In his Baccalaureate address give on June 15, 1898 at South Carolina College in Columbia, George Herbert Sass gave a speech to his fellow graduating classmates early in the morning as the sun rose over the ceremony, which began early to avoid the humid, southern heat. Sass addressed the changing times as he discussed how a person is unable to choose whether an act reflects character or was the result...
Many in the South could still taste the bitterness of defeat from the Civil War. The structure of society was changing around them, and many had trouble with the rising stature of blacks in society, even when it came to matters of national security. Raleigh Green, in a June 10, 1898 editorial, expressed his particular aggravation that white southern men were expected to salute African American officers....
On May 17, 1898, Teddy's Terrors were preparing for battle. On that day, the Chicago Daily Tribune ran an article detailing the preparations of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's First Volunteer Regiment of Cavalry, formerly known as Teddy's Terrors, which would move out to Cuba later that week. There had been a delay in the organization of a third squadron as two hundred Indian Territory...
On May 6th, 1898, Mess Three published “The Mess Three Times,” a newspaper of Furman’s third residential hall for its inhabitants. Within “Mess Three” a group of male Furman students, ranging from seniors to freshmen, lived and ate together. The four paged newspaper of the hall described the students, their nicknames, their origins, and where they lived within Mess Three. The newspaper...
On April 25, 1898, the United States officially entered into War with Spain. In the early months of 1898, tensions in Cuba involving Cuban revolutionaries and the Spanish government began to escalate. Following the explosion of the USS Maine, which the Spanish claimed was merely an accident; US President William McKinley was hesitant to begin war and waited on the Naval Court's reports. Questions...
At the beginning of the Spanish American War, Secretary Alger sent a bill to Congress requesting 25,000 blacks to enlist and support the war effort. Alger was backed by many other political figures that wanted to create separate black forces. It was thought that blacks would be a valuable addition to the forces in terms of physical strength and supposed immunity to tropical diseases. At the same...
Though Reconstruction ended officially in 1877, the country and its people were far from united as racism and segregation became a growing force. Texas, though on the edge of the South, was certainly no stranger to this battle over inequality. On November 18, 1898, the Galveston News ran an article detailing how Isabelle E. Mabson, a black resident of Galveston, TX, filed suit in the district court...
The South had been neglected according to the Portsmouth Star. The newspaper
accused the US, then in the middle of war with Spain, of being reluctant to spend any
more of the government's money in the South than has seemed absolutely necessary.
The US would regret spending so little on the South especially when the majority of the
war was being fought on the front...
In June of 1898, twenty-six certificates of merit and five Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to African American soldiers who fought bravely for the United States in the first battles that took place on Cuban soil. “Because they were believed to have greater resistance to tropical diseases, the U.S. Army used African American troops extensively during the campaigns in Cuba and the...