Spanish American War Memorial in Augusta. Few Georgia towns
bothered to honor the men who served in the 1898 Spanish American War
or the “Filipino Insurrection” that followed. Many communities were still trying to scrape
up the money to honor their confederate dead.

By 1898, “Yellow journalists” had made “muckraking” articles about corruption, anarchy, war and murder the fodder for the masses and transformed newspapers into cash cows. They had for years been hyping the news from Cuba. Spain’s brutal suppression of the rebellion there was covered in gory detail. Then the US sent a warship -the MAINE-to Havana, flexing American’s military might, ostensibly to protect American civilians. It blew up.

Historians have pretty much established since that the MAINE was sunk by an internal explosion, but the nationwide chain of newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst screamed for war in outsized headlines. The U.S. Navy and a Washington insider clique decided with little scientific evidence that Spanish colonial officials in Havanna indeed had been foolish enough to trigger a war with the United States, a major naval power only ninety miles away from Cuba. Spain’s decrepit fleet set sail for Havanna to meet its destiny: as rusting hulks on the bottom of the Carribean.

REMEMBER THE MAINE Commemorative Stamp (1998). The sinking of the US battleship MAINE in
Havana Harborin 1898 sparked popular support for US intervention in the insurrection against Spanish rule in Cuba.Few historians today would likely agree that Spain’s colonial officials were responsible for the sinking, but dozens of books and hundereds of articles have never proved the sinking was the result of an intentional act, and some have argued that an explosion on board the ship, likely caused by spontaneous combustion in the coal bunkers, may have caused the massive explosion. The 100th anniversary of the Spanish- American War went largely unnoticed in the US.

As in every war, there were Georgians eager to join the fray, to win some glory that would carry them into public office, or help revitalize their reputation for courage so gamely won at Sharpsburg, Gettysburg and many other Civil War battles a generation earlier. In fact, a Georgia Civil War veteran, “Fighting Joe” Wheeler, was named commander of the American volunteer forces that were to invade Cuba. From a certain perspective, it was a war that would reunite the country.

Units from the western territories were the first to organize for the invasion of Cuba. The cavalry or mounted unit elected as its commander an easterner. In fact, Theodore Roosevelt was a nearsighted, bookish young man from a rich Hudson Valley family of aristocrats. A serious student of everything, he had graduated from Harvard, been elected to the state legislature in New York, fought his way to become Commissioner of Police for New York City. When his wife and mother died suddenly, “Teddy” invested in a Dakota ranch and headed west. Here he “toughed up”, won respect as a rancher and then had his ranch devastated by the worst freeze the Great Plains had experienced since the ranges opened after the Civil War. TR and the “Rough Riders”, filled with a remarkable mix of cowboys, intellectuals, writers and Harvard classmates, found transportation to Tampa, then to Cuba -though they had to leave their horses behind. Roosevelt acted with decisive bravery in the campiagn and came home a national hero for his unit’s victory at San Juan Hill.

Meanwhile, the First Infantry Regiment of Territorial Volunteers -the footsoldiers to Roosevelt’s cavalry- made up in large part of recruits from Arizona and New Mexico (not yet states) were camped in temporary quarters in Kentucky. The weather took a turn for the worse, plummeting into the twenties -and then into single digits, the coldest weather anyone could recall in Kentucky. Orders came to pack up. They were being shipped out by train as far south as rails could carry them -to Albany, Georgia. The railroads had not yet reached the Florida line, much less the beaches of Miami.

Now comes the ironic part: Other western companies of volunteers had been sent east in anticipation of being shipped out to fight in Cuba. Fate intervened. Events on the other side of the world surprised the victorious Americans with a complication they had not anticipated. When the American Navy utterly destroyed the antiquated Spanish naval forces in the Philippine Islands, the delegation of soldiers and administrators charged with bringing order to the islands were suddenly faced with guerilla forces there who feared the American victory presaged the making of a colony of the islands. To borrow an expression from the Vietnam War era, most Americans could not have told you within 10,000 miles where the Philippines were located. And many today remain unaware that the islands occupy an area a third the size of the United States.

The “insurgents”, portrayed in the American press as drug-crazed fanatics, were determined that the islands should become independent and governed by Filipinos. Back in the US, American volunteer units were in limbo, kept in uniform by a war halfway round the world that no one had volunteered for. Would there be a major “insurrection” in the Philippines requiring tens of thousands of troops? Politicians debated the virtues and vices associated with acquiring overseas colonies. It was in a way, a rehearsal for Vietnam.

As every Georgian knows, Albany means gnats and days combining 90% humidity with 90 degree temperatures in the summer. But its late fall to early spring weather promised a “Yankee Paradise” of bugless, mild and sunny days. The town, still recovering from the terrible national financial collapse of 1893, welcomed this new source of social activity and spending. Named “Camp Churchman” after 2nd Lieutenant Clark Churchman of the 13th U.S. Cavalry who was killed at Santiago, the First Territorial’s new bivouac became a tent city almost overnight.

Life at Camp Churchman in Albany must have been pleasant. Volunteer troops entertained themselves by building a seven-foot long model of the battleship MAINE and hosting an open house for the townspeople. The territorial volunteer troops had benn sent to Albany to escape the single-digit freeze that struck Kentucky where they were formerly encamped. Photo: Thronateeska Heritage Center. Notice the pine boughs and palmeto fronds used as decorations.

With time on their hands, officers posed for a group photograph under a nearby ancient live oak. Bored enlisted men carved a seven- foot long model of the MAINE and held an open house for locals. There were patriotic banquets and the men were marched over to the ancient sand dunes east of the city to take target practice.

Things could be worse. And, they soon were. The arctic front that had chased them out of Kentucky arrived in south Georgia. A foot or so of snow fell on the tent army and frigid air took all the fun out of outdoor life. When it warmed a bit, the army was mustered out and supplied with rail tickets home. A very charming interlude in the life of Albany came to an end.

Fast forward almost a century. Albany became one of the larger cities in the state, comparable to Savannah, Augusta and Columbus. It became a rail center for the southeast after the Civil War and in the twentieth century has been fueled by military payrolls. A civilian- staffed training center was operated there to prepare British pilots in the lead up to World War II. A Cold War-era Air Force base, Turner Field, served as a launching place for U-2 spy planes, high altitude planes that monitored and photographed the Soviet Union’s construction of nuclear ballistic missile launching sites in Cuba. This led to the biggest showdown of the era between the Super Powers, the US and the USSR. Now there was a university and a smaller college in town. Albany was on the map again.

Difficult times came in the 1960’s and 1970’s that damaged the progressive reputation that Albany was gaining. It was stressed by national news coverage of sit-ins and “freedom marches”. The Rev. Martin Luther King came to support its Black citizens, hoping the time for change had at last come -even in south Georgia. Later, the city was twice ravaged by disastrous flooding of the Flint River. Both times the damage amounted to more than a billion dollars. Environmentalism and historic preservation found their way into the vocabulary of some people, even though Albany remained staunchly conservative politically.

Meanwhile, the Big Tree that shaded the officers posing for the photograph in 1899 had been growing, its draping limbs spreading onto the roads that intersected at its base. The city and the state’s Department of Transportation were poised to cut down this tree that -at least to some- seemed to pose a safety risk.

Cutting down trees has been a major league sport in south Georgia. The great forests of yellow pine were taken to the sawmills beginning in the 1880s to feed the building boom in the north and west; by the 1890’s immature and waste pines were harvested for the paper mills, mills requiring much of the water that had once fed the natural fish nurseries of the coastline, foretelling ecological disasters. In the counties around Albany, deep wells were drilled into the aquifer to supply enormous center pivot irrigation systems on farms in the district. Falling underground water levels left dead and dying groves of live oaks for all to see – or to choose not to see.

After a century of destruction of the natural environment, Mother Nature had begun at last to attract defenders, even in Albany. Some were informed activists, others simply enjoyed the sport of poking government in the eye with whatever stick came to hand. When the City of Albany and the state’s Department of Transportation decided to remove the “Big Oak,” many locals voiced their opinion that the tree was a historic landmark and a natural wonder.

Dubbed the “Friendship Oak” by some, the tree became a symbol and a rallying point. An awakened segment of Albany’s citizens, “tree huggers”, camped out around the tree, and at least one of them occupied a nest he had improvised in the branches of the tree. Some locals dismissed the Big Oak’s supporters as “hippies” and “weirdos.” The use of the terms from the 1960’s suggested the name-callers were out of touch with the concerns of a younger generation.

As the bureaucratic processes ground away, it occurred to someone that the units stationed in Albany in 1899 might have held meetings or posed for photos under the “Big Oak.” Surely that would justify preserving the old tree as a historic site. Within a few days after the “Big Oak” was cut down, a photo did arrived . It was from the Arizona State Archives. It showed the officers of the Territorial Regiment of Volunteers standing under a great oak in Albany. Was it THE “Big Oak”. Hard to say. But it was a symbol, whether factually anchored in history or not. If the photo had been discovered earlier, might it have saved the tree? Many friends of the “Big Oak” did collect pieces of wood when chain saws reduced the tree to sawdust, brnaches and sections of bark-covered trunk, just as people save the bricks when a great building is destroyed. Bricks or wood, such things are souveneirs, vessels of memory, cultural artifacts that help us reclaim the magical place we call “the past.”