History of the United States II / Unit 7 USH2 0918 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Teller and Platt
The idea
The Teller Amendment of eighteen ninety-eight promised that the United States would not annex Cuba after the war. The Platt Amendment, enacted three years later, gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba, a base at Guantanamo Bay, and a veto over Cuba's treaties. Both are true, and neither cancelled the other: the United States never annexed Cuba, and it made Cuba a protectorate without annexing it.
In practice
A promise of no annexation, and a treaty that made annexation unnecessary.
Where people slip
The confusion to avoid is treating one amendment as the whole policy. Teller alone suggests restraint; Platt alone suggests conquest. Together they show a new method, control without formal ownership, which the rest of this unit repeats in China, Panama and Nicaragua.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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