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Akshat Das Professor Greg Knittel US History 17B 22 June 2013 In Chapter 12 of, A People's History, by Howard Zinn, several key parts of history stood out to me, that I feel should be discussed. Some of these parts of history I was in strong agreement with, and others I did not support. The quote that follows is taken from Howard Zinn's A People's History. "A grave danger represents itself. Two-fifths of the insurgents in the field are negroes. These men . . . would, in the event of success, demand a predominant share in the government of the country . . . the result being, after years of fighting, another black republic." Howard Zinn goes on to make the point that Winston Churchill and other leaders of the time felt that if the Cuban revolution won out, then it might lead to the formation of a black and white republic. The harm that many world leaders saw in this was the belief that the negro population in Cuba might become the dominant one, which would lead to the formation of an all black republic. I strongly disagree with this, as race should not have been a factor in determining whether or not a country's population deserves help. Upon further reading, I discovered that William McKinley did in fact have plans to help Cuba, but these plans did not involve giving Cuba independence. Seeing as all of these events were going on in 1898, the Integrity of the laws governing the US are thrown further into doubt. Abraham Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, which was decreed in 1863, called for the equal treatment of all men, including those of color. The main reason for my disagreement is that when the US had already outlawed slavery and

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unequal treatment of men, for them to not grant Cuba independence because the negroes might take over, just undermines everything that Abraham Lincoln did. "Of the more than 274,000 officers and men who served in the army during the SpanishAmerican War and the period of demobilization, 5,462 died in the various theaters of operation and in camps in the U.S. Only 379 of the deaths were battle casualties, the remainder being attributed to disease and other causes." I am neither in agreement or disagreement with the above quotes. I am just in amazement. These quotes show how the war between the US and Spain did not cause the US too many lives, as only 379 of the 274,000 men serving actually died in the war. The reason for my further amazement with this quote is that further in the chapter, Howard Zinn starts writing about the Filipino American War, in which the number of casualties for both sides were enormous. When seeing how few lives were lost in the Cuban War, one would think that the US could take calculated risks, yet in the Filipino War, it has been proven that the US were the aggressors, as they fired upon the Filipino civilians without any reason whatsoever. In conclusion, the decisions made by the United States in this chapter are simply appalling.