The 'manly' ideal of politics and the imperialist impulse: Gender, U.S. political culture, and the Spanish-American and Phillipine-American wars

A number of late-nineteenth-century U.S. political leaders feared that electoral politics was losing its manly character. They felt beleaguered by women's political encroachments, including their suffrage campaigns, Populist speeches, and municipal reforms. These men regarded the growing international arbitration movement as a symbol of women's threat to the manly assumptions that guided politics. Anxieties about the manly character of American politics were exacerbated by the deaths of Civil War veterans, who had been seen as exemplary men and citizens, and by class tensions that undercut the idea of politics as a fraternal endeavor.;In the mid-1890s, American policymakers projected their concerns about the manly character of American politics into discussions of the Spanish-Cuban War. Bellicose men presented U.S. intervention as an opportunity to forge a new generation of civic-minded veterans, win international respect for American men, restore a fraternal spirit to U.S. politics, and reclaim electoral politics as male terrain. After the sinking of the Maine in 1898, they helped push the President into taking a more warlike stance toward Spain by accusing him of lacking manly backbone. In Congress, the ability of jingoes to formulate the war debate as a battle over manhood limited dissent on the imperial issue by discounting options that did not appear appropriately "manly.".;Concerns about manhood continued to shape debate over U.S. policies in the subsequent Philippine-American War. Imperialists and anti-imperialists brought their differing ideals of manhood to bear on three major issues: Did the Filipinos have the manly character seen as necessary for self-government? Who represented the manlier position, the imperialists or anti-imperialists? How would imperialism affect the character of American men and hence the government they constituted?;The martial ideals of citizenship articulated during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars hurt the political aspirations of men who were not considered manly--including African-American men, Filipino men, and anti-imperialist men. They also militated against women's suffrage efforts. Although women's wartime activism deepened their political consciousness, the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars led to a political context more hostile to their claims.