THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (_Continued_)
When, on June 14, General Shafter's army sailed for the southeastern
coast of Cuba, without adequate facilities for disembarkation, and
without a sufficient number of mules, packers, teamsters, and army
wagons to insure its proper equipment, subsistence, and maintenance in
the field, it was, _ipso facto_, predestined to serious embarrassment
and difficulty, if not to great suffering and peril. No amount of zeal,
energy, and ability on the part of quartermasters and commissaries,
after the army had reached its destination, could possibly make up for
deficiencies that should have had attention before the army sailed.
Boats, mules, and wagons were not to be had at Siboney, and when the
urgent need of them became apparent it was too late to procure them from
the United States. General Shafter cabled the War Department for
lighters and steam-tugs almost as soon as he reached the Cuban coast,
and General Miles telegraphed for more draft-animals before he had been
in Siboney twenty-four hours; but neither the boats nor the mules came
in time to be of any avail. Cuban fever waits for no man, and before the
boats that should have landed more supplies and the mules that should
have carried them to the front reached Siboney, seventy-five per cent.
of General Shafter's command had been prostrated by disease, due, as he
himself admits, to insufficient food, "without change of clothes, and
without any shelter whatever."[11]
But the lack of adequate land and water transportation was not the only
deficiency in the equipment of the Fifth Army-Corps when it sailed from
Tampa. It was also ill provided with medical stores and the facilities
and appliances needed in caring for sick and wounded soldiers. Dr.
Nicholas Senn, chief of the operating staff of the army, says that
"ambulances in great number had been sent to Tampa, but they were not
unloaded and sent to the front." I myself passed a whole train-load of
ambulances near Tampa in May, but I never saw more than three in use at
the front, and, according to the official report of Dr. Guy C. Godfrey,
commanding officer of the hospital-corps company of the First Division,
Fifth Army-Corps, "the number of ambulances for the entire army was
limited to three, and it was impossible to expect them to convey the
total number of wounded from the collecting-stations to the First
Division hospital."[12]
Lieutenant-Colonel Jacobs of the quartermaster's department, who was
assistant to General Humphreys in Cuba, testified before the
Investigating Commission on November 16 that he had fifty ambulances at
Tampa, and that he was about to load them on one of the transports when
General Shafter appeared and ordered them left behind.
The surgeon-general declared, in a letter to the "Medical Record," dated
August 6, that "General Shafter's army at Tampa was thoroughly well
supplied with the necessary medicines, dressings, etc., for
field-service; but, owing to insufficient transportation, he left behind
at Tampa his reserve medical supplies and ambulance corps."
General Shafter himself admits that he had not enough medical supplies,
but seems to assert, by implication, that he was not to blame for the
deficiency. In a telegram to Adjutant-General Corbin, dated "Santiago,
August 3," he said: "From the day this expedition left Tampa until
to-day there has never been sufficient medical attendance or medicines
for the daily wants of the command, and three times within that time the
command has been almost totally out of medicines. I say this on the word
of the medical directors, who have in each instance reported the matter
to me, the last time yesterday, when the proposition was made to me to
take medicines away from the Spanish hospital.... The surgeons have
worked as well as any men that ever lived, and their complaint has been
universal of lack of means and facilities. I do not complain of this,
for no one could have foreseen all that would be required; but I will
not quietly submit to having the onus laid on me for the lack of these
hospital facilities."
The state of affairs disclosed by these official reports and telegrams
seems to me as melancholy and humiliating as anything of the kind ever
recorded in the history of American wars. Three ambulances for a whole
corps of sixteen thousand men; an army "almost totally out of medicines"
three times in seven weeks; and a proposition to make up our own
deficiencies by seizing and confiscating the medical supplies of a
Spanish hospital! I do not wonder that General Shafter wishes to escape
responsibility for such a manifestation of negligence or incompetence;
but I do not see how he can be allowed to do so. It is just as much the
business of a commanding general to know that he has medicines and
ambulances enough as it is to know that he has food and ammunition
enough. He is the man who plans the campaign, and, to a certain extent,
predetermines the number of sick and wounded; he is the man who makes
requisition upon the War Department for transports, mules, and wagons
enough to carry the army and its equipment to the field where it is to
operate; and he is the man who should consider all contingencies and
emergencies likely to arise as a result of climatic or other local
conditions, and who should see that ample provision is made for them.
General Shafter says that "no one could have foreseen all that would be
required." That is probably true; but any one, it seems to me, could
have foreseen that an army of sixteen thousand men, which was expected
to attack intrenched positions, would need more than three ambulances
for the transportation of the wounded, to say nothing of the sick. The
same remark applies to medicines and medical supplies. Every one knew
that our army was going to a very unhealthful region, and it was not
difficult to foresee that it would require perhaps two or three times
the quantity of medical supplies that would be needed in a temperate
climate and a more healthful environment. The very reason assigned for
General Shafter's hurried advance toward Santiago is that he knew his
army would soon be disabled by disease, and wished to strike a decisive
blow while his men were still able to fight. If he anticipated the
wrecking of his army by sickness that could not be averted nor long
delayed, why did he not make sure, before he left Tampa, that he had
medical supplies and hospital facilities enough to meet the inevitable
emergency? His telegram to Adjutant-General Corbin seems to indicate
that he was not only unprepared for an emergency, but unprepared to meet
even the ordinary demands of an army in the field, inasmuch as he
declares, without limitation or qualification, that from June 14 to
August 3 he never had medicines enough for the daily wants of his
command.
It may be thought that the view here taken of the responsibility of the
commanding general for everything that pertains to the well-being and
the fighting efficiency of his command is too extreme and exacting, and
that he ought not to be held personally accountable for the mistakes or
the incompetence of his staff-officers. Waiving a discussion of this
question on its merits, it need only be said that, inasmuch as General
Shafter has officially recommended all of his staff-officers for
promotion on account of "faithful and meritorious services throughout
the campaign," he is estopped from saying now that they did not do their
duty, or that they made errors of judgment so serious as to imperil the
lives of men, if not the success of the expedition. The responsibility
for the lack of medical supplies and hospital facilities, therefore, as
well as the responsibility for the lack of boats, mules, and wagons,
must rest either upon the War Department or upon the general in command.
If the latter made timely requisition for them, and for transports
enough to carry them to the Cuban coast, and failed to obtain either or
both, the War Department must be held accountable; while, on the other
hand, if General Shafter did not ask for medical supplies enough to meet
the probable wants of his army in a tropical climate and an unhealthful
environment, he must shoulder the responsibility for his own negligence
or want of foresight.
I shall now try to show how this lack of boats, mules, wagons, and
medical supplies affected General Shafter's command in the field.
II. The landing at Daiquiri and Siboney.
The points selected for the disembarkation of the army and the landing
of supplies were the best, perhaps, that could be found between Santiago
harbor and Guantanamo Bay; but they were little more, nevertheless, than
shallow notches in the coast-line, which afforded neither anchorage nor
shelter from the prevailing wind. There was one small pier erected by
the Spanish-American Iron Company at Daiquiri, but at Siboney there were
no landing facilities whatever, and the strip of beach at the bottom of
the wedge-shaped notch in the precipitous wall of the coast was hardly
more than one hundred yards in length. The water deepened so suddenly
and abruptly at a distance of fifty yards from the shore that there was
practically no anchorage, and General Shafter's fleet of more than
thirty transports had to lie in what was virtually an open roadstead and
drift back and forth with the currents and tides. The prevailing winds
were from the east and southeast, and the long swell which rolled in
from the Caribbean Sea broke in heavy and at times dangerous surf upon
the narrow strip of unsheltered beach where the army had to land. All of
these local conditions were known, or might have been known, to General
Shafter before he left Tampa; but when he arrived off the coast they
seemed to take him wholly by surprise. He had brought with him neither
surf-boats, nor steam-launches, nor suitable lighters, nor materials
with which to construct a pier. How he ever would have disembarked his
command without the assistance of the navy, I do not know. I doubt
whether a landing could have been effected at all. Fortunately, the navy
was at hand, and its small boats and steam-launches, manned by officers
and sailors from the fleet, landed the whole army through the surf with
the loss of only two men. The navy then retired from the scene of
action, and General Shafter was left to his own devices--and deplorably
weak and ineffective they proved to be.
The engineer corps found near the railroad at Siboney a few sticks of
heavy timber belonging to the Iron Company, out of which they improvised
a small, narrow pier; but it was soon undermined and knocked to pieces
by the surf. The chief quartermaster discovered on or near the beach
three or four old lighters, also belonging to the Iron Company, which he
used to supplement the service rendered by the single scow attached to
the expedition; but as he put them in charge of soldiers, who had had
no experience in handling boats in broken water, they were soon stove
against the corners of the pier, or swamped in the heavy surf that swept
the beach. All that could be done then was to land supplies as fast as
possible in the small rowboats of the transports. If General Shafter had
had competent and experienced officers to put in command of these boats,
and steam-launches to tow them back and forth in strings or lines of
half a dozen each, and if he had made provision for communication with
the captains of the steamers by means of wigwag flag-signals, so as to
be able to give them orders and control their movements, he might have
landed supplies in this way with some success. But none of the
difficulties of the situation had been foreseen, and no arrangements had
been made to cope with them. The captains of the transports put their
vessels wherever they chose, and when a steamer that lay four or five
miles at sea was wanted closer inshore, there was no means of sending
orders to her except by rowboat. The captains, as a rule, did not put
officers in charge of their boats, and the sailors who manned them,
having no competent direction, acted upon their own judgment. Finally,
boats which could have made a round trip between the transports and the
shore in half an hour if towed by a steam-launch often used up the
greater part of two hours in toiling back and forth through a heavy sea
under oars.
It is not a matter for surprise that, with such facilities and under
such conditions, General Shafter found it almost impossible to land even
food and ammunition enough to keep his army properly supplied. In his
official report of the campaign he says: "It was not until nearly two
weeks after the army landed that it was possible to place on shore three
days' supplies in excess of those required for daily consumption."
In addition to all the unnecessary difficulties and embarrassments
above described, there was another, almost, if not quite, as serious,
arising from the manner in which the transports had been loaded at
Tampa. Stores were put into the steamers apparently without any
reference to the circumstances under which they would be taken out, and
without any regard to the order in which they would be needed at the
point of destination. Medical supplies, for example, instead of being
put all together in a single transport, were scattered among twenty or
more vessels, so that in order to get all of them it was necessary
either to bring twenty steamers close to shore, one after another, and
take a little out of each, or send rowboats around to them all where
they lay at distances ranging from one mile to five.[13] Articles of
equipment that would be required as soon as the army landed were often
buried in the holds of the vessels under hundreds of tons of stuff that
would not be needed in a week, and the army went forward without them,
simply because they could not be quickly got at. Finally, I am inclined
to believe, from what I saw and heard of the landing of supplies at
Siboney, that there was not such a thing as a bill of lading, manifest,
or cargo list in existence, and that the chief quartermaster had no
other guide to the location of a particular article than that furnished
by his own memory or the memory of some first mate. I do not assert this
as a fact; I merely infer it from the difficulty that there seemed to be
in finding and getting ashore quickly a particular kind of stores for
which there happened to be an immediate and urgent demand. After the
fight of the Rough Riders at Guasimas, for example, General Wood found
himself short of ammunition for his Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns. He sent
Lieutenant Kilbourne back to General Shafter at Siboney with a request
that a fresh supply be forwarded at the earliest possible moment.
General Shafter said that he had no idea where that particular kind of
ammunition was to be found, and referred the applicant to Quartermaster
Jacobs at Daiquiri. Lieutenant Kilbourne walked seven miles to Daiquiri,
only to find that the quartermaster had no more idea where that
ammunition was than the commanding general had. He thereupon returned to
Guasimas, after a march of more than twenty miles, and reported to
General Wood that ammunition for the rapid-fire guns could not be had,
because nobody knew where it was. If the commanding general and the
quartermaster could not put their hands on ammunition when it was
needed, they could hardly be expected to find, and forward promptly,
articles of less vital importance, such as camp-kettles, hospital tents,
clothing, and spare blankets.
It would be easy to fill pages with illustrations and proofs of the
statements above made, but I must limit myself to a typical case or two
relating to medical supplies, which seem to have been most neglected.
In a report to Surgeon-General Sternberg dated July 29, Dr. Edward L.
Munson, commander of the reserve ambulance company, says that for two
days after his arrival at Siboney he was unable to get any
transportation whatever for medical supplies from the ships to the
shore. On the third day he was furnished with one rowboat, but even this
was taken away from him, when it had made one trip, by direct order of
General Shafter, who wished to assign it to other duty. Some days later,
with the boats of the _Olivette_, _Cherokee_, and _Breakwater_, he
succeeded in landing medical supplies from perhaps one third of the
transports composing the fleet. "I appealed on several occasions," he
says, "for the use of a lighter or small steamer to collect and land
medical supplies, but I was informed by the quartermaster's department
that they could render no assistance in that way.... At the time of my
departure large quantities of medical supplies, urgently needed on
shore, still remained on the transports, a number of which were under
orders to return to the United States." "In conclusion," he adds, "it is
desired to emphasize the fact that the lamentable conditions prevailing
in the army before Santiago were due (1) to the military necessity which
threw troops on shore and away from the possibility of supply, without
medicines, instruments, or hospital stores of any kind; and (2) to the
lack of foresight on the part of the quartermaster's department in
sending out such an expedition without fully anticipating its needs as
regards temporary wharfage, lighters, tugs, and despatch-boats."
Dr. Frank Donaldson, assistant surgeon attached to Colonel Roosevelt's
Rough Riders, states in a letter to the Philadelphia "Medical Journal,"
dated July 12, that "a desperate effort" was made to secure a few cots
for the sick and wounded in the field-hospitals at the front. There were
hundreds of these cots, he says, on one of the transports off Siboney,
but it proved to be utterly impossible to get any of them landed.
Whether they were all carried back to the United States or not I do not
know; but large quantities of supplies, intended for General Shafter's
army, _were_ carried back on the transports _Alamo_, _Breakwater_,
_Vigilancia_, and _La Grande Duchesse_.
I do not mean to throw any undeserved blame upon the quartermasters and
commissaries at Siboney. Many of them worked day and night with
indefatigable energy to get supplies on shore and forward them to the
army; but they were hampered by conditions over which they had no
control, and for which, perhaps, they were not in any way responsible;
they were often unable to obtain the assistance of steamer captains and
other officers upon whose cooeperation the success of their own efforts
depended, and they probably did all that could be done by individuals
acting as separate units rather than as correlated parts of an organized
and intelligently directed whole. The trouble at Siboney was the same
trouble that became apparent at Tampa. There was at the head of affairs
no controlling, directing, and energizing brain, capable of grasping all
the details of a complex situation and making all the parts of a
complicated mechanism work harmoniously together for the accomplishment
of a definite purpose.
III. The strategic plan of campaign and its execution.
As this branch of the subject will be discussed--if it has not already
been discussed--by better-equipped critics than I can pretend to be, I
shall limit myself to a brief review of the campaign in its strategic
aspect as it appears from the standpoint of a civilian.
I understand, from officers who were in a position to know the facts,
that the original plan of attack on the city of Santiago provided for
close and effective cooeperation of the army with the navy, and for a
joint assault by way of Aguadores and Morro Castle. General Shafter was
to move along the line of the railroad from Siboney to Aguadores,
keeping close to the coast under cover of the guns of the fleet, and,
with the assistance of the latter, was to capture the old Aguadores fort
and such other intrenchments as should be found at the mouth of the
Aguadores ravine. This, it was thought, might be accomplished with very
little loss, because the fleet could shell the Spaniards out of their
fortifications, and thus make it possible for the army to occupy them
without much fighting. Having taken Aguadores, General Shafter was to
continue his march westward along the coast, still under the protection
of Admiral Sampson's guns, until he reached Morro. Then, without
attempting to storm or reduce the castle, he was to go down through the
ravine that leads to the head of the Estrella cove, and seize the
submarine-mine station at the mouth of Santiago harbor. When electrical
connection between the station and the mines had been destroyed, and the
mines had thus been rendered harmless, Admiral Sampson was to force an
entrance, fighting his way in past the batteries, and the army and fleet
were then to advance northward toward the city along the eastern side of
the bay.
This plan had many obvious advantages, the most important of which was
the aid and protection that would be given to the army, at every stage
of its progress, by the guns of perhaps thirty or forty ships of war. In
the opinion of naval officers, Admiral Sampson's cruisers and
battle-ships could sweep the country ahead of our advance with such a
storm of shot and shell that the Spaniards would not be able to hold any
position within a mile of the coast. All that the army would have to do,
therefore, would be to occupy the country as fast as it was cleared by
the fire of the fleet, and then open the harbor to the latter by cutting
communication with the submarine mines which were the only effective
defense that the city had on the water side. General Shafter's army,
moreover, would be all the time on high, sea-breeze-swept land, and
therefore comparatively safe from malarial fever, and it would not only
have a railroad behind it for the transportation of its supplies, but be
constantly within easy reach of its base by water.
Why this plan was eventually given up I do not know. In abandoning it
General Shafter voluntarily deprived himself of the aid that might have
been rendered by three or four hundred high-powered and rapid-fire guns,
backed by a trained fighting force of six or eight thousand men. I do
not know the exact strength of Sampson's and Schley's combined fleets,
but this seems to me to be a conservative estimate. A prominent officer
of the battle-ship _Iowa_ told me in Santiago, after the surrender, that
the fighting ships under Admiral Sampson's command, including the
auxiliary cruisers and mosquito fleet, could concentrate on any given
field a fire of about one hundred shells a second. This included, of
course, small projectiles from the rapid-fire and one-pound machine
guns. He did not think it possible for Spanish infantry to live, much
less fight, in the field swept by such a fire, and this was his reason
for believing that the fleet could have cleared the way for the army if
the latter had advanced along the coast instead of going back into the
interior. The plan of attack by way of Aguadores and Morro was regarded
by the foreign residents of Santiago as the one most likely to succeed;
and a gentleman who lived eight years at Daiquiri, as manager of the
Spanish-American Iron Company, and who is familiar with the topography
of the whole region, writes me: "I have always thought that the great
mistake of the Santiago campaign was that they assaulted the city at its
most impregnable point, instead of taking possession of the heights at
Aguadores, which would have been tantamount to the fall of Morro, the
possession of the harbor entrance and of the harbor itself. The forces
of the Spaniards were not sufficient to maintain any considerable number
of men there, and it seems to me that, with the help of the fleet
shelling the heights, they could have been reached very easily along the
Juragua Railroad. If General Duffield had pressed on when he was there,
it is probable that he would have met with only a thin skirmish-line,
or, if the fleet had done its work, with no resistance at all."
The reason assigned for General Shafter's advance through the valleys
and over the foot-hills of the interior, instead of along the high land
of the coast, is that he had been ordered to "capture the garrison at
Santiago and assist in capturing the harbor and the fleet." He did not
believe, it is said, that he could "capture the garrison" without
completely investing the city on the east and north. If he attacked it
from the southern or Morro side, he might take the city, but the
garrison would escape by the Cobre or the San Luis road. This seems like
a valid and reasonable objection to the original plan of campaign; but
I doubt very much whether the Spanish army would have tried to escape in
any event, for the reason that the surrounding country was almost wholly
destitute of food, and General Linares, in the hurry and confusion of
defeat, would hardly have been able to organize a provision-train for an
army of eight or ten thousand men, even if he had had provisions to
carry. The only place where he could hope to find food in any quantity
was Manzanillo, and to reach that port he would have had to make a
forced march of from twelve to fifteen days. But the question whether
the interior line of advance or the coastline was the better must be
left to strategists, and I express no opinion with regard to it.
The operations and manoeuvers of our army in front of Santiago have
already been described and commented upon by a number of expert
observers, and the only additional criticisms that I have to make relate
to General Shafter's neglect of reconnaissances, as a means of
ascertaining the enemy's strength and position; his apparent loss of
grip after the battle of July 1-2; and his failure not only to prevent,
but to take any adequate steps to prevent, the reinforcement of the
Santiago garrison by a column of five thousand regulars from Manzanillo
under command of Colonel Escarrio. If I am correctly informed, the only
reconnaissances made from the front of our army, after it came within
striking distance of the enemy's intrenched line, were made by General
Chaffee and a few other commanding officers upon their own
responsibility and for their own information. General Shafter knew
little more about the topography of the country in front of his advance
picket-line than could be ascertained by mere inspection from the top of
a hill. He received information to the effect that General Pando, with a
strong column of Spanish regulars, was approaching Santiago from the
direction of Manzanillo; but he never took any adequate steps to
ascertain where General Pando was, when and by what road he might be
expected to arrive, or how many men he was bringing with him. In the
course of a single day--July 3--General Shafter sent three telegrams to
the War Department with regard to the whereabouts of Pando, in each of
which he located that officer in a different place. In the first he
says: "Pando has arrived at Palma" (a village about twenty-five miles
northwest of Santiago on the Cobre road). In the second he declares that
Pando is "six miles north of Santiago," "near a break in the [San Luis]
railroad," and that he thinks "he will be stopped." In the third he
says: "Pando, I find to-night, is some distance away and will not get
into Santiago."
We know now--and General Shafter should have known then--that the column
of reinforcements from Manzanillo was not led by General Pando, but by
Colonel Escarrio, and that at the very time when Shafter, in successive
telegrams, was placing it "at Palma," "six miles north," "near a break
in the railroad," and "some distance away," it was actually in the
Santiago intrenchments, ready for business.
I take this case as an illustration on account of its extreme
importance. A column of five thousand Spanish regulars is not to be
despised; and when it is within a few days', or perhaps a few hours',
march, knowledge of its exact location may be a matter of life and death
to a thousand men. Was there any reason why General Shafter should not
have informed himself accurately with regard to the strength and the
position of this column of reinforcements? I think not. When Admiral
Sampson arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor, it was of vital
importance that he should know with certainty the location of Cervera's
fleet. He did not hastily telegraph the War Department that it was
reported at Cienfuegos; that it was said to be in the Windward Passage;
that it was five miles north of Morro, or that it was near a reef in
the Este Channel and would be stopped. He sent Lieutenant Victor Blue
ashore to make a thorough and careful reconnaissance. Lieutenant Blue
made a difficult and dangerous journey of seventy miles, on foot, around
the city of Santiago, saw personally every vessel in the harbor, and
then returned to the flagship, and reported that Cervera's fleet was all
there. I do not know whether this was good strategy on the part of
Admiral Sampson or not, but it was certainly good common sense. Suppose
that General Shafter had asked General Wood to pick out from the Rough
Riders half a dozen experienced scouts and Indian fighters to make a
reconnaissance, with Cuban guides, in the direction of Manzanillo, and
ascertain exactly where that column of reinforcements was, and when it
might be expected to arrive. Would not the men have been forthcoming,
and would not the desired information have been obtained? I have
confidence enough in the Rough Riders to answer this question
emphatically in the affirmative. The capable men are not all in the
navy, and if General Shafter did not have full information with regard
to Colonel Escarrio's movements, it was simply because he did not ask
any of his officers or men to get it for him--and it was information
well worth having. If that column of five thousand Spanish regulars had
reached Santiago two days earlier--the evening before instead of the
morning after the battle of July 1-2--I doubt very much whether we
should have taken either Caney or San Juan Hill, and General Shafter
might have had better reason than he did have to "consider the
advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear."[14]
If General Shafter believed that these Spanish reinforcements were "some
distance away" and that they would "not get into Santiago," it is
difficult to understand why he should have so far lost his grip, after
the capture of Caney and San Juan Hill, as to telegraph the War
Department that he was "seriously considering the advisability of
falling back to a position five miles in the rear." His troops had not
been defeated, nor even repulsed; they had been victorious at every
point; and the Spaniards, as we afterward learned in Santiago, were
momentarily expecting them to move another mile to the front, rather
than five miles to the rear. It is the belief of many foreign residents
of Santiago, including the English cable-operators, who had the best
possible means of knowing the views of the Spanish commanders, that if
our army had continued the attack after capturing Caney and San Juan
Hill it might have entered the city before dark. This may or may not be
so; but the chance--if chance there was--vanished when Colonel Escarrio,
on the morning after the battle, marched around the head of the bay and
into the city with a reinforcing column of five thousand regulars.
General Shafter says, in his official report, that "the arrival of
General Escarrio was not anticipated" because "it was not believed that
his troops could arrive so soon." The time when a reinforcing column of
five thousand men will reach the enemy ought not to be a matter of vague
belief--it should be a matter of accurate foreknowledge; and if General
Shafter had sent a couple of officers with a few Rough Riders out on the
roads leading into Santiago from Manzanillo, he might have had
information that would have made the arrival of Colonel Escarrio less
unexpected. But he seems to have taken no steps either to ascertain the
movements of the latter or to prevent his junction with Linares.
General O. O. Howard, in an interview published in the New York
"Tribune" of September 14, 1898, explains the apparent indifference of
General Shafter to the approach of these reinforcements as follows: "In
regard to the Cubans allowing the Spanish reinforcements to enter
Santiago from Manzanillo, I would say that I met General Shafter on
board the _Vixen_, and from my conversation with him I infer that he
intended to allow the Spaniards to enter the city, so as to have them
where he could punish them more."
It is to be hoped that General Howard misunderstood General Shafter,
because such strategy as that indicated would suggest the tactics of the
pugnacious John Phoenix, who, in a fight in the editorial room, put
his nose into the mouth of his adversary in order to hold the latter
more securely.
The explanation of the entrance of the Spanish reinforcements given by
General Shafter in his official report of the campaign is as follows:
"General Garcia, with between four and five thousand Cubans, was
intrusted with the duty of watching for and intercepting the
reinforcements expected. This, however, he failed to do, and Escarrio
passed into the city along my extreme right and near the bay."
General Garcia himself, however, in his report to his own government,
states that he was directed by General Shafter to occupy and hold a
certain position on the right wing of the army, and that, without
disobeying orders and leaving that position, he could not possibly
intercept the Manzanillo troops.
As it happened, Escarrio's column did not become a controlling or
decisive factor in the campaign, and the question why he was allowed to
reinforce the Santiago garrison has therefore only a speculative
interest. If, however, these reinforcements had happened to arrive two
days earlier--in time to take part in the battle of July 1-2--the whole
course of events might have been changed. The Spanish garrison of the
city, according to the English cable-operators and the foreign
residents, consisted of three thousand regulars, one thousand
volunteers, and about one thousand sailors and marines from Cervera's
fleet--a force, all together, of not more than five thousand men. This
comparatively small army, fighting in intrenchments and in almost
impregnable positions, came so near repulsing our attack on July 1 that
General Shafter "seriously considered the advisability of falling back
to a position five miles in the rear." If the five thousand men in the
Spanish blockhouses and rifle-pits had been reinforced July 1 instead of
July 3 by the five thousand regulars from Manzanillo, the Santiago
campaign might have ended in a great disaster. Fortunately for General
Shafter, and unfortunately for General Toral, "Socorro de Espana o tarde
o nunca" ("Spanish reinforcements arrive late or never ").