Veteran's Caucus Scholarship Quilt 2012

Dedicated to those who served in the Spanish-American War- 1898

 

A Mariner's Compass is the center of the quilt because so much of the war was fought on or over the seas.  The United States developed a strong Navy.

 

The crossing white squares are for the ships that had to cross the vast oceans.

 

The years between the end of the Civil War and the Spanish-American War were filled with the expansion of the United States across the continent.  The Industrial Revolution had become a driving force.   In the North, urbanization and the large growth of the immigrant population hastened that industrialization.  The immigrants provided labor and transformed American culture in to the ‘melting pot’.  In 1867, the purchase of Alaska from the Russians completed the expansion of American on the mainland.  The University of California was chartered in 1868.  The joining of the nation’s rail system was completed in 1869.  1872 saw the creation of Yellowstone National Park.  The battle of Little Bighorn was in 1876.  Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1879.  The massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 was the last major armed conflict in the Indian Wars.  The start of gold fever was in 1896 with the discovery of gold in Klondike in the Yukon.  The United States influence spread across the oceans with the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898, after the monarchy was overthrown in a coup led by American businessmen.  The victory in the Spanish-American War demonstrated that the United States had become a major world power.  

Overview:    On April 25, 1898 the United States declared war on Spain following the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1989.  The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898.  In that short time, Spain lost control of its overseas empire.  Its influence was removed from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Carolina, Marshall, Mariana Islands in Micronesia and ceded the Philippine islands to the United States for the sum of $20 million.  The shortness of the war is a direct contrast to the vastness of the area involved.  Each of these countries were fighting for their individual freedom from the Spanish in the years leading up to the actual declaration of war by the United States.  The United States Naval superiority proved decisive.  The US Army was small with just 28,000 men.  The Army wanted 50,000 new men but received over 220,000 through volunteers and mobilization of the state National Guard units.  The Spanish on the other hand, had large garrisons in Cuba and the Philippines.  Unfortunately, Spain’s Navy was poorly maintained and much weaker.  Thus a naval blockade of Cuba and an attack on the Spanish squadron at Manila, gave the United States command of the sea and precluded reinforcement and resupply of the Spanish overseas forces.  

The war was fought over a vast amount of ocean and a small amount of land. 

This quilt ended it's travel from the center of the midlands, to the north of the boarder, and then on to its final home in the marinas in Boston.  (I am always conserned where they are going when I finish a quilt like this.)

I have never sewn a paper-pieced pattern.  This was a first for me,  And I had to do it twice.  This was the first try.....