Sumner and Wood rode up on horseback moments later with the rest of their brigades, and Sumner strung them out across the hill in a long defensive perimeter in anticipation of a Spanish counterattack. They were prepared for any surprises the Spanish might have planned for them, as they now commanded the topmost peak between the Heights and Santiago de Cuba, the latter of which they could see from the ridge about three hundred yards west of the blockhouse. But the Spanish had little if anything left and launched no counterattack.
The Americans were half-starved after their momentous victory and were unexpectedly rewarded when they found a huge pot of Castilian stew cooking over a slow fire burning in the officers’ mess tent atop the hill. Besides the stew, there was bread, smaller pots of rice and peas, salted fish, and most satisfying of all, bottles of wine and a demijohn of good Cuban rum. The men began to attack the provisions without waiting for an invitation to assuage their hunger and thirst. The Spanish defenders, however, had fewer mouths to feed than the Americans did, so the officers made the men line up in an orderly fashion in an effort to stretch the food as far as it would go.
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From the western ridge of San Juan Hill, the American troops had a clear view of the harbor and the city, its streets empty except for the commotion of Spanish troops wandering shell-shocked in every direction. A number of Buffalo Soldiers from the Tenth and some white regulars started to run down the hill toward Santiago without authorization, but an officer called them back and told them to remain on the ridge until they received orders to proceed. Stephen Crane had joined them at the overlook and described the men as “dusty” and “disheveled,” their shirts glued to their backs with sweat as they gazed down the hill, weary from all the “marches and the fights.” And still, they had been ready to continue the battle without anyone ordering them to fight on.
The Spanish, for their part, were not yet ready to concede defeat. They reformed into three lines of defensive positions, forming a triple perimeter to protect the city, and then commenced firing artillery shots up at the hill to keep the Americans from charging down on them. The Americans remained on the peak of San Juan, digging trenches of their own with anything that came to hand—their own shovels and abandoned Spanish equipment, including cooking utensils, dishes, cups, cans, machetes, and the sharp edges of their mess kits. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, the generals sent word down to Shafter that the Heights had been taken. Shafter struggled from his cot, mounted his horse, and attempted to assess the situation from El Pozo. His aides told him that Lawton was apparently still bogged down at El Caney and had yet to march from there to support the troops on Kettle and San Juan Hills. Shafter was concerned that the spread of land between Kettle and El Caney remained unoccupied by American forces.
Shafter’s repeated orders to Lawton to abandon El Caney and head southwest to reinforce the troops in the Heights fell on deaf ears throughout the afternoon. The battle had dragged on far longer than anyone had anticipated, but Lawton considered El Caney to be strategically important and was determined to take it before moving on. In Lawton’s report after the siege on El Caney ended, Lawton didn’t acknowledge receiving any orders from Shafter. Lawton would not make it over to San Juan until the following day, July 2, after he rested his battered brigades overnight. The troops on top of San Juan exchanged fire with the Spaniards throughout most of the afternoon, and it wasn’t until around 4:00 PM that the Spanish attempted their first offensive operation in the campaign. Linares sent a contingent of four hundred men up the Heights in an effort to encircle the Americans from their right flank. The effort failed, however, when the Gatlings opened up on them, sending them retreating back over the ridge toward Santiago.
There was little left to do now but hold the positions on the Heights and wait for further orders. The officers took stock of the situation and used the opportunity to count their losses. They knew their casualties were heavy, but the final toll of those killed or seriously wounded in the brutal conflict would not be known for a while to come. Adding up the final numbers after any war has always been a dicey business, complicated both by imprecise report-age in the field and by the information’s potential use as political propaganda. But there was little doubt that both sides had suffered badly. Lawton’s cost in dead and wounded at El Caney numbered 450 men—7 percent of his forces. The outnumbered Spanish suffered 300 casualties, almost 60 percent of the defenders in the village. Lawton’s men took 127 Spanish soldiers prisoner, and another 100 escaped down the trail to Santiago.
Over on San Juan Hill, the American dead and seriously injured came to more than 10 percent of the troops engaged there, a total of almost 1,500 men when added to the losses at El Caney. About 200 Spaniards were mortally wounded and another 300 were captured. Linares himself was wounded as he stood near the blockhouse, but he lived on to return to Spain, where he died sixteen years after the war at age sixty-six. Among the Rough Riders, about half of the 500 Roosevelt started with were rendered unfit for duty because of illness suffered during the various campaigns, 86 were killed or wounded, and others went missing. Fifty of his men were with him as they dug into their positions on San Juan Hill. The Buffalo Soldiers suffered the heaviest losses in percentage terms: about 17 percent of the 1,685 that they started with.
The commanding generals on both sides, Shafter and Linares, were heavily criticized for their strategic decisions during the campaign. “Shafter’s conduct of the campaign was incompetent and culpable,” read a report disseminated by British military strategists, “and his ultimate success was undeserved good fortune. No precautions were taken against reverses. The daring of American troops was exceeded only by their extreme rashness.” The Brits called Roosevelt and the Rough Riders examples of audacity laced with imprudence. Linares was excoriated for holding back ten thousand of his men in Santiago and sending so few to defend the Heights and El Caney. The Spanish general, however, shifted the blame to Cuban rebels, whom he claimed diverted his forces, and to the “inappropriate” and “unorthodox” fighting style of the American invaders.
The American forces remained vigilant in their positions on San Juan Hill through the long night of July 1 and the early hours of the next day. They were determined to not give up any ground, but they were aware of the number of Spanish troops guarding the city and the harbor in Santiago. They expected a counterattack at any time in a last-ditch effort by the Spanish to reverse the fortunes of the war.
But it never came. The small hours of the morning of July 2 remained still and silent. When Lawton arrived later in the morning with his own forces, which he had rested overnight at El Pozo, the men on the hill knew that the battle for San Juan Hill was truly over. Lawton brought up his big guns, which opened a constant bombardment on the troops forming the perimeter around the city. The Spanish squadron guarding the harbor was also in range of the American artillery. American ships now began to move in toward Santiago from the open water, closing in on the Spanish flotilla. The Spaniards felt the noose tightening. Their options were limited. Should they attempt to withdraw the Spanish fleet from the harbor or risk being ensnared by an American blockade—or worse, watch their ships being sunk by the advancing American armada?
The Spanish naval defenses fell under the command of Admiral Pascual Cervera, whose fleet consisted of several cruisers and destroyers, none of which were in particularly good condition. The cruiser Cristóbal Colón lacked much of its armature, and another, the Vizcaya, was hampered by a porous bottom. Also at Cervera’s disposal were his flagship, the Infanta Maria Teresa, the cruiser Oquendo, and the destroyers Pluton and Furor. An attempt to run the American blockade with its superior ships and firepower would be tantamount to suicide. Cervera’s best hope, short of surrender, was to try to ram the fastest American cruiser, the USS Brooklyn, with the Infanta Maria Teresa.
On land, Shafter tried to assume command of his operation on July 2 and the morning of July 3, moving his troops down the slope of San Juan Hill, closer to the eastern side o
f Santiago, already under cover of his heavy guns. He positioned the men in a semicicle about a mile east of the city, where they faced the triple perimeter of the Spanish land defenses, who met the Americans’ advance with artillery of their own. Faced with the prospect of suffering even more casualties than he had taken already, Shafter cabled Secretary of War Russell Alger—a distant relative of rags-to-riches storyteller Horatio Alger—with a request to withdraw his men to a point at which they would be out of range of the Spanish guns. Alger had already been attacked for appointing Shafter to head the Cuban expedition in the first place, and for inadequately preparing the army for the war. Alger’s response to Shafter was immediate and emphatic: Hold your ground! The press was at that moment trumpeting the news of the great American victory in Cuba, under Alger’s watch, and there was no way he wanted Shafter to let the victory be clouded by even the appearance of defeat.
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 AM 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 advise
d 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.
The Roughest Riders Page 16