1898 State of the Union Address

1898 State of the Union Address

Date	December 5, 1898 (1898-12-05)
Venue	House Chamber, United States Capitol
Location	Washington, D.C.
Coordinates	38°53′23″N 77°00′32″W
Type	State of the Union Address
Participants	William Mckinley
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The 1898 State of the Union Address was a speech given on Monday, December 5, 1898, by President William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States. It was his second address.

Themes

The speech addressed the added burdens of the Spanish-American War. Mckinley advocated for the freedom of the Cuban people from Spanish rule, included reference to the victorious actions the armed forces, including Theodore Roosevelt's 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry (Rough Riders) took.

In addition the President speaks about the annexation of Hawaii by saying:

Pending the consideration by the Senate of the treaty signed June 1897, by the plenipotentiaries of the United States and of the Republic of Hawaii, providing for the annexation of the islands, a joint resolution to accomplish the same purpose by accepting the offered cession and incorporating the ceded territory into the Union was adopted by the Congress and approved July 7, 1898. I thereupon directed the United States steamship Philadelphia to convey Rear-Admiral Miller to Honolulu, and intrusted to his hands this important legislative act, to be delivered to the President of the Republic of Hawaii, with whom the Admiral and the United States minister were authorized to make appropriate arrangements for transferring the sovereignty of the islands to the United States. This was simply but impressively accomplished on the 12th of August last by the delivery of a certified copy of the resolution to President Dole, who thereupon yielded up to the representative of the Government of the United States the sovereignty and public property of the Hawaiian Islands