Slow Boats, Fast News, Short War: Spanish-American War, Part 2 (1895-1898)

Welcome to the second part of my post on the press and its role in the Spanish-American War of 1898, specifically the Army expedition to Cuba. It's time to introduce my chosen cast of colorful characters! I hadn't realized when I started this research that there were literally hundreds of correspondents covering this short war (indeed there's much disagreement about the specific number). And so many interesting ones, including con men and spies. And I was so amused to discover the rare humility of one Burr McIntosh, who, in contrast to the grandstanding of most of his peers, titled his book "The Little I Saw of Cuba"! But covering this topic has already gotten so long, that I'm going to introduce just three: the two most famous reporters of the war, Richard Harding Davis and Stephen Crane, and an outsider with a unique viewpoint (an artist who enlisted as an ordinary soldier), Charles Edward Post, who has left us a fascinating memoir.

First, Davis- not just famous for his war writing (then, though not now), but beyond that, one of the most well-known Americans of his day, and someone who epitomized journalism at its most romantic and glamorous (at one point he called himself a "knight errant"- hard to imagine a reporter with that self-image today!). He was born in 1864 in Philadelphia, near the end of the Civil War, and his path to being a writer was virtually predetermined (father a newspaper editor, mother a then well-known novelist, Rebecca Harding Davis). He inherited wealth, invaluable social connections, and a lifelong sense of privilege, and grew up tall and conventionally handsome ("square-jawed" being a frequent description!). His college experience was uneven, to say the least: he did find notice at his first, Lehigh University, as a true BMOC, founding the drama club and celebrated for his fastidious dress and football prowess. Unfortunately, as too often for such Big Men, his classes were of lower priority, and he was expelled from Lehigh. He moved to Johns Hopkins, only to repeat the pattern (he never did get a diploma).

It was then that he started on his career, beginning with a flood of novels and plays, mostly featuring a square-jawed handsome hero overcoming a variety of urban villains and getting the girl in the end (hugely popular in the 1890s, and later made into early silent films). He also started his journalist career, first covering one of America's most famous disasters, the Johnstown Flood of 1889 (when a dam collapse nearly wiped out an entire Pennsylvania town). He was hired as the editor of the famous magazine Harper's Weekly by the ripe age of 27, toured Europe, and covered his first war, the Sino-Japanese, in 1894 (though the Japanese kept him from the front- his essay was called "Battles I Did Not See"!). He worked hard throughout on image-building. That entailed always being nattily dressed and composed, even in the dirtiest, roughest, and most dangerous conditions (he brought along a collapsible bathtub to ensure that he was properly tidy). Near the end of his career, when the U.S. military briefly intervened in the Mexican Revolution in 1914 by seizing the port of Veracruz, a fellow reporter was amazed to see Davis, wearing "the only dinner coat within 300 miles," sitting under a verandah as bullets flew down the street, calmly reading and sipping champagne!

By 1898, he was at the peak of his celebrity. His fellow reporters reacted with a strong mix of emotions: envy (especially for how much he was paid!), and disdain, for his unwavering social snobbery. Once, when a Japanese officer said something of which he didn't approve, he shouted, "I am a bigger man in my profession than you are in yours!". While he had a low opinion of Hearst and his potboiler Journal, he could not resist the unprecedented salary Hearst offered for him to cover Cuba, both before and during the war, and his reporting was eagerly followed by the American public.

Richard Harding Davis, c. 1890- Public Domain

Next, Crane- much better known today, and a character with stark contrasts to Davis. Born in 1871 in New Jersey to a respected middle-class minister and the daughter of a minister, Crane was, instead of a pampered only child, the 14th (4 older siblings had already died in infancy). As a child, he grew up in a small town (Port Jervis, New York), sickly and an intellectual prodigy (teaching himself to read by age four!). His childhood was marred by further deaths and disruption. He wound up in the home of his older brother, a journalist, and, after dropping out of college (Syracuse), became a reporter in his teens, immediately impressing everyone with the quality of his writing. His path was the reverse of Davis's: instead of fiction and then journalism, his was journalism and then fiction. Though his first novel (published at 21!) flopped, and he barely scraped by at first in trying to survive as a freelance writer in New York City, his second novel was an instant classic of American literature. As with many of his generation, he grew up fascinated by his elders' stories of the Civil War. For his novel "The Red Badge of Courage," he apparently interviewed veterans of the bloody Battle of Chancellorsville, and fashioned a wholly original approach to war fiction, in which his young male protagonist finds combat to be, not romance and glory, but instead bewildering and traumatic. Crane called the novel's focus "the psychological portrayal of fear." When published in 1895, it was an instant and influential bestseller; countless readers then and since, have thought that, given the book's realism, Crane must have drawn on personal experience. Instead his motive in covering this was was to see what war was actually like. Given his celebrity, he was offered a big salary by Hearst's rival, Joseph Pulitzer, to work for the somewhat less lurid New York World.

In appearance and character, Crane was not at all a dashing figure (a photo of him is in my first post). He was perennially disheveled, contemptuous of elitism and imperialism, and gaunt from the tuberculosis that would soon kill him. His writing style also stands in stark opposition of Davis's: Davis's is that of the old-fashioned Victorian explorer, with pith helmet and kit (he later wrote an entire article on what to bring!), striding through the jungle, and writing (certainly very well) only about those he felt were "gentlemen," similarly heroic and civilized (in this case, about Theodore Roosevelt). Crane's prose is more "modern": graphic (by the standards of his time), crisp, and often pessimistic, stressing human vulnerability.

One of Davis's best pieces is his description of the mobilization phase of the war, in Tampa, Florida (late April to mid-June 1898), which he called the "rocking-chair war". Tampa was chosen for both practical reasons (a dock facility and railroad, and a huge hotel), and for political reasons (because the wealthy businessman who created all three, Henry B. Plant, had great influence with the McKinley Administration). The Tampa Bay Hotel, finished in 1890, was in a grandiose Moorish style, by far the largest structure in town, and immediately became the headquarters for both the Army officers and the host of correspondents (it's still there today- a museum in the midst of the University of Tampa). I quote Davis at length to show you what it was like to be at the hotel in wartime in 1898 (he knew, for example, that the American public was fascinated by the war's reunion of former Confederate and Union officers):

"...The Army was distributed at the port and in the pine woods back of the city, and the commanding generals of the invading army, with their several staffs, made their headquarters

at the Tampa Bay Hotel.

And so for a month the life of the army was the life of a hotel, and all those persons who were directly or indirectly associated with the army...came to this hotel and added to its interest. It was fortunate that the hotel was out of all proportion in every way to the size and wealth of Tampa, and to the number of transient visitors that reasonably might be expected to visit that city. One of the cavalry generals said: "Only God knows why Plant built a hotel here; but thank God he did."...It is the real oasis in the real desert- a giant affair of ornamental brick and silver minarets in a city chiefly composed of derelict wooden houses drifting in an ocean of sand; a dreary city...Those were the best days of the time of waiting. Officers who had not met in years, men who had been classmates at West Point, men who had fought together and against each other in the last war...were gathered together apparently for an instant onslaught on a common enemy, and were left to dangle and dawdle...So they talked

and argued and rocked and drank gallons of iced tea, and the hot days wore into weeks. Life then centered around the bulletin-board; men stood eight deep, peering over each other's shoulders as each new telegram followed fast..." (Scribner's Magazine, August 1898)

There is a very interesting alternate perspective to Davis's. Illustrator and painter Charles Johnson Post, likewise in his thirties, enlisted in the 71st New York Infantry Regiment, one of many volunteer units converging on Tampa. Well after the war, he wrote a very lively memoir (published after his death, in 1960). I had never heard of it before researching this post, but I would place it right alongside three earlier classics by ordinary American soldiers: the short memoir by Joseph Plumb Martin for the Revolution, and the accounts by Sam Watkins (Confederate) and Elisha Hunt Rhodes (Union) which were used so much by Ken Burns in constructing his landmark 1990 TV series about the Civil War. Post, for one, describes what Davis never does- not just the usual topics of ordinary soldiers in any war (the bad food, the wrongheaded orders from dictatorial or incompetent officers, and the bonding with comrades), but in this case what it was like to camp out on the hot dunes outside the grand hotel. That included the improvised tent city of bars (supposedly "ice cream parlors") and brothels next to the soldiers' tents (never mentioned by Davis). And here's his take on the same hotel and its celebrity correspondents:

"The newspaper correspondents waited at the Tampa Bay Hotel, with ice water, steaks, eggs, ice cream, highballs- and Scotch whisky, which was just becoming fashionable. To us doughboys, it tasted too much like creosote. We were very common folk. Richard Harding Davis was busy conning his Social Register on the cool hotel porch, until he knew the elite of the Rough Riders from Teddy on up or down, and keeping himself and his silk undies in perfect condition for the rigors of the coming campaign. Trumbull White, from Chicago, was probing into the ranks and writing speculative stories about the vanished Spanish fleet; Stephen Bonsal of the New York Herald was becoming the heavy intellectual, whose dispatches knew more than it was humanly possible to know. And George Kennan, who was to write the only fair, decent, and un-vainglorious account of the war, Campaigning in Cuba, distinguished himself by writing about mere men and brass-hat [officer] bungling. Kennan had been foreign correspondent for Century Magazine throughout Russia and Siberia, where he had studied the Russian convict system of Siberian exile. He was a great reporter."

(Post 1960)

To convey all of this better, I'm adding in a couple videos, both on the Hotel and on the experiences of another ordinary soldier and a nurse (in Tampa at the same time):

A side comment: Tampa contained what was at the time the most significant Cuban immigrant community in the U.S. (the predecessor of today's Little Havana in Miami), Ybor City. It was a company town of cigar makers. Its businessmen saw an exceptional opportunity in the arrival, and long residence, of so many soldiers; they passed out an average of 12,000 cigars a week! Reminds me of the way that Union soldiers' enjoyment of brightleaf tobacco led to the creation of my town of Durham! Here's a video on this unique part of Florida history:

There were a couple reasons for the long delay in the Cuban expedition: one was simple logistics (the town had only a single-track railroad, which had to move tons of supplies and tens of thousands of troops). The other was that the specific whereabouts of the Spanish fleet, under Adm. Cervera, known to be headed to Cuba, were unknown; it was too much of a risk to load the crowded and helpless transports until that was settled. Unlike the life of the elite reporters staying at the hotel, most reporters spent this long month on press boats out next to the American fleet, which was much less enjoyable. Not only did they deal with heat and cramped quarters, but the waters between the Florida Keys and Cuba are where the powerful Gulf Stream current is born, and that means frequent storms and turbulence. One reporter described having to write as he lay on his stomach on the boat's floor, due to the constant rocking!

At last, on June 14, 1898, the unwieldy fleet of warships, transports, and supply ships got underway for Cuba. With no one clearly in charge of the loading, Teddy Roosevelt had his men simply seize, from another unit, a transport for his Rough Riders (a unique cavalry unit made up of cowboys, Hispanics from the Southwest, Ivy League athletes, and a few Native Americans!). Even then, he had to leave half of his unit and almost all of its horses and mules on the dock (note that this was America's last war without any motorized vehicles). He did leave space for a film crew!

The landing of the troops, on the south coast near the Spanish base of Santiago (home now to Cervera's fleet), was just as disorganized as the loading. There weren't enough small boats to transport both soldiers and pack animals through the heavy surf to shore, and the troops had to push their animals over the side! One of Teddy's two horses drowned (along with many others), while the other swam strongly- but in the wrong direction, out to sea! An alert cavalryman on shore blew a trumpet call; the trained animal then turned toward shore. Fortunate indeed that there were no Spanish defenders there (they'd been chased away by the Cuban rebels).

Predictably, Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, eager for glory, along with Gen. Wheeler (a former Confederate cavalry commander), plunged ahead into the forest on the road toward Santiago and the Spanish, without waiting for the overall commander (obese and indecisive Gen. William Shafter) to even come ashore, let alone issue orders. Roosevelt picked out six correspondents, including Davis and Crane, and, at a clearing called Las Guasimas, ignored what sounded like doves calling from the underbrush (which the insurgents warned was a Spanish signal). As a result, his unit ran straight into an ambush. It was at this point that an important technological inferiority was revealed. The Spanish were armed with up-to-date Mauser rifles, using the newly invented smokeless powder. Some of the American officers carried Krag-Jorgenson rifles, which did use smokeless, but they were inferior in rate of fire and punch. And most American enlisted carried obsolete Springfields, which still belched black powder smoke (hence revealing their positions). Roosevelt found men falling dead and wounded all around him; only the arrival of reinforcements prevented a major disaster (a fact that Roosevelt would never admit). Davis and another reporter, Edward Marshall, forgot their journalist role and joined in, firing their revolvers. Tragically, Marshall was hit, close to his spine. Davis simply noted that he was bearing the pain well, but it was Crane who actually responded. He had placed himself at the rear of the column (Roosevelt considered him immoral, not worthy of being in the front). At Marshall's request, he took his report on this first battle to the cable station at Siboney on the coast, which meant walking for three miles through the forest in 100-degree heat. He then walked back, having arranged for a stretcher (scarce, like other medical supplies). Crane then accompanied Marshall on yet another walk to Siboney, making sure that his wound was treated in the hospital there. Though Marshall had a leg amputated, he did recover somewhat from his initial paralysis, and was grateful to Crane for the rest of his life. Crane's editor was not quite as grateful; when he heard that he had helped a rival reporter file a story before his own, he fired Crane (though only briefly).

Meantime, the rest of the American army struggled ashore on two beaches, and slowly moved inland (it didn't help that much of their food and equipment hadn't made it onto the ships, and they suffered mightily in their wool uniforms). On June 30, the entire expedition gathered at the foot of a set of low (but steep) hills to the east of Santiago. The Spanish, though greatly outnumbered now, had had plenty of time to build blockhouses on the summits to protect the city and fleet. Shafter, finally on the scene, met with his commanders and came up with a plan for the next day (for what would be the only major land battle of the war). One column, under Gen. Lawton, would swing to the north first, attacking at a place called El Caney. The other part of the army, including the Rough Riders and the veteran Black units (the Buffalo Soldiers), and accompanied by most of the correspondents (including Davis and Crane), was to wait in the morning of July 1, expecting El Caney to fall in about two hours, and would then join in (at a point on the ridge with two adjoining summits, Kettle and San Juan Hills).

As so often in war, the plan promptly fell apart. El Caney's garrison had fewer defenders, but it had an inspiring leader, and held out far longer than expected. The second group of Americans also made a major error in sending up a stationary balloon with observers to scout the Spanish positions. It made a perfect aiming point for the enemy to fire into the crouching troops below, who took heavy losses and never did get an order from the top to attack. Finally the commanders of the front units, including Roosevelt, simply took control and charged; in Roosevelt's case leading fragments of at least three units (only one being his own!). Roosevelt, unlike just about everyone else, was mounted on his horse Texas, making a perfect target. Nevertheless he was only grazed by bullets, and his group of 400 did drive the 100 defenders off Kettle Hill, losing a quarter of their number, only to face a counterattack. They were saved by the Buffalo Soldiers, who had already captured San Juan Hill nearby. At the time he was giddy with adrenaline, having achieved his ambition of military glory (his beloved father had paid for a substitute in the Civil War). But he was perturbed that he hadn't shot anyone; at last two Spaniards ran away from a trench in his path, and he killed one, with a pistol salvaged by a friend from the wreck of the Maine (a detail he would retell for many years, as part of his "crowded hour," "the great day of my life").

Here is an excerpt of Davis's famous story of the charge, which would make Roosevelt an instant national hero, and would cement his reputation as the man "who led the charge at

San Juan Hill" (not Kettle!):

"Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from the woods behind the line of the Ninth [Buffalo Soldiers], and finding its men lying in his way, shouted: 'If you don't wish to go forward, let my men pass, please.' The [white] junior officers of the Ninth, with their Negroes, instantly sprang into line with the Rough Riders, and charged at the blue block-house on the right. I speak of Roosevelt first because, with General Hawkins, who led Kent's division, notably the Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars, he was, without doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge. General Hawkins, with hair white as snow, and yet far in advance of men thirty years his junior, was so noble a sight that you felt inclined to pray for his safety; on the other hand, Roosevelt, mounted high on horseback, and charging the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone, made you feel that you would like to cheer. He wore on his sombrero a blue polka-dot handkerchief, a la Havelock, which, as he advanced, floated out straight behind his head, like a guidon [cavalry flag]. Afterward, the men of his regiment who followed this flag, adopted a polka-dot handkerchief as the badge of the Rough Riders. These two officers were conspicuous in the charge, but no one can claim that any two men, or any one man, was more brave or more daring, or showed greater courage in that slow, stubborn advance than did any of the others...I think the thing which impressed one the most, when our men started from cover, was that they were so few...It was a miracle of self-sacrifice, a triumph of bulldog courage, which one watched breathless with wonder..." ("The Cuban and Puerto Rican Campaigns", 1898)

Hearst reporter James Creelman was at El Caney (we met him in my earlier post- he had described Japanese atrocities at Port Arthur in China in 1894). In one of the most outlandish stories of all my research, Creelman decided he had to have the Spanish flag that had flown over the El Caney blockhouse. What follows is best told in his own words, from his postwar memoir: "I wanted it for the Journal. The Journal had provoked the war, and it was only fair that the Journal should have the first flag." [I] dashed in and grabbed it, only to be hit in the shoulder and fall bleeding. Opening my eyes, I saw Mr. Hearst...a straw hat with a bright ribbon on his head, a revolver at his belt, and a pencil and notebook in his hand...finding one of his correspondents prostrate, was [reporting the story] himself. Slowly he took down my story of the fight. 'I'm sorry you're hurt, but- and his face was radiant with enthusiasm- 'wasn't it a splendid fight? We must beat every paper in the world.'"

The rest of the was in Cuba was a matter of weeks, with only one more dramatic incident; this time involving the two navies. With the Americans now controlling the heights above Santiago, the top Spanish commander ordered Adm. Cervera on what amounted to a suicide mission, to try to break his fleet out of the narrow harbor entrance and through the American warships waiting outside. Cervera waited until the moring of July 3, and then, decorating his ships with huge flags, made his run. Like the Battle of Manila Bay at the start of the war, the result was very one-sided and soon over. Soon all the Spanish ships were sinking, in flames, or run aground. Only one American died (hit by a shell on the deck next to a reporter), versus 474 Spanish dead; famously one American captain shouted to his men, "Don't cheer, boys, the poor devils are dying." Most of the surviviors, including the admiral, were rescued, taken prisoner, and treated well. After that, it was only a matter of negotiation before the Spanish gave up Cuba.

Hearst, fittingly (as he had tried so hard to instigate the war in the first place), had a final surreal role in the Battle of Santiago. He sailed his press boat up to the wreck of an enemy cruiser, and spotted survivors on shore. He jumped in a small boat with some crewmen, and, waving a pistol, "captured" 29 men. He gave them a "full meal" and led them in cheers (!) for the Fourth of July (coming up the next day) and for "George Washington and Old Glory"! To top it off, he brought his boat up next to an American warship, and informed the captain that he had prisoners to deliver- and insisted on a receipt! He published it on his front page, and kept the original, framed on his office wall, for years afterward.

As soon as there was a Cuban ceasefire and Santiago surrendered, on July 17, 1898, most of the press went home, including Hearst on his yacht. Most of the American military stayed and suffered the worst losses of the war, due to raging malaria and yellow fever. Finally Roosevelt and other officers embarrassed the federal government through a joint public letter about the death toll. The troops were then, in early August, hastily evacuated to a quarantine camp on the eastern tip of Long Island (Montauk Point), and the volunteers, including the Rough Riders, were released as soon as they were reasonably healthy. Roosevelt came home a "rock star," greeted by his wife, President McKinley, and a swarm of reporters and film crews. He was already planning to run for governor of New York in the November election.

A few reporters joined Gen. Miles' expedition to Puerto Rico, including both Davis and Crane (the latter had been rehired after a trip to Virginia to recover from a fever). It was a very short campaign, as Miles caught everyone by surprise by landing on a beach on the opposite coast from the capital (San Juan). Many inhabitants welcomed the Americans. There is one more good press story, which again involves both Crane and Davis. Crane started it off, boasting that he had "captured" a town, Juana Diaz, all by himself (recounted in his story "The Porto Rican 'Straddle'"). Actually all that had happened was that he had walked far enough ahead of the marching infantry to get to the town a little before other Americans. Davis got him back by intentionally doing the same (claiming to "capture" the town of Coamo!). Under the peace treaty in 1899, Puerto Rico would become American territory.

And so the Caribbean phase of the Spanish-American War came to an end, with a ceasefire signed on Aug. 12, including the Philippines; the second shortest American war ever (only the ground part of the 1991 Gulf War has been shorter). Teddy Roosevelt, his reputation burnished by Davis and himself, and showcasing the Rough Riders and his Brooks Brother uniform at every stop, did narrowly win his campaign to become Republican governor of New York (going on the the vice presidency; the assassination of Pres. McKinley in 1901 would make him the youngest American president). The most lasting positive result of the war was medical (the epidemiology research which, at last determining the mosquito species which carries yellow fever and malaria, has saved countless lives, and in the short term made possible the American construction of the Panama Canal in 1905-1914). Davis would go on to other wars, dying not long after reporting on the start of World War I. For Crane, this was his last war; he died in England in June 1900, at just 28.

As I have thought through what I've learned in researching this topic and war, I am struck by a paradox. In one way, this was, especially for its short length, the most reported war ever by the American media (hundreds of articles, followed by dozens of books). And yet, look at the omissions! First, two aspects, still American but little covered in the dispatches: one, the true magnitude of the contributions of the Buffalo Soldiers (no accident, given that this war took place at the height of Jim Crow lynchings). I could only find a mention of a single black reporter, Herschel Cashin. The medical part of the war, presided over by American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, also got much less mention than the combat (with the exception of the stories written by the small handful of women reporters).

But the biggest omission of all is that of the story of the Cuban rebels, who had been fighting the Spanish for over three years, across the whole island, before any American troops arrived! Only the meetings of reporters and top American generals with the top Cuban commanders got into the news. A modern historian has made a shrewd connection of the American military perception of the rebels to that of Native Americans in the last "Indian Wars" immediately before this war- the most positive view being that the Cubans could make

good "scouts". They weren't even invited to the Santiago surrender, and their flag wasn't raised! Obviously this was seen, then and since, as a grave insult to the Cuban people; it would be as if the French, coming to help us in our Revolution, had instructed George Washington and his army to serve only as their scouts. Our insurgent allies almost seem ghost-like in the American reports- suddenly appearing out of the forest, with no individual identities, and disappearing just as quickly, as if at random. One factor, certainly, was the language barrier (it would appear that few of the Americans spoke Spanish). But, if the alliance had really mattered to the Americans, that barrier could have been overcome. the lesson for me is that Americans in general, the press included, saw this war in Cuba as a solely American story: we came (telling ourselves we were liberators), we conquered, we left.

Of course that narrative had, and has, serious flaws, starting with the major one that we didn't really leave (our military occupation lasted until 1902; we then imposed a law that gave us a lease on the naval base at Guantanamo, right up to the present; and American economic domination continued until Castro's Revolution in 1959!).

That's it for me for the story of war correspondents, for the time being (I have a bibliography, but, given its exceptional length, this time I'll instead supply it on request). As I have mentioned, I will next be changing blog subjects dramatically. I will go right up to the evolving present for the next post, looking at the global revolution in electric vehicles (who is making them? where? etc.). I hope to have that one done soon. Bye for now!