two ...