The Spanish-American war was declared in April of 1898. Fighting was officially halted in August and a peace treaty was signed in December. If remembered today it is usually for Teddy Roosevelt's charge up San Juan Hill or Admiral George Dewey's lopsided defeat of Spain's Pacific fleet at Manila Bay. Matthew McCullough argues that the war with Spain cemented in the popular mind a vision of American national purpose identified with “messianic interventionism” (3), the belief that the United States had inherited the mantel of Israel in demonstrating fidelity to God in the pursuit of justice. America, in fact, was asked to play the role of Jesus in accepting the burden of war with Spain. As the Presbyterian pastor Henry van Dyke put it, the war “must be carried in the same spirit in which Christ bore his Cross and fought his battle on Calvary” (34). Lyman Abbott, the influential pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church, insisted “that not even in the Old Testament history is there a stronger demonstration of the leading of Divine Providence than that most extraordinary victory at Manila—a fleet wiped out of existence, a country set free, the map of the world changed at a stroke, and not a life lost by the victors” (65).

McCullough follows Clifford Geertz in seeing ideology as giving “public expression to what would otherwise remain private and disconnected emotions . . . offering a roadmap for navigating difficult or unfamiliar terrain” (8). He draws on sermons, editorials, and commentary drawn from “private manuscript collections, newspapers, and published pamphlets . . . across denominational lines” (ibid.). In doing so, he helpfully reminds us that “in 1900, more than four-fifths of the country's estimated twenty-six million church members were affiliated with the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, or Roman Catholics. According to the relevant census data, no other group had even a half-million members” (9). Out of a total population of 76 million, of which 11 million were under 10 and another 6 million illiterate, it is safe to say that the ideology reflected in this material was shared, at least in part, by many Americans.

What does it reflect? McCullough finds “a new sense of responsibility, resulting in nearly universal public support for the war among Christian leaders, who defined it as righteous and holy” (27). The “black legend” of Spanish atrocities in the New World was resurrected, so as to demonize Spanish culture, over and against which America, the true Christian nation, was led to triumph (41–43). “It is a contest,” wrote the Methodist minister James King, “in which the character of civilization and the interpretation of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount are involved” (44). Providential victories vindicated the claim, as Bishop Bernard McQuaid of Rochester put it, “that the principles underlying our government are those which make people great and noble” (58).

Not only this, but this new identity “bore the deep imprint of a phenomenon known as Anglo-Saxonism” (83). True and righteous civilization was to be carried to the rest of humanity by the Anglo-Saxon peoples. This providential racism even, in the minds of some, served to heal the rifts created by the Civil War. America, its identity unified and renewed through a war enjoined by Christian humanitarianism and guided to victory by God's providential hand, stood ready to receive its mission of civilizing the world. Twenty years later Lyman Abbott would describe WWI in terms “nearly identical to those used in 1898” (137).

The Cross of War is illuminating, provocative, and for the most part convincing. I would, however, like to have heard more about Anglo-Saxon racial exceptionalism. Was this already forged by the time of Texas independence and the war with Mexico? If so, then perhaps American identity was merely disrupted by the civil war. At the same time, I wonder about the size and impact of the anti-imperialist movement. Was it as ineffectual as it seems? In the period preceding the war with Spain, there were objections to Grover Cleveland's meddling in Venezuela and many more objections to the annexation of Hawaii. McCullough mentions them, but briefly. And I worry a bit about the discussion of the Philippine insurgency (130–135). McCullough cites Robert Welch's work on “the lack of interest in American abuses among the wider public” (134). But this isn't borne out by Stuart Miller's “Benevolent Assimilation,” of 1984. Miller's volume is cited in the bibliography, but apparently not used in the body of the book. It tells a more complex story.

Finally, there is the collapse of “messianic interventionism.” McCullough writes that “this Christian nationalism—this ideology forged in the war with Spain—proved unable to survive intact the untold carnage of the First World War” (138). Is this true? I'm not even sure that McCullough thinks so. He refers to its survival “in chastened forms” (141). Americans are still pledging allegiance to “one nation under God,” a Cold War holdover. And at the Citadel on December 11, 2001, President Bush told the cadets that “if America wavers, the world will lose heart. If America leads, the world will show its courage. America will never waver. America will lead the world to peace” (Selected Speeches of President George W. Bush [Washington, D. C.: National Archives, 2009], 99). That sounds messianic to me. But it takes us well beyond the scope of The Cross of War.