American planning for war with Spain before 1898

The United States had dispatched officers and developed plans for a possible Spanish war years before open hostilities. William Warren Kimball's 1896 study already proposed a naval blockade of Cuba, an attack on Manila, and possible operations against Spain's Mediterranean coast. The plan shows that Maine's destruction accelerated an existing strategic trajectory rather than creating an expeditionary concept from nothing. This planning culture, combined with a large pool of Union and former Confederate Civil War veterans, left American forces substantially better prepared than Spain's neglected overseas squadrons.