The ‘Splendid Little War’ of 1898: A Reappraisal

The ‘Splendid Little War’ of 1898: A Reappraisal

JOSEPH SMITH University of Exeter

n February 1895 Cuban aspirations for independence from Spain took the form of armed revolt. A brutal colonial war resulted in I which more than 200,OOO Spanish troops were sent to the Caribbean

island in a futile attempt to crush the rebellion. Only 100 miles distant from Cuba, the United States showed a close interest in events. American public opinion was openly sympathetic to the struggle of the Cubans for freedom from European monarchical tyranny. It was also appalled by reports of alleged Spanish cruelty and barbarism towards the civilian population. Although the administrations of President Grover Cleveland (1 893-7) and President William McKinley (1897-1901), proclaimed a policy of neutrality, they engaged in pro- tracted diplomatic discussions with the Spanish government in an attempt to end the fighting and destruction. Unwilling to abandon its most precious imperial possession, Spain resisted American pressure for a ceasefire. In April 1898 McKinley concluded that American military intervention was necessary to force Spain to give up Cuba and thereby bring peace to the island and its people.

War between the United States and Spain officially began on 21 April 1898. On the next day the first shots of the war were fired at sea. Just over three months later, on 12 August, the fighting was declared at an end.’ The intervening weeks were marked by military humiliation and disaster for Spain but much glory and triumph for the United States. American successes extended beyond Cuba to include Spain’s other colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. The most famous victory was secured on 1 May at Manila Bay in the Philippines, where the American Asiatic Squadron commanded by Commodore Dewey sank the opposing Spanish navy ‘before breakfast and without

A readable and comprehensive study of the military aspects is D. F. Trask, The War with Spain in I898 (New York, 1981) [hereafter Trask, War with Spain]. An older and more detailed work, which was written by a naval participant in the war, is F. E. Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: The Spanish-American War (3 vols., 191 1). For an entertaining account which was a bestseller during the 1930s, see W. Millis, The Martial Spirit: A Study of Our War with Spain (Boston, 1931) [hereafter Millis, Martial Spirit].

0 The Historical Association 1995. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1 JF, UK and 238 Main St, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.

JOSEPH SMITH 23

fosing a man’. ‘The destruction of the Spanish fleet’, observed The Times, ‘was as complete as any achievement recorded in naval annals.” The American army was not able to claim any success of similar magnitude. Nevertheless, an expeditionary force of 17,000 men was safely landed in eastern Cuba on 22 June and, within less than four weeks, had compelled a large Spanish army to surrender Cuba’s second largest city, Santiago de Cuba. When Spain sued for peace shortly after- wards, the American ambassador in London, John Hay, was prompted to write to Theodore Roosevelt: ‘It has been a splendid little war; begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the b r a ~ e . ’ ~

Although contemporaries of Hay referred to the conflict as ‘the war with Spain’ or ‘the Spanish war’, the idea of a ‘splendid little war’ accurately conveyed the mood of American excitement and joy at winning the conflict so easily and quickly. ‘In the United States’, noted The Times in August 1898, ‘the general feeling is one of exultation at the completeness of the victory and the shortness of the ~truggle.’~ Indeed, Hay’s celebrated phrase has endured as a convenient and evocative description of the 1898 war. It has been quoted and para- phrased in numerous textbooks on American history, including those by British historians. For example, Harry Allen writes of ‘America’s swift and total defeat of Spain’.’ According to Frank Thistlethwaite, most Americans ‘enjoyed this exuberant little adventure in “colonial warfare”’.6 William Brock refers to the ‘short and glorious Cuban campaign’.’ A recent work by Hugh Brogan describes the war as ‘a short, businesslike affair’.8

The Spanish-American war was undeniably ‘little’ in terms of duration and absence of great battles, but doubts about it being ‘splendid’ were voiced from the very beginning of hostilities. Quite simply, the United States was inadequately prepared for war in 1898. The navy lacked sufficient ships. An army had to be created virtually from scratch. Moreover, the prosecution of the war effort was hampered by frequent inter-service disagreement and rivalry. These deficiencies made the war a far from ‘splendid’ or ‘glorious’ experience for many

’ The Times, 9 May 1898. ’ Hay to Roosevelt, 27 July 1898, cited in W. R. Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay ( 2 vols., Boston, 1915), ii. 337.

The Times, 15 Aug. 1898. H. C. Allen, The United States of America: A Concise History (New York, 1965),

p. 200. An identical comment was made by Alec Campbell: ‘The war itself was short, and its engagements entirely successful for the United States.’ See A. Campbell, ‘The S ankh-American War’, History Today, viii (1958), 245. ?F. Thistlethwaite, The Great Experiment: An Introduction to the History of the American

People (Cambridge, 1961). p. 288. W.R. Brock, The Character of American History (1960). p. 208. H. Brogan, The Pelican History of the United States of America (1986), p. 453. Hay’s

phrase is directly cited in another recent text by a British author: see M. A. Jones, The Limits of Liberty: American History, 1607-1980 (Oxford, 1983), p. 401.

0 The Historical Association 1995

24 THE ‘SPLENDID LITTLE WAR’

American soldiers and sailors. Finally, instead of promoting friendship with the people of Cuba and the Philippines, the military intervention of the United States provoked charges of American imperialism and resulted in a legacy of anti-Americanism which has persisted up to the present day.9

Military Unpreparedness American military victory in 1898 was achieved relatively quickly but not smoothly. In fact, the conduct of American. wartime operations was severely constrained by inadequate military preparation. Although the United States Congress had regularly voted funds to build up a powerful navy during the 1880s and 1890s, the emphasis had been placed on the construction of expensive state-of-the-art battleships to the detriment of acquiring other types of vessels. In 1898 the American navy listed four first-class battleships and was accordingly ranked as the sixth most powerful navy in the world. While the ‘new American navy’ was able to fight major sea battles against other powerful navies, it was ill suited to carry out missions requiring large numbers of ships.I0 This was revealed at the beginning of the Spanish-American War when President McKinley instructed Admiral Sampson to institute a close naval blockade of Cuba. More than thirty years earlier, during the American Civil War, the Union had used more than 600 ships to main- tain a blockade of the Confederacy. In April 1898 the main American naval force, the North Atlantic Squadron based at Key West, Florida, numbered only twenty-six ships and clearly lacked the capability to enforce an effective blockade over the whole coastline of Cuba, which stretched for 2,000 miles. Shortage of ships resulted in Sampson having to confine his blockade initially to the northern coast of Cuba. ‘It is difficult’, remarked The Times, ’to see how a blockade of this scale can be rendered effective with the naval forces at the command of the American Government.’” In the Pacific, Dewey sailed to the Philippines with only seven warships under his command.

The importance attached to battleships also restricted American military options because it meant that Admiral Sampson had to refrain from pursuing aggressive tactics for fear of losing any of these precious warships, For example, the admiral had proposed a daring surprise

Most American history textbooks published during the past twenty years have increasingly stressed the negative and ‘unsplendid’ aspects of the war. For the comment that ‘Hay’s blithe phrase was grotesquely inappropriate’ see P. S. Boyer et al., The Enduring Vision: A Hirtory of the American People (2nd edn., Lexington, 19!23), p. 716. Some writers attempt to place the war in a wider perspective and call it ‘the Spanish-American- Cuban-Filipino War’. see T. G. Paterson, J. G. Clifford and K. J. Hagan, American Foreign Policy: A History (3rd edn., Lexington, 1988), p. 203. l o Naval developments are described in H. Sprout and M. Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776-1918 (Princeton, 1967). pp. 183-222.

The Times, 25 April 1898.


JOSEPH SMITH 25

raid on Havana as the first act of war; but this was rejected by his superiors in Washington on the grounds that armoured vessels must not be risked against Havana’s artillery batteries and underwater mines. These ships were to be held back for the major sea battle which it was confidently assumed would eventually take place between the American and Spanish fleets. The famous naval strategist, Captain Alfred T. Mahan, agreed with the decision and later explained: ‘No merely possible success justified risk, unless it gave a fair promise of diminishing the enemy’s naval force, and so of deciding the control of the sea, upon which the issue of the war depended.’12 In contrast to the bold tactics adopted by Dewey in the Philippines, caution rather than daring characterized American naval policy in the Atlantic and the Caribbean.

The damaging consequences of political interference and administrative deficiencies were even more evident in the American army, which was considerably less prepared for war than the navy. Separated into numerous small posts spread out over the continental United States, the regular army was limited by law to a total listed peacetime strength of 28,000 officers and enlisted men. Until 1898 there was little require- ment or incentive for the War Department and the army to undertake contingency planning for wartime operations. In the unlikely event of war, army officers presumed that their principal mission would be to defend the United States from external attack rather than engage in an overseas military campaign. In fact, the War Department was not encouraged to prepare for possible war against Spain because Presidents Cleveland and McKinley both sought a diplomatic solution to the Cuban crisis and avoided military preparations which might serve to provoke the Spanish government. This policy, however, was drama- tically reversed by the outbreak of war and McKinley’s subsequent call on 23 April for 125,000 volunteers to join the army. Almost overnight the War Department had to deal with the enormous task of raising a huge volunteer army. The call for such a large number of volunteers resulted in massive confusion over recruiting, mustering and training. l 3

The problems were seen most vividly in Tampa, Florida, which was selected as the principal base for preparing and despatching an army expeditionary force to invade Cuba. The choice of Tampa was sensible on the grounds of its geographical proximity to Cuba, but this advan- tage was outweighed by its remoteness from America’s main factories and supply depots, which were located in the north and midwest.

I‘ A . T . Mahan, Lessons of the War with Spain, and Other Articles (Boston, 1899) [hereafter Mahan, Lessons of War], p. 32 .

On 25 May McKinley issued a second call for volunteers, on this occasion requesting an additional 75,000 men. A total of 200,442 volunteers were recruited during the war. Of this number, an estimated two-thirds remained in the United States and never saw service overseas. A scholarly study of how the War Department organized the new volunteer army is G . A. Cosmas, An Army For Empire: The United States and the Spanish-American War (Columbia, 1971) [hereafter Cosmas, Army for Empire].



Rail and road communications were clearly inadequate. Nor did the difficulties end at Tampa. The docks at Port Tampa were nine miles distant from the city, to which they were connected by a single railway line. ‘Unquestionably,’ the Secretary of War, Russell A. Alger, later disarmingly summed up, ‘Tampa was not adapted to the concentration and the effective handling of the vast quantities of supplies necessary for an army of 25,000 rnen.’I4

For the substantial numbers of troops who arrived in Tampa daily from late April onwards, the immediate impression was of oppressive heat and an abundance of sand. The journalist George Kennan recalled his previous travels to remote parts of Russia and unkindly likened the place to Semipalatinsk, a Siberian city which Russian army officers nicknamed ‘the Devil’s Sand-box’.’’ The problem of adjusting to the climate and environment was made worse by the evident inexperience of army staff officers in organizing a large expeditionary force. The latent tensions were however moderated by a strong sense of patriotism and received minimal publicity until the journalist Poultney Bigelow published an indictment on 28 May. Bigelow stressed the misery of daily life in the camp: ‘Down here we are sweltering day and night with the thermometer ninety-eight in the shade. Nobody dares complain for fear of appearing unpatriotic . . . Here we are thirty days after the declaration of war, and not one regiment is yet equipped with uniforms suitable for hot weather.’16

In addition to the difficulties of housing, feeding and equipping thousands of troops, War Department officials and army staff officers faced the problem of organizing their embarkation. The army had no professional experience of major overseas campaigning and did not at first possess transport ships or landing craft. Such technical difficulties, however, were glossed over by officials in Washington. On 31 May Shafter was ordered to load a fullyequipped army of 25,000 and proceed without delay to attack Santiago de Cuba. In a frantic effort to implement these orders, thousands of men and their supplies were rushed to the railway terminal at Tampa where they waited to be put aboard transports at a wharf which could handle a maximum of no more than nine ships at any one time. The commanding general of the army, General Nelson A. Miles, travelled from Washington to assist Shafter. ‘On arriving at Tampa,’ he observed on 1 June, ‘I found great confusion and the place crowded with an indiscriminate accumula- tion of supplies and war materials.’” It was hoped, however, that the

l4 R. A, Alger, The Spanish-American War (New York, 1901) [hereafter Alger, Spanish- American War], p. 65. Is G . Kennan, Campaigning in Cuba (Port Washington, 1899) [hereafter Kennan, Campaigning in Cuba], pp. 2-3. l6 Harper’s Weekly (New York), 28 May 1898. cited in C. H. Brown, The Correspondents’ War: Journalists in the Spanish-American War (New York, 1967), p. 231.

N. A. Miles, Serving the Republic: Memoirs of the Civil and Military Life of Nelson A . Miles (New York, 191 l), p. 275.


JOSEPH SMITH 27

embarkation could take place on Saturday 4 June. ‘Men are working night and day,’ Miles telegraphed to Alger,’’ But the deadline was missed. To general dismay it was discovered that the available fleet of transports had the capacity to accommodate not 25,000 men and their supplies but only around 18,OOO-20,OOO at the most. Even with this reduction in size, Shafter admitted that embarkation could not be carried out before Tuesday 7 June. On that day, however, President McKinley personally telegraphed: ‘Time is the essence of the situation. Early departure of first importance.’” The almost indecent haste to leave Tampa resulted in disorder and chaos. Attempts to organize the loading of ships in an efficient and methodical manner were abandoned, due to pressure of time and the awareness that there would not be sufficient space for every regiment. In effect, most commanders were not told until the evening of 7 June that the expedition intended to depart early the following morning - indeed no official announcement was actually made, and news was carried by word of mouth. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, second-in-command of the volunteer cavalry regiment known as the ‘Rough Riders’ understood the implication perfectly: ‘We had no intention of getting left, and prepared at once for the scramble which was about to take place.’20 Arriving at the dock, Roosevelt found that the Yucatan, the ship in which the Rough Riders were to travel, had also been assigned to two other regiments. An administrative error had obviously been made, because the Yucatan was capable of taking only half the combined numbers of the three regiments. There was no time for bureaucratic niceties. Instead, Roosevelt decisively resolved the issue by taking possession of the Yucatan for the Rough Riders and preventing anyone else from coming aboard. ‘There was a good deal of expostulation, but we had possession,’ he jubilantly remarked.2’

By fair means or foul, the loading of the transports continued throughout the night, and the convoy began leaving the harbour on the morning of 8 June. At that point Shafter received a telegram from Alger instructing him to bring everything to a halt. It was learned that an American scout ship had sighted two Spanish warships off the northern coast of Cuba. Consequently, it was considered too dangerous for the expedition to proceed. For their own protection the transports moved back to Tampa Bay where they and their 17,000 passengers remained in blistering heat for five days. The reported sighting of Spanish warships turned out to be an error, so the expedition was eventually allowed to depart on 14 June. It was the largest expeditionary force to leave the United States, but the story of its preparation and despatch was hardly ‘splendid’.

I s Miles to Alger, 1 June 1898, cited in Alger, Spanish-American War, p. 67. ‘ 9 McKinley to Shafter, 7 June 1898, cited in ibid., p. 71. 2o T. Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (New York, 1902) [hereafter Roosevelt, Rough Riders], p. 57. 21 Ibid., p. 60.



Divergence over Strategy and Conduct of Military Operations No sooner had war begun than the American press adopted the slogan ‘On to Havana’, which implied that American troops would soon be landed in Cuba to seize the Cuban capital. In reality, such optimism was quite unfounded because the American army lacked the means to launch a successful armed invasion against entrenched Spanish forces estimated to number at least 40,000 regular troops. By default President McKinley fell back on the war plan originally attributed to Lieutenant William Warren Kimball of the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, which emphasized the immediate use of the American navy to mount a close blockade of the island combined with separate raids launched against Spanish merchant shipping and naval targets in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

An unanticipated result of this strategy was Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.22 No such daring exploit was achieved in the waters off Cuba, where the actual deployment of the American navy was defensive rather than offensive. This reflected a desire not to risk the loss of any battleships. It was also influenced by the outbreak of alarm among residents along the eastern seaboard of the United States who suddenly realized that war exposed their homes, pro- perty and lives to surprise raids and bombardment by Spanish armoured cruisers operating in Atlantic waters. Even the nation’s capital at Washington was believed to be virtually defenceless, just as it had been in 1814 when the British had burned the White House. The public perception that the coastline was inadequately defended created political pressures which resulted in the decision to split the American fleet into two separate squadrons. The main North Atlantic Squadron remained at Key West, Florida, while a ‘flying squadron’ was based further to the north at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Sampson found himself not only denuded of ships to institute the blockade of Cuba but also at greater risk of being out-gunned if the Spanish squadron appeared and wished to force a battle. Mahan condemned the politically motivated decision to split the fleet as ‘contrary to sound practice’.23

Political pressures were also exerted on the army to do something to satisfy the public’s expectation of early military action. President McKinley favoured an attack on Havana, while General Miles suggested an invasion of Puerto Rico. The most immediately feasible option, however, was to send relatively small units of regular troops to an isolated part of Cuba where they could join forces with the rebels and attack vulnerable Spanish garrisons. Various schemes emanated from Washington, though none was ever implemented. The decision of

22 The subject of American naval strategy and the significance of the Philippines is percep- tively examined in J. A. S . Grenville, ‘American Naval Preparations for War with Spain, 1896-1898’, Journal of American Studies, ii (1968), 33-47 and R. Spector, ‘Who Planned the Attack on Manila Bay?’, Mid-America, Iiii (1971), 94-102. 23 Mahan, Lessons of War, p. 56.


JOSEPH SMITH 29

Admiral Cervera on 19 May to take the Spanish naval squadron into Santiago de Cuba effectively resolved the confusion in the US capital.24 South-eastern Cuba suddenly became the critical area of military concern. The expeditionary force preparing at Tampa would accordingly be sent not to Havana but to Santiago de Cuba.

Any American attempt to invade Cuba required co-operation between the army and navy. Unfortunately, no formal administrative machinery existed in Washington for combining land and sea forces in joint operations overseas. Moreover, inter-service rivalries were frequent in the bureaucratic no man’s land of Washington, where the Navy Department showed little sympathy or understanding for the War Department and vice verso. The secretary of the navy, John D. Long, saw the war in naval terms and regarded the army as subordinate to the navy. The secretary of war, Russell A. Alger, downplayed the role of the navy and stressed that only a land invasion of Cuba by the army would secure the final victory over Spain. During the early weeks of the war it often seemed that the American navy was ‘at war’ with the American army while Spain was relegated to the sideline. For example, at a cabinet meeting on 6 May, Long pointedly criticized Alger for prevaricating. According to Long, the army only had to land 50,000 men on Cuban soil and the war would come to an end. Next day, goaded by Long’s comments, Alger ordered General Miles to assemble a force of 70,000 men and prepare for a direct frontal assault on Havana. Miles disliked the secretary of war and took the opportunity to describe Alger’s plan as much too ambitious. It was therefore modified into a smaller scheme involving an attack to the west of Havana at Mariel. No doubt to Alger’s satisfaction and Long’s embarrassment, this proved imprac- ticable because the Navy Department was unable to provide warships to protect the troop convoy.

Professional and personal rivalries were also apparent among the military commanders in the field. In March 1898 the appointment by Long of Captain William Sampson to command the North Atlantic Squadron caused ill feeling among some senior officers who resented being passed over in favour of a junior officer. The most awkward relations were between Sampson and Commodore Winfield Schley. Schley was in charge of the ‘flying squadron’ at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and jealously insisted on retaining an independent command over his ships.25 Sampson also clashed with his army colleague, General Rufus Shafter, concerning the particular military strategy to be pursued at Santiago de Cuba. The admiral believed that the army expeditionary

24 The reputedly powerful Spanish naval squadron had left the Cape Verdes on 29 April. American military experts believed that its destination was Havana and were surprised to discover that the ships were in Santiago de Cuba. 2s The sour personal relationship blighted the careers of both men and resulted in a postwar inquiry. See United States Navy Department, Record of Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry in the Case of Rear-Admiral Winfield S . Schley, U.S. Navy. September 12, 1901 (2 vols., Washington DC, 1902).


30 THE ‘SPLENDID LITTLE W A R

force had been sent primarily to capture the forts at the entrance to the bay and thereby clear the way for the navy to attack the Spanish fleet in the interior harbour. But Shafter thought otherwise and mounted an infantry assault on the city several miles inland. Open signs of personal friction were displayed on 2 July when Shafter asked Sampson to launch a diversionary naval attack to draw Spanish forces away from the city. Sampson refused on the grounds that such an impulsive manoeuvre would inevitably result in ‘a great loss of life’. Shafter responded with undisguised irritation: ‘I am at a loss to see why the Navy can not work under a destructive fire as well as the Army.’% The uncomfortable personal relationship between the two commanders was highlighted by the absence of a representative from the American navy at the ceremony marking the Spanish capitulation of Santiago de Cuba.

The Realities of War That ‘fortune which loves the brave’, in John Hay’s words, was exemplified by the success of the American expeditionary force in establishing a beachhead at Daiquiri in eastern Cuba without facing any opposition from the local Spanish garrison. Sampson could only describe the absence of prepared Spanish defensive positions as ‘a my~tery’.~’ ‘It was great luck for us, but it was not war,’ observed George Kennan.28 Only two - accidental - deaths occurred during the landing. The advance into the interior, however, proved more dangerous. Eager to rush into battle and gain glory for himself and the cavalry regiment which he commanded, General Joseph Wheeler engaged the Spaniards in a skirmish at Las Guasimas on 24 June. On approaching the enemy, Theodore Roosevelt was delighted by his first sight of the tropical forest in all its luxurious magnificence, but he was soon disconcerted by the particular dangers of jungle warfare and recalled: ‘The air seemed full of the rustling sound of the Mauser bullets, for the Spaniards knew the trails by which we were advancing, and opened heavily on our position. Moreover, as we advanced we were, of course, exposed, and they could see us and fire. But they themselves were entirely in~is ib le . ’~~

Las Guasimas was not only a fierce baptism of fire but also a rude awakening to reality for American troops who had become accustomed to believe that the Spaniards lacked the will to fight. Wheeler was taken aback by the sheer amount of rifle fire and reckoned that it was more intense than any he had experienced during the American Civil War. Although the American press subsequently claimed a great victory

26 Shafter to Sampson, 2 July 1898, cited in Trask, War with Spain, p. 253. 27 W. T. Sampson, ‘The Atlantic Fleet in the Spanish War’, Century Magazine, lvii (1899), 904.

29 Roosevelt, Rough Riders, p. 89. Kennan, Campaigning in Cuba, p. 80.


JOSEPH SMITH 3 1

for the United States cavalry, the Spaniards asserted that they had merely made a tactical withdrawal to stronger defensive positions after inflicting heavy losses on their enemy. The number of casualties reveal that their claim was not totally without foundation. Sixteen Americans died and fifty-two were wounded, while the Spanish suffered ten killed and twenty-five wounded.

An even fiercer battle was fought a week later when the Americans attacked the hills directly overlooking Santiago de Cuba. At the hamlet of El Caney 520 Spaniards stubbornly resisted 5,400 Americans for more than nine hours. A few miles to the south at the San Juan Heights a similar American infantry advance was halted by intense Spanish fire. The journalist Richard Harding Davis described the American soldiers as being trapped in a ‘chute of death’. His report graphically noted: ‘The situation was desperate. Our troops could not retreat, as the trail for two miles behind them was wedged with men. They could not remain where they were for they were being shot to pieces. There was only one thing they could do - go forward and take the San Juan hills by assault.’30 In fact, a retreat would have been disastrous because Shafter had prepared no plans for such a contingency, whether tactical or enforced. Although Shafter’s strategy of advancing en musse gained the desired territory, it resulted in heavy casualties. A cautious and unimaginative commander, Shafter emerged from the war with the reputation of a blunderer rather than a hero.3’

The first press reports about the Battle of San Juan Hill suggested a far from ‘splendid’ outcome.32 ‘It was a victory, but a doubtful victory,’ remarked the British journalist John Black at kin^.^^ Dismayed by heavy casualties and the threat of a Spanish counter-attack, Shafter summoned his generals to consider the advisability of falling back to a more easily defensible position. The gloomy mood among the American troops was confirmed by Roosevelt, who wrote to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge: ‘We have won so far at a heavy cost; but the Spaniards fight very hard and we are within measurable distance of a terrible military disaster.’34 The Spaniards, however, had also suffered heavy losses, and fortunately for Shafter, their desire was not to counter-attack but to stop fighting and enter into negotiations to surrender the city.

30 R . H . Davis, The Cuban and Porto Rico Campaigns (New York, 1898), pp. 213-14. 3 1 In many respects, Shafter’s tactics foreshadowed those adopted by European generals in the First World War. Shafter is sympathetically portrayed in a recent biography: see P. H. Carlson, ‘Pecos Bill’: A Military Biography of William R . Shafter (College Station, 1989). 32 Although usually referred to as ‘the Battle of San Juan Hill’, the struggle was to win control of a number of hills or ridges forming a wider area known as the San Juan Heights. ” J . B. Atkins, The War in Cuba: The Experiences of an Englishman with the United States Army (1899), p. 136. Atkins was the correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. 34 Roosevelt to Lodge, 3 July 1898, cited in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. E. E. Morison (8 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1951), ii. 846.



American elation over the capture of Santiago de Cuba was quickly dampened by rumours that yellow fever had broken out among the troops. There was no known cure for this sourge, popularly referred to as ’yellow jack’, which annually claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives in the tropical regions of the Caribbean and Brazil. By autho- rizing American soldiers to fight in Cuba during the disease-ridden rainy season, President McKinley had, in effect, taken a calculated risk with the army’s health. The first cases of suspected yellow fever were notified on 6 July. In fact, though surgeons did not know this in 1898, the vast majority of cases of sickness arose not from yellow fever but the much more common and less deadly malarial fever. Never- theless, the spread of disease was most alarming. On 22 July Kennan estimated that only about half of the American troops were fit for active duty. He placed the blame not on the Cuban climate but on ‘bad management, lack of foresight, and the almost complete break- down of the army’s commissary and medical department^'.^^

Kennan’s views were published in the American press and formed part of a growing chorus of public concern and anger emerging in the United States that official neglect and incompetence were causing the unnecessary suffering of brave American soldiers in Cuba. To force the hand of the government in Washington, senior army officers at Santiago de Cuba produced a letter which was leaked to the American press on 4 August. Their recommendation was blunt and uncompro- mising: ‘This army must be moved at once or it will perish. As an army it can be safely moved now. Persons responsible for preventing such a move will be responsible for the unnecessary loss of many thousands of lives.’36 Alger had wanted the army to remain in Cuba ‘until the fever has had its run’,37 but he bowed to political pressure and ordered an immediate evacuation from Santiago de Cuba. Within three weeks the soldiers of the expeditionary force had been returned to the United States. The masses of emaciated men suffering from malarial fever or its after-effect gave the impression of a defeated rather than an all-conquering army.38

Kennan was justified in pointing out the failings of the War Depart- ment, but the problems which had arisen were the result not so much of personal incompetence or malice as of the acute shortage of experienced officials and staff officers to deal with the enormous demands made by the war. Administrative shortcomings were also especially

3s Kennan, Campaigning in Cuba, pp. 215-16. 36 The letter was signed by a number of senior officers including Roosevelt and was known as the ‘round robin’. The text is printed in Alger, Spanish-American War, p. 266. 37 Cited in Cosmas, Army for Empire, p. 255. 38 In order to prevent the possible spread of disease and, no doubt, with public relations in mind, the War Department ensured that all soldiers were disembarked and quarantined at a reception camp at Montauk Point in a remote part of Long Island. The hasty removal of troops from Cuba resulted in disorder and confusion at Montauk Point, which was reminiscent of Tampa during the days preceding the despatch of the expeditionary force.


JOSEPH SMITH 33

evident in the army camps in the United States, where supply consis- tently failed to meet demand. Consignments of equipment arrived every day, but the contents were not usually listed on the crates and boxes. Even if the contents could be identified, the facilities for efficient loading and distribution rarely existed. Consequently, the basic wartime reality for the thousands of men in the camps was poor accommoda- tion and shortages of basic necessities. Unpalatable food was a particularly common complaint. Irritation and boredom also set in as the large majority of the volunteers realized that they were unlikely to be sent overseas. The camps lacked adequate sanitation and health-care facilities primarily because they had been originally conceived as temporary transit points rather than permanent encampments. As the summer progressed the incidence of disease, especially typhoid, rose alarmingly. By 30 September 1898 more than 500 soldiers had died from disease - a higher number than those killed in combat

In the public mind, the military achievements of the army in Cuba were increasingly overshadowed by allegations of official incompetence and negligence. Blame was increasingly personalized and fastened upon secretary of war Alger. In popular speech the word ‘Algerism’ was used as a term of abuse to denote maladministration and insensitivity. To relieve public anxieties McKinley appointed a special presidential commission to investigate the War Department’s conduct of the war. Under the chairmanship of General Grenville M. Dodge, the ‘Dodge Commis- sion’ commenced its proceedings on 26 September 1898 and continued until 9 February 1899. No sensational revelations were forthcoming until General Miles appeared before the commission on 21 December 1898 and revived his longstanding feud with Alger by accusing the War Department of including in the army’s rations large stocks of canned roast beef treated with chemicals. Miles declared that soldiers in Cuba had suffered considerable sickness after eating what he described as ‘embalmed beef.40 The final report of the commission dismissed Miles’s allegations and found no incriminating evidence of corruption or maladministration by the War Department. The com- missioners, however, adopted an ambiguous attitude towards Alger and ended their report with the concluding statement that ‘there was lacking in the general administration of the War Department during the continuance of the war with Spain that complete grasp of the situation which was essential to the highest efficiency and discipline of the Army.’4’ Though technically exonerated by the findings, Alger and the War Department suffered the stigma of having been investi- gated and emerged from the inquiry with tarnished reputations.

39 See Millis, Martial Spirit, pp. 366-7. 40 Miles’s testimony is printed in Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the War Department in the War with Spain, 56th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document No. 221 (8 vols., Washington DC, 1900), vii. 3240-64. 41 Ibid., i . 115-6. Alger’s own version of events is contained in Alger, Spanish-American War, pp. 376-410.


34 T H E ‘SPLENDID LITTLE W A R

American Imperialism The Spanish-American war appeared ‘splendid’ to many Americans because it gave them the opportunity to assist people who were strug- gling against the oppression of Spanish monarchical rule. In the congressional debate on American intervention Senator John Daniel of Virginia argued that the Cubans were emulating the American colonists in fighting for ‘the most glorious principles of Anglo-Saxon freedom and independen~e’.~~ ‘The time has come when the American people demand and when the interests of the race demand’, declared Senator Henry Teller of Colorado, ‘that we shall say the people of that island are entitled to be free.’43 American soldiers arriving in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines saw themselves as liberators and benefactors. They were, therefore, unprepared for and usually taken aback by their initial encounters with the local people. Part of the reason for this lay in the propaganda of the popular ‘yellow’ press in the United States, which had been successful in portraying the Cuban insurgents as an organized army of patriots who were in most respects just like the Americans themselves.44 American troops landing at Daiquiri were consequently surprised and shocked to be confronted by Cubans who visibly failed to meet the idealistic expectations built up in the United States. George Kennan expressed the most common reaction when he observed that ‘full four-fifths’ of the insurgents were mulattoes or blacks. ‘If their rifles and cartridge-belts had been taken away from them,’ he added, ‘they would have looked like a horde of dirty Cuban beggars and ragamuffins on the tramp.4s

The military value of the insurgents was also soon brought into question. ‘It was evident, at a glance,’ remarked Theodore Roosevelt, ’that they would be no use in serious fighting, but it was hoped that

42 15 April 1898, Congressional Record, 55th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 3880. 43 Ibid., p. 3898. 44 Gaining their name from a cartoon character called ‘the yellow kid’, the ‘yellow’ daily newspapers sought exciting and sensational stories and found abundant material in the trouble and strife of war-ravaged Cuba. The classic studies of the emergence of the ‘yellow’ press are M. M. Wilkerson, Public Opinion and the Spanish-American War: A Study in War Propaganda (Baton Rouge, 1932) and J. L. Wisan, The Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press (New York, 1934). The influence of the press upon the decision to go to war has been questioned in G. W. Auxier, ‘Middle Western Newspapers and the Spanish American War, 1895-1898’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review. xxvi (1948), 523-34 and H. J. Sylvester, ‘The Kansas Press and the Coming of the Spanish-American War’, The Historian, xxxi (1969), 251-67. 45 Kennan, Campaigning in Cuba, p. 92. The attitudes of American society towards the war are expertly examined in G. F. Linderrnan, The Mirror of War: American Society and the Spanish-American War (Ann Arbor, 1974). On relations between Americans and Cubans the outstanding study is L. A. Perez, Cuba berween Empires, 1878-1902 (Pittsburgh, 1983) [hereafter Perez, Cuba Between Empires]. See also the brief discussion in J. Smith, ‘The American Image of the Cuban Insurgents in 1898’, Zeitschrift for Angfistik und Amerikanistik, xl (1992), 319-29.


JOSEPH SMITH 35

they might be of service in scouting.46 This was the view held by the American military command, who quickly dropped the idea of treating the Cubans as wartime allies who would be taking on a major combat role. They preferred instead to assign them to defensive duties and especially routine tasks as scouts, messengers, sentries, porters and trench diggers. The insurgent leader in Oriente, General Calixto Garcia, was greatly offended and protested to Shafter that his men should be regarded as soldiers and not labourers. His protests were ignored. A similarly unsympathetic attitude was displayed by American commanders in the Philippines, where General Merritt rejected Filipino requests for a joint military occupation of Manila. The general’s action was commended by Alger, who noted later that ‘the horrors of a Filipino horde let loose in the town to indulge in the expected carnival of loot, arson, and rapine, had been a~oided’.~’

The military intervention of the United States transformed a struggle for national liberation in Cuba into a war of American military conquest. Americans used their superior power not only to dictate military strategy but also to determine the peace settlement. The Cuban insurgents were pointedly excluded from the negotiations leading to the surrender of Santiago de Cuba, the peace protocol and the treaty of Paris. The pre-eminence of the United States in Cuba was symbolically demonstrated in Havana on 1 January 1899 when the American military authorities refused to allow armed insurgents to participate in the ceremonies marking the evacuation of Spanish troops. The insurgent commander, General Maximo Gomez, deliberately stayed away from the capital and lamented that the Americans ‘have soured the joy of the victorious Cubans’.48

The United States formally replaced Spanish rule in Cuba with a military government. The duration of the occupation was not speci- fied because the American authorities possessed a low opinion of the capacity of the Cubans to exercise self-government. One particularly disparaging comment made by General Shafter in December 1898 was widely reported in the American press: ‘Self-government! Why, these people are no more fit for self-government than gun-powder is for President McKinley affirmed that the United States was obligated to help the Cubans set up ‘a government which shall be free and independent’, but he warned ominously that the American military occupation would continue ‘until there is complete tranquillity in the

46 Roosevelt, Rough Riders, p. 75. The opposing view, that the insurgents contributed significantly to American military success, is argued in Ptrez, Cuba between Empires and especially in P. S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism (2 vols., New York, 1972) [hereafter Foner, Spanish-Cuban-Arnericnn War]. 4’ Alger, Spanish-American War, p. 340. 48 M. Gomez, Diario de camparia, 1868-1899 (Havana, 1968), pp. 371-2. 49 New York Tribune, 19 Dec. 1898.



island and a stable government ina~gurated’.~’ Independence was eventually granted on 20 May 1902, but only after a Cuban convention had accepted the Platt Amendment giving the United States a constitutional right to intervene in Cuba.

The conquest of Manila presented the United States with the dilemma of the disposition of the Philippines. In a famous statement justifying American annexation of the islands, McKinley explained ‘that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died’.” Imbued with the sense of ‘the highest motives’ referred to by Hay, officials in Washington did not anticipate armed Filipino resistance to American rule. In Alger’s opinion, the Filipino insurgents who had been fighting the Spaniards since 1896 were an unrepresen- tative minority of ‘armed natives’.s2 This complacency proved to be a grievous miscalculation. The fighting which broke out on 4 February 1899 marked the beginning not of a brief skirmish but of the ‘Philippine insurrection’ or ‘Filipino-American War’ which lasted for more than three years.

To defeat the insurgents it became necessary for the American army to pacify the civilian population, especially in the countryside. Allega- tions emerged of atrocities committed by American forces against Filipino civilians. The most shocking related to General Jacob Smith, who was later court-martialled for his orders to his men to turn the island of Samar into a ‘howling wilderness’ by shooting every Filipino male above the age of ten. One influential American weekly sadly observed in April 1899 that ‘the war of 1898 ”for the cause of humanity” has degenerated . . . into a war of conquest, characterized by rapine and cruelty worthy of savages. y 5 3 The Filipino-American War dragged on until July 1902 when insurgent resistance came to end. The conflict claimed the lives of over 4,000 American soldiers and 15,000 insurgents. Civilian deaths were estimated to exceed 200,000. In addition to the human losses, the war in the Philippines delivered an unquantifiable but no less damaging blow to America’s image as a nation dedicated

50 ‘Annual Presidential Message to Congress for 1898’, cited in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States for 1898 (Washington, DC, 1901), p. xvii. 51 Account of an interview given by McKinley to a group of Methodist clergymen at the White House, 21 Nov. 1899, cited in C. S. Olcott, The Life of William McKinley ( 3 vols., Boston, 1916), ii. 110-11. For a discussion of the authenticity and significance of the statement see L. L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence, 1980), pp. 140-42 and E. K. Smith, “‘A Question from which We could not Escape”: William McKinley and the Decision to Acquire the Philippine Islands’, Diplomatic History, ix (1985), 363-75. One eminent American historian has argued that McKinley’s stress on ‘duty’ exemplified a wider ’psychic crisis’ from which American society was suffering. See R. Hofstadter, ‘Manifest Destiny and the Philippines’, America in Crisis, ed. D. Aaron (New York, 1952), pp. 173-200. 52 Alger, Spanish-American War, p. 356. *) The Nation (New York), 20 April 1899.


JOSEPH SMITH 37

to the promotion of freedom and democracy. Influenced by the Vietnam war and American policy towards Fidel Castro, some recent historians have argued that American military intervention in 1898, far from being ‘splendid’, was intended to forestall the imminent success of national liberation movements in Cuba and the Philippines. According to this view, the tyranny of American imperialism and racism was imposed upon the people of the former Spanish colonies.54

Conclusion The Spanish-American War reflected glory on the American people and their country. The great powers of Europe were impressed and took notice of the rise of the United States to the status of a world power. In this sense, Hay was justified to coin the phrase ‘a splendid little war’. However, with the exception of President McKinley and the two war heroes Commodore Dewey and Colonel Roosevelt few American political and military leaders emerged from the war with enhanced reputations. From beginning to end the war exposed serious administrative shortcomings and military deficiencies. The majority of men who volunteered for service remained festering in the United States. Those who went overseas were exposed to trying conditions and the perils of disease. American soldiers fought with courage and deter- mination, but their motives and achievements were called into question by the subsequent subjection of overseas peoples to the rule of the United States. The ‘splendid little war’ was therefore historically signi- ficant in providing not so much a smashing American military triumph but an example of the complicated clash between myth and reality in American attitudes and responses to foreign policy issues.

54 The counterfactual argument that the Cuban insurgents would have defeated Spain without the military intervention of the United States is effectively presented in Foner, Spanish-Cubun-American War and PCrez, Cuba between Empires. The same view has long been argued by Cuban historians; see e.g. E. Roig de Leuchsenring, Cuba no debe su independencia a 10s Estados Unidos (Havana, 1950). A recent study emphasizing the influence of American imperialism upon modern Cuba is J . R. Benjamin, The United States and the Origins of the Cuban Revolution: An Empire of Liberty in an Age of National Liberation (Princeton, 1990). American policy and attitudes towards the Filipinos are severely criticized in L. Wolff, Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippine Islands at the Century’s Turn (New York, 1961). Two recent works which explore the same theme are R. E. Welch, Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899-1902 (Chapel Hill, 1979) and S. Karnow, In our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines (New York, 1989).


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The ‘Splendid Little War’ of 1898: A Reappraisal

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