In an insightful paper he read before the Navy Board in 1896, Admiral Francis M. Bunce predicted that the best way to isolate Cuba and support the insurgents in their war with Spain was to use the U.S. Navy to neutralize the Spanish navy and blockade Cuba and Puerto Rico.
This small archive also includes Bunce’s 1899 honorary degree from Yale University and a copy of a fascinating April 1898 letter by Union Army veteran John J. McCook to President William McKinley, urging him to leave any fighting in a war against Spain to the professional military men rather than the “Jingoes” (of whom Theodore Roosevelt was the most famous).
