Florida in the Spanish American War

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Florida began as a Spanish Colony, with governing headquarters in Havana, Cuba.It is fitting, then, that the state played such a large role in the Spanish-American War. As a base of training and combat operations, Florida's involvement was crucial to the war effort. A time when Roosevelt's Rough Riders prepared for battle at Tampa bases, when battleships departed from south Florida ports to avenge the sunken USS Maine and when a nation looked to the Sunshine State to help united America around a common cause, even as the nation still struggled to come to terms with the Civil War and Reconstruction