Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 Sylvester H. Scovel, Journalist, and the Spanish-American War Darien Elizabeth Andreu Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES SYLVESTER H. SCOVEL, JOURNALIST, AND THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR By Darien Elizabeth Andreu A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2003 Copyright © 2003 Darien Elizabeth Andreu All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Darien Elizabeth Andreu defended on May 30, 2003. ________________________ Dr. Joseph R. McElrath Professor Directing Dissertation ________________________ Dr. Ernest Rehder Outside Committee Member ________________________ Dr. R. Bruce Bickley Committee Member ________________________ Dr. John Fenstermaker Committee Member Approved: _________________________________________________________ Bruce Boehrer, Director of Graduate Studies The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. For family and friends whose support sustained this effort iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A project such as this provides the pleasures of collaboration. I am grateful for the assistance of Peggy Dyess, Interlibrary Loan Technician, Flagler College, who tracked down numerous interlibrary loans and reels and reels of The World microfilm; Nancy Pelletier, Faculty Secretary, Flagler College, who typed the Scovel dispatches, often from blurred and fragmentary photocopies of The World articles; Dennis Northcott, Associate Archivist for Reference, Missouri Historical Society, who made many special efforts during a trip to St. Louis to visit the Sylvester H. Scovel collection; Paula Miller, Dean of Academic Affairs and William T. Abare, Jr., President, Flagler College, who provided course reductions and moral support throughout; my committee members, Dr. R. Bruce Bickley, Dr. John Fenstermaker; and Dr. Ernest Rehder; who offered invaluable advice and example throughout my years at Florida State University; and for the larger Flagler community for its generous support on a daily basis. I am deeply grateful to my major professor, Dr. Joseph R. McElrath, whose guidance and experience, patience and compassion, taught me much more about academic professionalism than what appears in the following pages. Ever always, I am grateful to my husband, Robin King, for his joy of life. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vi PREFACE 1 SYLVESTER H. SCOVEL: AN INTRODUCTION 3 EDITORIAL METHODOLOGY 27 SYLVESTER SCOVEL’S SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR ARTICLES 30 WORKS CITED 349 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 360 v ABSTRACT Sylvester Henry “Harry” Scovel (1869-1905) was one of the most celebrated journalists of the Spanish-American War. Almost every scholar who has written about the correspondents of this late nineteenth-century engagement has made use of Scovel’s dispatches from the New York World, particularly his on-the-scene reports of the explosion of the Maine. For the first time, all of Scovel’s “war” writing for the Joseph Pulitzer owned New York World are here made available in edited form: 132 dispatches dating from the explosion of the Maine on February 15, 1898, to his letter of August 10, 1898, an explanation and apology for the events surrounding his confrontation with General Shafter at the flag-raising ceremony in Santiago. Following an introduction treating the correspondent’s life and experiences during the war is a transcription of each article, which has been given a close proofreading and then edited to reflect the discernible intentions of the author within the conventions of contemporaneous usage. The arrangement is chronological, and an "Editorial Methodology" explains how and why these articles are edited as they appear. vi PREFACE Although it marked the emergence of the United States as a global power in 1898, the Spanish-American War is not one of the prominent conflicts in popular memory. Likewise, not only the yellow journalists who stirred up enthusiasm for intruding upon Spanish sovereignty to liberate the Cuban people but more temperate correspondents who reported preparations for and the invasion of Cuba by American soldiers are largely forgotten figures, despite the celebrity they enjoyed at the turn of the century. Stephen Crane and Frank Norris served as correspondents; but had their name recognition depended upon their involvement in the Cuban expedition rather than their novels, they too would have suffered the fate of now less famous fiction writers present. By the end of the twentieth century, for example, John Fox, Jr., and Richard Harding Davis were hardly household names. And thus the fate of Sylvester Henry Scovel, known to his friends as Harry, who was not a literary man but was, in fact, one of the most widely known and celebrated figures in journalism in his day. Indeed, he was the very type of the dashing, fearless reporter whose mission in life was to “get the scoop” and beat the competition to the press. One of the New York World yellow journalists profoundly sympathetic to the cause of Cuban liberation before the war, he was one of the most energetic and valuable contributors to that nationally influential daily through the conflict’s successful conclusion. For students of American literary history, he is an important figure in that his activities in the 1890s are intertwined with those of literary artists such Crane, Norris, and Davis. The writing of biographies of the latter figures inevitably involves treatment of their associations with Scovel. But it is professional historians who demonstrate the greatest need to attend to both Scovel’s career and his documentation of what transpired as the United States wrested from Spain’s control the “pearl of the Antilles.” In such significant books as Charles H. Brown’s The Correspondents’ War, George O’Toole’s The Spanish War: An American Epic—1898, and especially Joyce Milton’s The Yellow Kids: Foreign Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism, Scovel’s dispatches, and particularly his on-the- scene reports concerning the sinking of the Maine, are crucial sources of information for these scholars. 1 There follows, first, an introduction to Scovel as a historically significant individual for a scholarly readership that does not enjoy access to a full-scale biography or a reliable means of biographically contextualizing his Spanish-American War reportage. What is now known about Scovel is not a result of a systematic investigation of his life and must be spliced together from several sources, none of which focuses exclusively upon him. Below, in the section entitled “Sylvester H. Scovel: An Introduction,” is a discussion that addresses the major contribution that the dissertation makes to scholarship. For the first time, all of Scovel’s New York World writings that deal with the war are made available in conservatively edited form. While historians have repeatedly used some of these writings, they have had to turn to the New York Public Library’s microfilm collection including the New York World for particular articles from which they have quoted; and none reflects his or her having either identified or read all of the dispatches authored by Scovel. That is, this dissertation is a critical edition, the editorial principles of which are described in the section entitled “Editorial Methodology.” To ensure full contextualization of Scovel’s war writings and his involvement in events leading up to and following the conflict between Spain and the United States, I have searched the issues of the only newspaper by which Scovel was employed during the war, The World--this taking me from 4 February 1896 to 30 January 1899. 2 SYLVESTER H. SCOVEL: AN INTRODUCTION Sylvester Scovel had never planned to become a “yellow kid” journalist or the celebrated correspondent covering the Spanish-American War for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York newspaper, The World. His dispatches from Cuba--about Spanish atrocities before the war, the American war effort in Cuba, and especially those about the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor--gave him a national notoriety unexpected for a man not trained as a journalist but an engineer. “Harry” was born Sylvester Henry Scovel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 29, 1869. Scovel was the third of five children of Caroline Woodruff and Dr. Sylvester Fithian Scovel, a Presbyterian minister who served as President of the University of Wooster (now College of Wooster), in Wooster, Ohio, from 1883 to 1899. According to one of the many articles about him The World (these are cited parenthetically), young Scovel was expected to “curb his fondness for athletics.” But Harry, from his earliest years, “showed a daring spirit and a fondness for sports. He was a leader among his comrades” (“Scovel Arrested,” February 7, 1897, 1). He would not fulfill the family’s desire that he become its third generation minister. At about the age 16, Scovel indicated to his parents his lack of interest in religious training and his intention to seek work as an engineer. His family, thinking a period of hard labor would cure him of this notion, sent him to work for his older brother, a junior engineer at a Tennessee firm that specialized in constructing blast furnaces. After a season of hard labor, Scovel’s parents wanted him to return to school. He startled them by announcing his desire to stay and his sympathy for the workers wishing to strike. Nevertheless, Scovel returned to Wooster and sought an appointment to Annapolis, but his congressman, William McKinley, gave the nod to a young man from his own hometown of Canton. Then Scovel attended the Michigan Military Academy, graduating in 1877 and enrolling at the University of Michigan in the fall. Halfway through his sophomore year, despite his excelling on the athletic field and performing well in the classroom, Scovel, restless, dropped out (“Autobiographical Sketch,” 1-3).