One hundred and nineteen years ago this month, the Spanish-American War ended, and residents of Toledo and elsewhere across the country took to the streets to celebrate.
It was a peculiar war, to say the least, lasting only from April 21 to Aug. 13 of 1898. The war began after an explosion on the USS Maine in Havana Harbor during the Cuban war for independence against Spain. While President William McKinley, an Ohio native, had hoped to avoid the entanglement, political pressures at home forced him to do otherwise.
Thousands of Ohioans, including hundreds from Lucas County, volunteered for service. While the war was brief, their enlistment lasted up to a year.
It would be 27 years before northwest Ohio’s contribution to the war effort was memorialized on Armistice Day — now Veterans Day — on Nov. 12, 1925. On that date, veterans from three wars — the Civil War, World War I, and the Spanish-American War — gathered on the lawn of the Lucas County Courthouse to dedicate a statue to the Citizen Soldier.
In The Blade photo above, thousands of area residents and soldiers gathered for the celebration, which included speeches by local politicians, a combined march by veterans of the three wars, and dedication of the statue. Erected by Egbert Camp, United Spanish War Veterans, the bronze statue depicts a young man in the uniform of 1898 with a rifle in his hand. The statue is 8-feel tall, and stands atop a 50-ton, 10-foot granite base.
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First Published August 28, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
