When Americans Became ‘Splendid Liberators’

America spent most of the 19th century at war with itself. It conquered its western expanse then collapsed into civil war. Once the North beat the South, partisan politics consumed the country for a generation. A string of assassinations, progressive firebrands, and civil service reforms burned people out on domestic politics and a bored and febrile nation began to search for meaning beyond its borders. It noticed the Spanish Empire was awfully close.

In Splendid Liberators, award winning journalist Joe Jackson chronicles the beginning of the American myth of the “good war.” He’s on the show today to talk to us about Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and a general who lay in state at the Alamo.

• Recurring patterns in American history
• Roscoe Conkling jumpscare
• Remnants of the Spanish-American War in South Carolina
• What did liberty mean in the 19th century?
• Clara Barton, Leonard Wood and the dual American personality
• The first modern concentration camps
• The Battleship of Maine
• When Congress used to fight, physically
• Drones won’t win a war
• The US in the Philippines
• ‘The water cure’
• American historians facing reality in the Philippines
• Teddy, finally
• Laying in state at the Alamo

Buy Splendid Liberators

A Defense of General Funston

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