ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the validity of the leading accounts of the wars outcome and deals with the acquisition of an "empire". A more appropriate measure of sentiment on the question of "empire" came in a later vote on eventual Philippine independence. At the beginning of the "new empire", half of the senators voted in favor of subsequent separation. To explain the wars outcome, that choice of "empire", many commentators return to the business-dominance thesis. Henry Cabot Lodge focused on American continentalism as opposed to a reach for overseas empire. The decision for "empire", as with the decision for war, is best explained through use of the elitist framework. The relief of Cuba and the "enlargement of the American empire" had no obvious connection, none at least that "the yeomanry of the domestic hinterland" could recognize. Although business leaders, on the whole, were not interested in empire, progressive historians nevertheless declared them to have been "the movers".
