Participation during the Spanish-American War took different forms, both on the home front and on the battlefield. For the first time in American history, the effort of the war involved naval campaigns in two oceans and the landing of troops overseas. To accomplish this required participation by members of various social and ethnic groups, of both sexes and a range of ages. Out of the approximately 20,000 U.S. troops that participated actively in the Cuban campaign, the majority was regular soldiers, and 7,000 were African Americans. The average volunteer was twenty-four years old, single, and native born, and employed as a worker or farmer. Most of the 200,000 volunteers recruited in the United States at the time of the war stayed at home in military camps; only a third of them saw action in Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico . …
