The Roughest Riders (24 page)

Alger also cabled Admiral Sampson to close in on the harbor as quickly as possible, to relieve Shafter's troops who were still facing strong enemy resistance. Sampson turned his command over to Commodore Winfield S. Schley and boarded his cruiser
New York
with orders to sail to Siboney to confer with Shafter, whom Alger ordered to meet there with Sampson. At dawn on the morning of July 3, the Spanish held a mass to pray for victory, and at 8:00 A
M
they weighed anchor. Fifteen minutes later, Cervera flashed the signals to his naval commanders. “Sortie in the prescribed order!
¡Viva España!
” An aide to Cervera was moved to remark, “
Pobre España
”—poor Spain—as the Spanish ships pushed away from their moorings
into the face of almost certain suicide. Schley had anchored the American fleet four miles offshore to avoid the heavily mined harbor. At 9:30 he was stunned to see the first of the Spanish ships moving slowly away from land, in his direction. He knew he had them outgunned with his seven-ship fleet, the well-conditioned battleships
Iowa
,
Indiana
,
Oregon
, and
Texas
, and his cruisers and armed yachts
Brooklyn
,
Gloucester
, and
Vixen.

Schley kept his spyglass trained on the Spanish fleet as it sailed slowly toward the mouth of the harbor. Cervera's ships started to head west along the coast in an attempt to outrun the Americans and escape toward Cienfuegos. The
Infanta Maria Teresa
was in the lead, followed at six- to ten-minute intervals by the other cruisers and destroyers. Sampson had sunk an American collier in the harbor channel earlier to block a Spanish escape, and the enemy ships had to move gingerly around it. Once past it, they would no doubt build up a head of steam as they sailed into open water. Schley gave the order to close in and cut them off. “Go right for them!” he sounded the alarms. The
Iowa
opened fire first, ripping shells into the
Infanta Maria Teresa
with devastating firepower. The American sailors could see the dead and wounded enemy crewmen flying in all directions across the deck. Cervera seized upon his only opportunity for victory. He directed his flagship directly at the
Brooklyn.
If he could ram it and knock it out of action, he might have a chance to punch through the blockade and make it to Cienfuegos.

Cervera's desperate plan failed as quickly as it was hatched. Every ship in the American flotilla turned toward the Spanish flagship and pounded it to pieces, silencing most of its guns. Explosions rocked the ship, and flames broke out from stem to stern. By 10:15, the Spanish flagship ran for the beach and its commander hauled down its colors. Schley turned the American guns next on the
Oquendo
with similar results, and the ship ran aground and raised a white flag. But Cervera was not yet defeated. With Sampson
reversing course and sailing back on the
New York
to join the engagement, the
Cristóbal Colón
fired on the
Iowa
, hitting her twice and forcing the American vessel to reduce speed. Both sides set off their guns from a distance of twenty-five hundred yards. The
Furor
and
Pluton
were struck next, with the first hit by the
Gloucester
and running aground in a fiery explosion, and the second sinking shortly after 11:00
AM
, when it was pounded nearly in half by shells from the
Iowa.

The fastest of the Spanish fleet, the
Cristóbal Colón
, escaped the blockade and dashed westerly along the coast. The
Brooklyn
,
Texas
, and
Oregon
chased after the fleeing vessel for the next two hours. The Spanish cruiser raced through open water five miles ahead of the pursuing Americans, until the
Oregon
opened up on it with its biggest guns, thirteen-inch behemoths that fired shells weighing eleven hundred pounds each. The first five missed their target, but the sixth flew through the distance and landed just in front of the prow of the
Cristóbal Colón
, sending a powerful cascade across its deck. At that moment, the ship's commander realized the American guns had his range; the next shells would be lethal. He raised his white flag and headed for land.

At 1:00
PM
, the naval battle for Santiago was over. When the American sailors on the
Texas
filled the air with cheers, the captain said, “Don't cheer, boys! Those poor devils are dying.”

The Spanish sailors under Cervera had fought bravely, giving back as much as they could with their inferior ships and firepower. The crew of the
Iowa
rescued the Spanish admiral and gave him a standing ovation when they took him on board. Of the 2,200 men in the Spanish fleet, 328 had been killed and 151 were wounded. The rest were rescued that afternoon by American sailors who pulled them out of the water, away from the sharks and the Cuban rebels, who surely would have treated them cruelly had they captured them on land. Indeed, the rebels had already shot several of them
as they tried to swim ashore. Unlike the land battles for the hills north of Santiago, the American casualties in the naval engagement were minimal: one man dead, and one badly wounded.

As was the case after many hard-fought encounters, the Spanish and American sailors recognized the humanity in their enemy combatants and began to fraternize when all the fighting at sea was over, the Spaniards trading swords, wine, cigarettes, and jewelry for American hardtack and bacon. The men (and now women) who fight in wars often find common ground in the same manner that two street fighters will shake hands and drink together after they've battered each other without mercy.

Although the naval situation had been settled, Shafter was still not finished with his battle to occupy the city of Santiago de Cuba. Linares having been relieved of command after he was wounded in battle, his replacement, General José Toral, had agreed to an exchange of prisoners with Shafter but not to a surrender of the strategically located city. Toral was stubborn, even in the face of logistical problems arising from the vast number of men under his command. He still had 10,000 troops in the area, another 20,000 scattered around the province, and a total of 140,000 Spanish soldiers remaining in the numerous encampments located throughout the island—all of them with mouths to feed. The Americans had cut off his water supply, and his positions were being pummeled by ongoing attacks from American naval guns now in control of the harbor even as the sailors broke bread with one another. His soldiers were suffering, but he was under orders from his government not to capitulate as long as it was possible to resist. Shafter, on his part, was impatient to negotiate a peace agreement immediately. His own men were exhausted, and more and more of them were
coming down with malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical ailments. And he had never stopped worrying about a counterattack on his rear by Spanish reinforcements.

The matter remained at a stalemate for the next few days, until Toral proposed Shafter a deal on July 8, offering to abandon Santiago if the American general allowed his men to march off unharmed to a different location. Shafter was tempted to accept, but Alger and others in Washington were adamant that he refuse any peace offers by the Spanish until he received further instructions. The American ships continued to bombard the city from the harbor, the troops east of Santiago rained shells down from the hills, and a few days later General Nelson Miles arrived in Cuba with three thousand more soldiers to bolster the American offense. With Miles now on the scene in virtual command, he ordered Shafter to make a peace proposal of his own on July 11. The United States would agree to ship the Spanish defenders back to Spain if they laid down their arms and ceased hostilities.

Toral needed to confer with his government before making a decision. He advised his country about the hopelessness of the Spanish situation in Santiago and, indeed, throughout the entire Cuban countryside. Morale was low, ammunition was running out, and yellow fever was taking a toll on his men. On July 13, the generals of both armies met under a large tree equidistant from their opposing lines and worked out a settlement that was acceptable to each warring party.

The precise language of the agreement was paramount. The Spanish insisted on avoiding the word
surrender
to save face. The war in Cuba was unpopular at home, and the appearance of leaving the island in disgrace could stir a civil uprising, and possibly a revolution against the government. Instead, the Spanish agreed to
capitulate
to the reality of their plight and head for home. A flurry of cables flew back and forth across the Atlantic for the next few
days, and finally the United States and Spain forged a ten-point agreement that amounted to surrender without actually using the offending word.

The two countries signed the document on July 16. At 9:00 the next morning, Shafter and Toral met in a field just outside Santiago with their chief advisers and units of cavalry officers. Included on Shafter's team was General “Fighting Joe” Wheeler, who reported afterward that “the Spanish troops presented arms, and the Spanish flag which for 382 years had floated over the city was pulled down and furled forever.” Later that day, July 17, the entire contingent of Spanish troops in Santiago de Cuba marched unarmed out of the city they had fought so diligently to defend. They stepped into captivity aboard American ships that would guarantee their safe passage home—to a country riven by unending strife that would lead to a brutal civil war less than forty years later.

Many of the American troops would also be leaving the island of Cuba, but not necessarily sailing back to their homeland. There were other Spanish territories remaining to be conquered, several more battles on the horizon to topple what was left of the crumbling Spanish empire. And not all of the American troops who had fought in Cuba left after the battle was concluded. Some were ordered to stay behind to occupy and secure the city, and to stand guard over the prisoners until they were shipped home later.

Most of the American fighting men who remained to garrison Santiago and keep it safe from any further hostilities were Buffalo Soldiers—the all-black units that were deemed more suitable for war in tropical climates because their government considered them to be less susceptible to malaria and yellow fever than white soldiers were.

T
he colored troops did as well as any soldiers could possibly do,” Roosevelt said when the battle was over. “I wish no better men beside me in battle than these colored troops showed themselves to be.” The black soldiers are “an excellent breed of Yankees,” he added. Later, he softened his praise, saying, “Between these two cavalry regiments and ours” there was a tie, “which we hope will never be broken.” Still later, Roosevelt claimed that the Buffalo Soldiers performed their duties well, but only because they were “peculiarly dependent on their white officers.” His assessment soured further when he said he had to pull his gun to restrain some leaderless black troops who were trying to retreat in the face of enemy fire. “Negro troops were shirkers in their duties and would only go so far as they were led by white officers,” he wrote.

Black and white soldiers alike attacked Roosevelt's shifting views on the performance of the black troops in Cuba. Presley Holliday, a member of the Tenth, explained that Roosevelt was well aware that a few black troops had headed to the rear only to replenish their ammunition. “Everyone who saw the incident knew the Colonel was mistaken about our men trying to shirk their duty,”
he wrote in a letter to the
New York Age.
As far as white leadership was concerned, Holliday said that many black noncommissioned officers filled in for the whites when they were killed or wounded in combat. Roosevelt's statement was “uncalled for and uncharitable,” Holliday wrote. “Considering the moral and physical effect the advance of the Tenth Cavalry had in weakening the forces opposed to the Colonel's regiment, both at Las Guasimas and San Juan Hill,” Roosevelt's assessment did the black troops a great deal of harm, according to Holliday. He also added that not all the black troops who charged the hills were urged on by white officers.

Pershing thought the Buffalo Soldiers were the finest troops he had ever fought with. “We officers of the Tenth Cavalry could have taken our black heroes in our arms,” he wrote. A white journalist with the
Baltimore Morning Herald
reported that “the colored citizen makes an admirable soldier in many respects,” and
Leslie's Weekly
, a national magazine, stated that black soldiers were “heroes, as good as any in the land.” George Kennan, another correspondent, wrote that “they fought with the utmost courage, coolness, and determination.” The
Republican
of Springfield, Illinois, carried an article stating that “at San Juan Hill three companies of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry (colored) lost every one of their officers before the fighting was over…. It is said that the Twenty-Fourth bore the brunt of the battles around Santiago, the Spaniards directing their main attack upon the theory that the Negroes would not stand the punishment. Yet whole companies remained steady without a single officer.”