By mid-March the Maine had come to represent Spanish brutality, dead American soldiers, and the entire "Cuba libre" movement. The popularity and apparent success of the war facilitated the Maine's commodification and the selling of war more generally--as advertisers capitalized on war slogans (most famously "Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain!") to profit from the war's popularity. Phrases like "War Declared on Prices" and "Remember the Main features of good laundry" appeared in newspapers across the country, constructing war as a splendid little "holiday" (as the Worcester Telegram put it) for consumers. The mass media and the burgeoning advertising industry thus collaborated with American propaganda against the Spanish (in addition to providing moral, economic and political justifications for the new American manifest destiny).

Savannah Morning News June 9, 1898	Worcester Telegram April 26, 1898

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