The importance of San Francisco is that it is the port that Americans used to
get into the Western Pacific and Asia. It is a northern port and what
Americans do is discover very quickly that the quickest route to China is
north, around Alaska and down the Japanese coast and into China. It's not
across Hawaii and Guam. So San Francisco becomes essentially the port of,
exit for American goods. It is also the port of exit for American troops.
When McKinley finds out that Admiral Dewey has defeated the Spanish fleet, and
he hasn't even received official news of it yet; he's only received rumors that
Dewey has done this; he immediately orders 5,000 troops out of San Francisco to
go to the Philippines. And San Francisco becomes again the pivot for American
empire in the Pacific, the place that Americans look at as our entry point into
Hawaii or north into Alaska and then to China market.
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