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.His wild kind has beenamong us always, since the beginning: a young man with his temptations, ahero without wings. Wister dedicated the book to Theodore Roosevelt, forwhom he expressed his changeless admiration. Wister had captured thetrue western American, Roosevelt believed. I have sometimes been asked ifWister s Virginian is not overdrawn, he recalled. Half of the men I workedwith or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards inmy regiment [in the Spanish-American War] might have walked out ofWister s stories. "A decade after the book s publication, Wister reflected on its dedication. Ten years ago, when political darkness still lay dense upon every State in the e"`"+" 1898 1901Union, he wrote, this book was dedicated to the greatest benefactor wepeople have known since Lincoln. Roosevelt had inspired Americans toreturn to honest public men, and after decades of shirking and evasion of theircivic duty, Americans had begun to look at themselves and their institutionsstraight; to perceive that Firecrackers and Orations once a year, and sellingyour vote or casting it for unknown nobodies, are not enough attention to payto the Republic. To celebrate this new, principled America, Wister hadwritten The Virginian. If this book be anything more than an Americanstory, it is an expression of American faith.Our Democracy has many en-emies, both in Wall Street and in the Labor Unions.But I believe.that,with mistakes at times, but with wisdom in the main, we people will proveourselves equal to the severest test to which political man has yet subjectedhimself the test of Democracy. In 1898, Americans joined together to putthemselves to the test in a war for American principles.d"Although modern-day Americans tend to forget it, nineteenth-centuryAmericans were very aware that Spain had been the most important Euro-pean power in the Americas from the time Columbus sailed for Ferdinandand Isabella in 1492.Its power had waned steadily after 1800, when it cededmuch of what is now America to Napoleon who promptly sold it to theUnited States as the Louisiana Purchase but it still retained its hold onthe valuable island of Cuba, a constant reminder to Americans of its linger-ing power.Cuba lies almost at our door, an American history book read in 1898.About 760 miles long and 30 to 120 miles wide, the book explained, it isapproximately 45,000 square miles, or about one-fourth that of all Spain. Itscapital and largest city boasting about 200,000 people in 1898 was Havana. The island is mountainous, with a central chain of mountains running downits length while other chains and individual peaks rise elsewhere.Travelinginland and upward, lowlands and marshes on the shore rise gradually towardthe regions of great sugar plantations, which in turn give way to the tobaccobelt.Above this lies grazing and farming land, and above it are the forests thatstill cover about half the island. Cuba s sugar crop was even more importantthan its world-famous tobacco, the book explained, for by 1896, the UnitedStates secured 96.7 percent of the sugar shipped from Cuba.e"Americans had eyed Cuba s rich lands longingly since the early nine-teenth century.Americans especially southerners, who hoped to spreadtheir enterprises onto the slave-holding island had repeatedly tried to cap- Reunion e"`"©ture or buy Cuba but were repeatedly rebu"ed.The island was an object ofsuch curiosity to Americans that when John Muir set out to see the nationafter the Civil War, he traveled through the South and went on to Cuba.Landing in Havana on a Sunday afternoon, he was charmed by the tropicalisland, with its refined and exotically Catholic Spanish and Cuban leaders, itsmuscled slaves, its flowering vines and cacti, palm trees, seashells, and rosycorals.Muir heard cathedral bells and prayers in the forenoon, theaters andbull-fight bells and bellowings in the afternoon! Lowly whispered prayers tothe saints and the Virgin, followed by shouts of praise or reproach to bulls andmatadors! I made free with fine oranges and bananas and many other fruits.Pineapple I had never seen before. During his stay, Muir wandered throughthe bustling city, its public squares and fine gardens with marble statuesproviding welcome respite from the narrow dusty and crowded streets of thebusy town.More often, he tramped the hills around Havana or walked thecoastline, marveling at the strange plants he found. I was now in one of myhappy dreamlands, he recalled, the fairest of West India islands. "Havana might have looked Spanish, but Spain s relations with Cuba wereuncomfortable.The island s plantations produced valuable sugar and tobaccocrops, but they did so with the labor of slaves.Landowners wanted morecontrol of the Spanish-dominated government, while slaves wanted freedom.For both groups this translated into hatred of Spanish rule.Their sporadicprotests gained momentum after the American Civil War, when the end ofslavery in the United States encouraged Cuban slaves to hope for liberty.In1868, a coup removing Spain s unpopular Isabella II from her throne coin-cided with a hike in Cuban taxation to prompt a dramatic strike for Cubanfreedom.In October 1868, wealthy planter Carlos Manuel de Cespedes issued The Cry of Yara, complaining of excessive taxation, foreign government,and trade restrictions.In weeks he led an army of 10,000 men, and the TenYears War of Cubans against Spanish rule had begun.The outbreak of war on the island could not help but involve Americans.Southerners greeted the news of the war with eager interest, wondering if atlast the rich island would fall into their hands
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