Admiral Hyman G. Rickover published, in 1976, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed. This book was not entirely his work, he assembled an unbiased team of experts, who examined all the evidence. The ship positively blew up from an internal explosion. The team came to the strong conclusion that the explosion that sank the Maine was caused by an internal source, almost positively by accident. Probably an explosion of coal dust.
Logic also eliminates the possibility of a bomb smuggled aboard by Spain. The ship was in a the bay of Havana, controlled by Spain.
The ship was on full alert.
And don't forget that the Spanish knew full well how a war would go against the vastly superior US Navy. Look how short and lopsided the war actually was. They wanted to avoid war with us. The 98 pound geek never wants to fight the biggest linebacker on the football team. People who don't actually study history are unaware that Spain actually agreed to all the terms the US made on them and notified our government BEFORE we declared war. War fever had become an unstoppable force and we declared war anyway.
The idea that the Spanish had destroyed the Maine was, of course partially responsible for this war fever.
Wm. Randolph Hearst was largely responsible for this war fever. He wanted a war to boost circulation of his newspapers. He was the strong promoter of the story that a Spanish mine sank the Maine.
That's not a conspiracy theory, that's fact.
On the night of 15 Feb. 1898 the vast majority of officers of the
Maine were ashore, so it is hardly the case that the ship was "on full alert." There were two explosions. It is thought the first was a coal bunker and the secondary explosion was the magazine. The first responders were all Spanish subjects be they native Cubanos or peninsular Spaniards.
Charles Dwight Sigsbee disagreed with the notion that the Spaniards, or, for that matter, Cuban insurrectos had been responsible, and urged the public and the media to wait until an investigation was undertaken. Such investigation initially thought a mine or "infernal engine" had destroyed
Maine and was trumpeted in the run up to war.
People in the United States had followed the 1895-1898 war in Cuba in the newspapers, which carried any number of spectacular and gawdawful descriptions of Spanish misconduct and misrule. The idea that a gleaming great white ship flying the flag had now been destroyed with heavy loss of life in a Spanish-controlled harbor on the island enflamed indignation and war fever in the United States. After vainly attempting to destroy the insurgency, including "reconcentration" of the rural population into army-controlled towns, which led to the deaths by disease and starvation of some ten percent of the island's residents, Spain had belatedly extended overtures of "autonomy" in an attempt to create divisions among rebel leaders, and to palliate U.S. public opinion. The refusal of the bulk of insurgent officials to contemplate negotiations absent guarantees of independence scuppered that. The implication is that the Cuban refusal, in turn,
drove the U.S. decision to intervene even if Spain expressed willingness to meet U.S. demands.
The fate of the Spanish Pacific squadron in Manila Bay 1 May 1898 and that of the Atlantic squadron under Pascual de Cervera betrays the miss-match between the U.S. Navy and that of a declining European power, while Spain retained naval fighting ships and resources for home defense and concerns about the war extending to the Canary Islands or Morocco as well. Prior to WWI, Spain's Ejército Ultramar was the largest army ever sent across the Atlantic, much larger than the armada dispatched by Britain during the American Revolution or the War of 1812, let alone the loss of Spain's New World Empire between 1808 and 1821. That army on paper was quite formidable, and capable of creating any number of problems, but it was largely confined to controlling all of the coastal towns and cities in a relatively passive defense. The U.S. Navy feared that a war extending into hurricane season necessitated a safe harbor, and so before the U.S. Army Vth Corps landed in Eastern Cuba, the USMC had already been landed at Guantánamo Bay 10 June. The army feared the extension of the war due to yellow jack, malaria, and other tropical ailments that had long stricken the conscripts of their enemy.
After 1898 and the Treaty of Paris, the U.S. adopted population removal in the Philippine War, as did Great Britain in the Boer War. The British named their invigilated civilian holding pens "concentration camps" as a shorter term than the Spanish "reconcentración" and thus introduced the term "concentration camp" into the political lexicon of the 20th century.