CHAPTER V
THE WAR WITH SPAIN
For three centuries and a half, Spain held possession of the island of Cuba, although she had lost, long before, her possessions in North and South America. The Cubans desired freedom, for the Spanish yoke was a galling one, and as early as 1822 sympathy with this desire was openly expressed in the United States.
APOSTROPHE TO THE ISLAND OF CUBA
[November, 1822]
There is blood on thy desolate shore,
Thou island of plunder and slaves!
Thy billows are purpled with gore,
And murder has crimsoned thy waves;
The vengeance of nations will come,
And wrath shall be rained on thy head,
And in terror thy voice shall be dumb,
When they ask for their brothers who bled.
Thy hand was not stirred, when their life-blood was spilt;
And therefore that hand must partake in the guilt.
Thou art guilty or weak,—and the rod
Should be wrenched from thy palsied hand;
By the pirate thy green fields are trod,
And his steps have polluted thy land;
Unmoved is thy heart and thine eye,
When our dear ones are tortured and slain;
But their blood with a terrible cry,
Calls on vengeance, and calls not in vain;
If Europe regard not—our land shall awake,
And thy walls and thy turrets shall tremble and shake.
The voice of a world shall be heard,
And thy faith shall be tried by the call;
And that terrible voice shall be feared,
And obeyed—or the proud one shall fall.
Enough of our life has been shed,
In watching and fighting for thee;
If thy foot linger still—on thy head
The guilt and the vengeance shall be:
We have sworn that the spirit of Allen shall lead,
And our wrath shall not rest, till we finish the deed.
James Gates Percival.
The people of Cuba revolted against their Spanish rulers in 1848, and kept up a guerilla warfare for some years. In August, 1851, a filibustering expedition, led by Narciso Lopez, sailed from New Orleans. The expedition was captured, and most of its members were executed, among them Lopez himself, and Colonel William L. Crittenden, of Kentucky, who, with fifty others, was shot at Havana, August 16.
THE GALLANT FIFTY-ONE
WHO FORMED PART OF THE LOPEZ EXPEDITION AND WERE EXECUTED BY THE SPANISH AUTHORITIES IN HAVANA
[August 16, 1851]
Freedom called them—up they rose,
Grasped their swords and showered blows
On the heads of Freedom's foes—
And Freedom's foes alone.
Fate decreed that they should die;
Pitying angels breathed a sigh;
Freedom wildly wept on high,
For the gallant Fifty-one!
There they stood in proud array;
None for mercy there would pray;
None would coward looks betray—
All stood forth with fearless eye,
Showing by their dauntless air,
What their noble souls could dare;
Showing to the tyrants there,
How Freedom's sons could die.
None there strove their fate to shun—
Gallant band of Fifty-one!
Then a voice the stillness broke:
'Twas their gallant leader spoke,
Scorning to receive Death's stroke,
Kneeling humbly on the sod!
Gazing calmly on the dead,
Whose life-blood had just been shed,
Proudly then the words he said,
"Americans kneel but to God!"
Perished thus Kentucky's son—
Leader of the Fifty-one.
Rejoice! sons of Thermopylæ!
Kindred spirits join with thee,
Who fell in fight for Liberty,
For Freedom's sacred name.
Future days their deeds shall tell,
How they nobly fought and fell,
Youthful bosoms proudly swell
At mention of their fame—
Rays of light from Freedom's sun,
Gallant band of Fifty-one!
Honor's rays will ever shed
Glory 'round their hallowed bed.
Though their hearts are cold and dead,
Though their sands of life have run,
Still their names revered will be,
Among the noble and the free—
Glorious sons of Liberty;
Gallant band of Fifty-one!
Henry Lynden Flash.
Spain at last found it necessary to put the whole island under martial law, and American sympathy grew more outspoken.
CUBA
[1870]
Is it naught? Is it naught
That the South-wind brings her wail to our shore,
That the spoilers compass our desolate sister?
Is it naught? Must we say to her, "Strive no more,"
With the lips wherewith we loved her and kissed her?
With the mocking lips wherewith we said,
"Thou art the dearest and fairest to us
Of all the daughters the sea hath bred,
Of all green-girdled isles that woo us!"
Is it naught?
Must ye wait? Must ye wait,
Till they ravage her gardens of orange and palm,
Till her heart is dust, till her strength is water?
Must ye see them trample her, and be calm
As priests when a virgin is led to slaughter?
Shall they smite the marvel of all lands,—
The nation's longing, the Earth's completeness,—
On her red mouth dropping myrrh, her hands
Filled with fruitage and spice and sweetness?
Must ye wait?
In the day, in the night,
In the burning day, in the dolorous night,
Her sun-browned cheeks are stained with weeping.
Her watch-fires beacon the misty height:—
Why are her friends and lovers sleeping?
"Ye, at whose ear the flatterer bends,
Who were my kindred before all others,—
Hath he set your hearts afar, my friends?
Hath he made ye alien, my brothers,
Day and night?"
Hear ye not? Hear ye not
From the hollow sea the sound of her voice;
The passionate far-off tone which sayeth:
"Alas, my brothers! alas, what choice,—
The lust that shameth, the sword that slayeth?
They bind me! they rend my delicate locks;
They shred the beautiful robes I won me!
My round limbs bleed on the mountain rocks:
Save me, ere they have quite undone me!"
Hear ye not?
Speak at last! Speak at last!
In the might of your strength, in the strength of your right,
Speak out at last to the treacherous spoiler!
Say: "Will ye harry her in our sight?
Ye shall not trample her down, nor soil her!
Loose her bonds! let her rise in her loveliness,—
Our virginal sister; or, if ye shame her,
Dark Amnon shall rue for her sore distress,
And her sure revenge shall be that of Tamar!"
Speak at last!
Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Then in 1873 came what was certain to come, sooner or later, an outrage by Spain against the United States. The Virginius, a vessel of American register, was captured on the high seas by a Spanish gunboat, taken to a Cuban port, and some fifty of her officers and crew, Americans for the most part, summarily shot. America was wild with rage, but Spain was permitted to settle by paying an indemnity.
THE GOSPEL OF PEACE
[1873]
Ay, let it rest! And give us peace.
'Tis but another blot
On Freedom's fustian flag, and gold
Will gild the unclean spot.
Yes, fold the hands, and bear the wrong
As Christians over-meek,
And wipe away the bloody stain,
And turn the other cheek.
What boots the loss of freemen's blood
Beside imperilled gold?
Is honor more than merchandise?
And cannot pride be sold?
Let Cuba groan, let patriots fall;
Americans may die;
Our flag may droop in foul disgrace,
But "Peace!" be still our cry.
Ay, give us peace! And give us truth
To nature, to resign
The counterfeit which Freedom wears
Upon her banner fine.
Remove the Stars,—they light our shame;
But keep the Stripes of gore
And craven White, to tell the wrong
A prudent nation bore.
James Jeffrey Roche.
The insurrection in Cuba dragged on, its horrors steadily increasing, and at last, in 1875, the American government intimated that if Spain did not stop the war, foreign intervention might become necessary. Spain took the hint and ended the struggle by granting Cuba certain reforms.
CUBA
Isle of a summer sea,
Fragrant with Eden's flowers,
God meant thee to be free,
And wills thee to be ours!
The blood of generous hearts
Has freely drenched thy soil;
That blood but strength imparts,
Which tyrants cannot foil!
Within thy fair retreat,
'Mid victory and flame,
Thy sons shall yet repeat
Huzzas in Freedom's name!
Yet, where his ashes rest,
Whose eye revealed a world,
From towers and mountain crest,
Our flag shall be unfurled!
In truth, it is but just,
That Freedom's hand should hold,
Confided to her trust,
The key to lands of gold!
Harvey Rice.
But with a cynical disregard of good faith, Spain kept only such of her promises as she pleased; increased abuses followed, and in 1895 revolution flamed out again. Under such leaders as Gomez, Maceo, and Garcia, the revolutionists soon gained control of most of the provinces.
CUBA TO COLUMBIA
[April, 1896]
A voice went over the waters—
A stormy edge of the sea—
Fairest of Freedom's daughters,
Have you no help for me?
Do you not hear the rusty chain
Clanking about my feet?
Have you not seen my children slain,
Whether in cell or street?
Oh, if you were sad as I,
And I as you were strong,
You would not have to call or cry—
You would not suffer long!
"Patience?"—have I not learned it,
Under the crushing years?
Freedom—have I not earned it,
Toiling with blood and tears?
"Not of you?"—my banners wave
Not on Egyptian shore,
Or by Armenia's mammoth grave—
But at your very door!
Oh, if you were needy as I,
And I as you were strong,
You should not suffer, bleed, and die,
Under the hoofs of wrong!
Is it that you have never
Felt the oppressor's hand,
Fighting, with fond endeavor,
To cling to your own sweet land?
Were you not half dismayed,
There in the century's night,
Till to your view a sister's aid
Came, like a flash of light?
Oh, what gift could ever be grand
Enough to pay the debt,
If out of the starry Western land,
Should come my Lafayette!
Will Carleton.
American sympathy was soon awakened, and grew rapidly in strength. This was increased when Spain placed Valeriano Weyler in command in Cuba. Weyler had an evil reputation for cruelty and extortion, and at once proceeded to make it more evil by exterminating the "pacificos," or quiet people who were taking no active part in the war.
CUBA LIBRE
Comes a cry from Cuban water—
From the warm, dusk Antilles—
From the lost Atlanta's daughter,
Drowned in blood as drowned in seas;
Comes a cry of purpled anguish—
See her struggles, hear her cries!
Shall she live, or shall she languish?
Shall she sink, or shall she rise?
She shall rise, by all that's holy!
She shall live and she shall last;
Rise as we, when crushed and lowly,
From the blackness of the past.
Bid her strike! Lo, it is written
Blood for blood and life for life.
Bid her smite, as she is smitten;
Stars and stripes were born of strife.
Once we flashed her lights of freedom,
Lights that dazzled her dark eyes
Till she could but yearning heed them,
Reach her hands and try to rise.
Then they stabbed her, choked her, drowned her
Till we scarce could hear a note.
Ah! these rusting chains that bound her!
Oh! these robbers at her throat!
And the kind who forged these fetters?
Ask five hundred years for news.
Stake and thumbscrew for their betters!
Inquisitions! Banished Jews!
Chains and slavery! What reminder
Of one red man in that land?
Why, these very chains that bind her
Bound Columbus, foot and hand!
Shall she rise as rose Columbus,
From his chains, from shame and wrong—
Rise as Morning, matchless, wondrous—
Rise as some rich morning song—
Rise a ringing song and story,
Valor, Love personified?
Stars and stripes espouse her glory,
Love and Liberty allied.
Joaquin Miller.
The situation of Americans in Havana began to cause uneasiness, and it was decided to send a ship of war to that port. The battleship Maine was selected for this duty, and reached Havana on the morning of January 24, 1898.
THE PARTING OF THE WAYS[14]
Untrammelled Giant of the West,
With all of Nature's gifts endowed,
With all of Heaven's mercies blessed,
Nor of thy power unduly proud—
Peerless in courage, force, and skill,
And godlike in thy strength of will,—
Before thy feet the ways divide:
One path leads up to heights sublime;
The other downward slopes, where bide
The refuse and the wrecks of Time.
Choose then, nor falter at the start,
O choose the nobler path and part!
Be thou the guardian of the weak,
Of the unfriended, thou the friend;
No guerdon for thy valor seek,
No end beyond the avowèd end.
Wouldst thou thy godlike power preserve,
Be godlike in the will to serve!
Joseph B. Gilder.
On the morning of February 16, 1898, the news flashed over the country that on the previous evening the Maine had been blown up at her anchorage, and that two hundred and sixty-four men and two officers had been killed.
THE MEN OF THE MAINE
[February 15, 1898]
Not in the dire, ensanguined front of war,
Conquered or conqueror,
'Mid the dread battle-peal, did they go down
To the still under-seas, with fair Renown
To weave for them the hero-martyr's crown.
They struck no blow
'Gainst an embattled foe;
With valiant-hearted Saxon hardihood
They stood not as the Essex sailors stood,
So sore bestead in that far Chilian bay;
Yet no less faithful they,
These men who, in a passing of the breath,
Were hurtled upon death.
No warning the salt-scented sea-wind bore,
No presage whispered from the Cuban shore
Of the appalling fate
That in the tropic night-time lay in wait
To bear them whence they shall return no more.
Some lapsed from dreams of home and love's clear star
Into a realm where dreams eternal are;
And some into a world of wave and flame
Wherethrough they came
To living agony that no words can name.
Tears for them all,
And the low-tunèd dirge funereal!
Their place is now
With those who wear, green-set about the brow,
The deathless immortelles,—
The heroes torn and scarred
Whose blood made red the barren ocean dells,
Fighting with him the gallant Ranger bore,
Daring to do what none had dared before,
To wave the New World banner, freedom-starred,
At England's very door!
Yea, with such noble ones their names shall stand
As those who heard the dying Lawrence speak
His burning words upon the Chesapeake,
And grappled in the hopeless hand-to-hand;
With those who fell on Erie and Champlain
Beneath the pouring, pitiless battle-rain:
With such as these, our lost men of the Maine!
What though they faced no storm of iron hail
That freedom and the right might still prevail?
The path of duty it was theirs to tread
To death's dark vale through ways of travail led,
And they are ours—our dead!
If it be true that each loss holds a gain,
It must be ours through saddened eyes to see
From out this tragic holocaust of pain
The whole land bound in closer amity!
Clinton Scollard.
THE WORD OF THE LORD FROM HAVANA
[February 16, 1898]
Thus spake the Lord:
Because ye have not heard,
Because ye have given no heed
To my people in their need,
Because the oppressed cried
From the dust where he died,
And ye turned your face away
From his cry in that day,
Because ye have bought and sold
That which is above gold,
Because your brother is slain
While ye get you drunk with gain,
(Behold, these are my people, I have brought them to birth,
On whom the mighty have trod,
The kings of the earth,
Saith the Lord God!)
Because ye have fawned and bowed down
Lest the spoiler frown,
And the wrongs that the spoiled have borne
Ye have held in scorn,
Therefore with rending and flame
I have marred and smitten you,
Therefore I have given you to shame,
That the nations shall spit on you.
Therefore my Angel of Death
Hath stretched out his hand on you,
Therefore I speak in my wrath,
Laying command on you;
(Once have I bared my sword,
And the kings of the earth gave a cry;
Twice have I bared my sword,
That the kings of the earth should die;
Thrice shall I bare my sword,
And ye shall know my name, that it is I!)
Ye who held peace less than right
When a king laid a pitiful tax on you,
Hold not your hand from the fight
When freedom cries under the axe on you!
(I who called France to you, call you to Cuba in turn!
Repay—lest I cast you adrift and you perish astern!)
Ye who made war that your ships
Should lay to at the beck of no nation,
Make war now on Murder, that slips
The leash of her hounds of damnation!
Ye who remembered the Alamo,
Remember the Maine!
Richard Hovey.
HALF-MAST
[February 16, 1898]
On every schoolhouse, ship, and staff
From 'Frisco clear to Marblehead,
Let droop the starry banner now,
In sorrow for our sailors dead.
Half-mast! Half-mast! o'er all the land;
The verdict wait; your wrath restrain;
Half-mast for all that gallant band—
The sailors of the Maine!
Not till a treachery is proved
His sword the patriot soldier draws;
War is the last alternative—
Be patient till ye know the cause.
Meanwhile—Half-mast o'er all the land!
The verdict wait; your wrath restrain;
Half-mast! for all that gallant band—
The martyrs of the Maine!
Lloyd Mifflin.
THE FIGHTING RACE
[February 16, 1898]
"Read out the names!" and Burke sat back,
And Kelly drooped his head,
While Shea—they call him Scholar Jack—
Went down the list of the dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,
Carpenters, coal passers—all.
Then, knocking the ashes from out his pipe,
Said Burke in an offhand way:
"We're all in that dead man's list by Cripe!
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the Maine, and I'm sorry for Spain,"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Wherever there's Kellys there's trouble," said Burke.
"Wherever fighting's the game,
Or a spice of danger in grown man's work."
Said Kelly, "you'll find my name."
"And do we fall short," said Burke, getting mad,
"When it's touch and go for life?"
Said Shea, "It's thirty-odd years, bedad,
Since I charged to drum and fife
Up Marye's Heights, and my old canteen
Stopped a rebel ball on its way;
There were blossoms of blood on our sprigs of green—
Kelly and Burke and Shea—
And the dead didn't brag." "Well, here's to the flag!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"I wish 'twas in Ireland, for there's the place,"
Said Burke, "that we'd die by right,
In the cradle of our soldier race,
After one good stand-up fight.
My grandfather fell on Vinegar Hill,
And fighting was not his trade;
But his rusty pike's in the cabin still,
With Hessian blood on the blade."
"Aye, aye," said Kelly, "the pikes were great
When the word was 'clear the way!'
We were thick on the roll in ninety-eight—
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the pike and the sword and the like!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
And Shea, the scholar, with rising joy,
Said, "We were at Ramillies;
We left our bones at Fontenoy
And up in the Pyrenees;
Before Dunkirk, on Landen's plain,
Cremona, Lille, and Ghent;
We're all over Austria, France, and Spain,
Wherever they pitched a tent.
We've died for England from Waterloo
To Egypt and Dargai;
And still there's enough for a corps or crew,
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to good honest fighting blood!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
"Oh, the fighting races don't die out,
If they seldom die in bed,
For love is first in their hearts, no doubt,"
Said Burke; then Kelly said:
"When Michael, the Irish Archangel, stands,
The angel with the sword,
And the battle-dead from a hundred lands
Are ranged in one big horde,
Our line, that for Gabriel's trumpet waits,
Will stretch three deep that day,
From Jehoshaphat to the Golden Gates—
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's thank God for the race and the sod!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.
Joseph I. C. Clarke.
A wave of fierce wrath swept over the American people; but Captain Sigsbee, of the destroyed ship, asked that judgment be suspended until the cause of the accident had been investigated.
ON THE EVE OF WAR
O God of Battles, who art still
The God of Love, the God of Rest,
Subdue thy people's fiery will,
And quell the passions in their breast!
Before we bathe our hands in blood
We lift them to thy Holy Rood.
The waiting nations hold their breath
To catch the dreadful battle-cry;
And in the silence as of death
The fateful hours go softly by.
Oh, hear thy people where they pray,
And shrive our souls before the fray!
Before the sun of peace shall set,
We kneel apart a solemn while;
Pity the eyes with sorrow wet,
But pity most the lips that smile.
The night comes fast; we hear afar
The baying of the wolves of war.
Not lightly, oh, not lightly, Lord,
Let this our awful task begin;
Speak from thy throne a warning word
Above the angry factions' din.
If this be thy Most Holy will,
Be with us still,—be with us still!
Danske Dandridge.
Good Friday, 1898.
Spain, without waiting for investigation, announced that the Maine had been blown up by an explosion of her magazines, due to the carelessness of her officers. The American people waited in ominous silence for the investigation to be concluded.
TO SPAIN—A LAST WORD
Iberian! palter no more! By thine hands, thine alone, they were slain!
Oh, 'twas a deed in the dark—
Yet mark!
We will show you a way—only one—by which ye may blot out the stain!
Build them a monument whom to death-sleep, in their sleep, ye betrayed!
Proud and stern let it be—
Cuba free!
So, only, the stain shall be razed—so, only, the great debt be paid!
Edith M. Thomas.
Meanwhile, the sailor dead were buried in the cemetery at Havana, with impressive ceremony. They were afterwards disinterred and placed in the military cemetery at Arlington on the Potomac.
THE MARTYRS OF THE MAINE
And they have thrust our shattered dead away in foreign graves,
Exiled forever from the port the homesick sailor craves!
They trusted once in Spain,
They're trusting her again!
And with the holy care of our own sacred slain!
No, no, the Stripes and Stars
Must wave above our tars.
Bring them home!
On a thousand hills the darling dead of all our battles lie,
In nooks of peace, with flowers and flags, but now they seem to cry
From out their bivouac:
"Here every good man Jack
Belongs. Nowhere but here—with us.
So bring them back."
And on the Cuban gales,
A ghostly rumor wails,
"Bring us home!"
Poltroon, the people that neglects to guard the bones, the dust,
The reverenced relics its warriors have bequeathed in trust!
But heroes, too, were these
Who sentinell'd the seas
And gave their lives, to shelter us in careless ease.
Shall we desert them, slain,
And proffer them to Spain
As alien mendicants,—these martyrs of our Maine?
No! Bring them home!
Rupert Hughes.
At last, the investigation was ended, and showed that the Maine had been blown up from the outside, probably by a submarine mine, exploded by men who wore the uniform of Spain. The report reached Congress March 28, 1898, and on April 11 President McKinley asked Congress for authority to establish an independent government in Cuba.
EL EMPLAZADO
El Emplazado, the Summoned, the Doomed One,
Spain whom the nations denounce and abhor,
Robe thy dismay in the black sanbenito,
Come to the frowning tribunal of war.
Curst were thy minions, their roster and scutcheon,
Alvas, Alfonsos, Archarchons of hate;
Pillared on bigotry, pride, and extortion,
Topples to ruin thy mansion of state.
Violence, Cruelty, Intrigue, and Treason.
These the false courtiers who flattered thy throne;
Empires, thy sisters, forbode thee disaster,
Even thy children their mother disown.
Suppliant Cuba, thy daughter forsaken,
Famished and bleeding and buffeted sore,
Ghastly from gashes and stabs of thy rancor,
Binds up her wounds at an alien door.
Courts and corregidors erst at thy bidding
Banished or butchered Moresco and Jew;
Ghosts from all Christendom, shades of the Martyrs
Flock from the sepulchre thee to pursue.
Wrath of retributive Justice o'ertakes thee!
Brand of time's malison blisters thy brow:
Armed cabelleros and crowned kings of Bourbon,
All are unable to succor thee now.
El Emplazado, the Summoned, the Doomed One!
God's Inquisition condemns thee to-day!
Earth-shaking cannon-bolts thunder thy sentence,—
Heaven reëchoes the auto-da-fé.
William Henry Venable.
On April 19, 1898, Congress adopted a resolution declaring that Spanish rule in Cuba must cease, recognizing the independence of the Cubans, and empowering the President to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States to drive Spain from the island. It was, in effect, a declaration of war.
BATTLE SONG
When the vengeance wakes, when the battle breaks,
And the ships sweep out to sea;
When the foe is neared, when the decks are cleared,
And the colors floating free;
When the squadrons meet, when it's fleet to fleet
And front to front with Spain,
From ship to ship, from lip to lip,
Pass on the quick refrain,
"Remember, remember the Maine!"
When the flag shall sign, "Advance in line;
Train ships on an even keel;"
When the guns shall flash and the shot shall crash
And bound on the ringing steel;
When the rattling blasts from the armored masts
Are hurling their deadliest rain,
Let their voices loud, through the blinding cloud,
Cry ever the fierce refrain,
"Remember, remember the Maine!"
God's sky and sea in that storm shall be
Fate's chaos of smoke and flame,
But across that hell every shot shall tell,
Not a gun can miss its aim;
Not a blow shall fail on the crumbling mail,
And the waves that engulf the slain
Shall sweep the decks of the blackened wrecks,
With the thundering, dread refrain,
"Remember, remember the Maine!"
Robert Burns Wilson.
England was the only country in Europe whose sympathies were openly with the United States. In France, Italy, and elsewhere, the hostility to America was bitter and outspoken.
GREETING FROM ENGLAND
America! dear brother land!
While yet the shotted guns are mute,
Accept a brotherly salute,
A hearty grip of England's hand.
To-morrow, when the sulphurous glow
Of war shall dim the stars above,
Be sure the star of England's love
Is over you, come weal or woe.
Go forth in hope! Go forth in might!
To all your nobler self be true,
That coming times may see in you
The vanguard of the hosts of light.
Though wrathful justice load and train
Your guns, be every breach they make
A gateway pierced for mercy's sake
That peace may enter in and reign.
Then, should the hosts of darkness band
Against you, lowering thunderously,
Flash the word "Brother" o'er the sea,
And England at your side shall stand,
Exulting! For, though dark the night
And sinister with scud and rack,
The hour that brings us back to back
But harbingers the larger light.
London Chronicle, April 22, 1898.
Diplomatic relations between Spain and the United States were at once severed, and on April 25, 1898, Congress formally declared that war with the Kingdom of Spain had existed since April 21. The first blow was to be struck with surprising suddenness.
BATTLE CRY
[May 1, 1898]
The loud drums are rolling, the mad trumpets blow!
To battle! the war is begun and we go
To humble the pride of an arrogant foe!
The ensign and standard which wave for the Crown
Of Castile and Aragon—trample them down!
Granada and Leon and haughty Navarre
Shall lower their banner to Cuba's lone star!
Now under Old Glory, the Blue and the Gray
United march shoulder to shoulder away,
To meet the Hidalgos in furious fray.
With musket and haversack ready are we
To tramp the globe over, to sweep every sea,
From isles of dead Philip to Florida's Key.
We think of the Maine and our hot bosoms swell
With rage of love's sorrow, which vengeance must quell,
And then we are ready to storm gates of Hell.
Our flag streams aloft by the tempest unfurled!
We strike for a Continent;—nay, for the World!
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! the thunder is hurled!
The ensign and standard which wave for the Crown
Of Castile and Aragon—trample them down!
Granada and Leon and haughty Navarre
Shall lower their banner to Cuba's lone star!
William Henry Venable.
Thousands of miles away, across the Pacific, lay another island dependency of Spain, the Philippines. The Navy Department, with singular foresight, had been gradually increasing the Asiatic squadron, commanded by Commodore George Dewey, and that officer was carefully preparing for the work he saw before him. The fleet was assembled at Hong Kong, and on April 26, 1898, came a cablegram to Dewey stating that war had commenced and ordering him to proceed at once to the Philippines and capture or destroy the Spanish fleet there. At two o'clock the next afternoon, the American fleet started on its six-hundred-mile journey. It reached Manila on the night of April 30, and steamed straight into the harbor.
JUST ONE SIGNAL
[May 1, 1898]
The war-path is true and straight,
It knoweth no left or right;
Why ponder and wonder and vacillate?
The way to fight is to fight.
The officer of the deck
Had climbed to a perch aloft,
And he leaned far out and he craned his neck,
And his tones were gentle and soft:
"I see," he whispered, "off there to port,
Through the night shade's lesser black,
The darker blur of the outer fort,
Preparing for the attack."
They signalled it so, and sharp and short
The answer was signalled back:
"Keep on."
Again from the upper air
Came the quiet voice of the guide:
"The admiral's flagship's over there,
Two miles on the starboard side.
It's a long, long way for the best of eyes,
But I know her by moon or sun,
I know by her lines and I know her size—
And there goes her warning gun."
"That boat will make a most excellent prize,"
Said the admiral, "when we've won.
Keep on."
The whispering came again:
"I think by the hints and signs
Appearing ahead of us now and then
That we're getting among their mines.
Ten fathom in front, as the search-lights show,
I fancy that I can detect
The line of their outermost works—Ah, no!
It is nearer than I'd suspect."
The message was sent to the admiral so,
And he answered to this effect:
"Keep on."
The haze of the dawning day
Slid into the shades of night,
And he called: "Off there in the upper bay,
They're lining their ships for a fight.
I think they are training on us—" No more
He said, for the dawn was lit
By the blaze of a gun from the neighboring shore,
And he fell to the deck, hard hit.
They signalled: "The first man struck." As before
The admiral answered it:
"Keep on."
The sun came over the hills
As wishing a world-wide weal.
And the guns were fired with the aim that kills,
And steel pierced the heart of steel.
And the line of shore was the fringe of hell,
And the centre of hell was the sea,
And the woe was the woe no tongue may tell,
And no eye view tearlessly,
And over that crater of bomb and shell
The signal continued to be:
"Keep on."
O Lawrence, whose passing cry
Grows ever the more sublime,
And thou, O Nile King, whose words shall die
When we learn of the death of time,
We send you the third of a glorious three;
We send you a battle shout
That echoes up from the blood-thick sea
And up from the wreck and rout
And down from the staff on the high cross-tree
Where the flag is signalling out:
"Keep on."
The war-path is true and straight,
It knoweth no left or right;
Mars loves not the man who would deviate,—
For the way to fight is to fight.
A shot from Corregidor and another from El Fraile told that the fleet was discovered, but the ships glided quietly on, and at dawn the Spanish fleet was seen anchored under the batteries of Cavité. Dewey steamed straight for them; the Spanish ships were sunk, one after another, by the deadly fire of the American gunners, and by noon the Spanish fleet had been destroyed, the shore batteries silenced, and a white flag floated over the citadel of Cavité. Dewey had not lost a man, and had won the greatest naval battle since Trafalgar.
DEWEY AT MANILA
[May 1, 1898]
'Twas the very verge of May
When the bold Olympia led
Into [Bocagrande] Bay
Dewey's squadron, dark and dread,—
Creeping past Corregidor,
Guardian of Manila's shore.
Do they sleep who wait the fray?
Is the moon so dazzling bright
That our cruisers' battle-gray
Melts into the misty light?...
Ah! the red flash and the roar!
Wakes at last Corregidor!
All too late their screaming shell
Tears the silence with its track;
This is but the gate of hell,
We've no leisure to turn back.
Answer, Concord!—then once more
Slumber on, Corregidor!
And as, like a slowing tide,
Onward still the vessels creep,
Dewey, watching, falcon-eyed,
Orders,—"Let the gunners sleep;
For we meet a foe at four
Fiercer than Corregidor."
Well they slept, for well they knew
What the morrow taught us all,—
He was wise (as well as true)
Thus upon the foe to fall.
Long shall Spain the day deplore
Dewey ran Corregidor.
May is dancing into light
As the Spanish Admiral
From a dream of phantom fight
Wakens at his sentry's call.
Shall he leave Cavité's lee,
Hunt the Yankee fleet at sea?
O [Montojo], to thy deck,
That to-day shall float its last!
Quick! To quarters! Yonder speck
Grows a hull of portent vast.
Hither, toward Cavité's lee
Comes the Yankee hunting thee!
Not for fear of hidden mine
Halts our doughty Commodore.
He, of old heroic line,
Follows Farragut once more,
Hazards all on victory,
Here within Cavité's lee.
If he loses, all is gone;
He will win because he must.
And the shafts of yonder dawn
Are not quicker than his thrust.
Soon, Montojo, he shall be
With thee in Cavité's lee.
Now, Manila, to the fray!
Show the hated Yankee host
This is not a holiday,—
Spanish blood is more than boast.
Fleet and mine and battery,
Crush him in Cavité's lee!
Lo, hell's geysers at our fore
Pierce the plotted path—in vain,
Nerving every man the more
With the memory of the Maine!
Now at last our guns are free
Here within Cavité's lee.
"[Gridley]," says the Commodore,
"You may fire when ready." Then
Long and loud, like lions' roar
When a rival dares the den,
Breaks the awful cannonry
Full across Cavité's lee.
Who shall tell the daring tale
Of our Thunderbolt's attack,
Finding, when the chart should fail,
By the lead his dubious track,
Five ships following faithfully
Five times o'er Cavité's lee;
Of our gunners' deadly aim;
Of the gallant foe and brave
Who, unconquered, faced with flame,
Seek the mercy of the wave,—
Choosing honor in the sea
Underneath Cavité's lee?
Let the meed the victors gain
Be the measure of their task.
Less of flinching, stouter strain,
Fiercer combat—who could ask?
And "surrender,"—'twas a word
That Cavité ne'er had heard.
Noon,—the woful work is done!
Not a Spanish ship remains;
But, of their eleven, none
Ever was so truly Spain's!
Which is prouder, they or we,
Thinking of Cavité's lee?
ENVOY
But remember, when we've ceased
Giving praise and reckoning odds,
Man shares courage with the beast,
Wisdom cometh from the gods.
Who would win, on land or wave,
Must be wise as well as brave.
Robert Underwood Johnson.
DEWEY AND HIS MEN
[May 1, 1898]
Glistering high in the midnight sky the starry rockets soar
To crown the height so soon to be uncrowned, Corregidor;
And moaning into the middle night resounds the answering shock
From Fraile's island battery within the living rock;
Like Farragut before him, so Dewey down the bay,
Past fort and mine, in single line, holds on toward Cavité.
When the earth was new a raven flew o'er the sea on a perilous quest,
By his broad black pinions buoyed up as he sought him a spot to rest;
So to-day from British China sweeps our Commodore 'mid the cheers
Of England's dauntless ships of steel, and into the night he steers,
With never a home but the furrowy foam and never a place for ease
Save the place he'll win by the dint and din of his long, lean batteries.
A misty dawn on the May-day shone, yet the enemy sees afar
On our ships-of-war great flags flung out as bright as the morning star;
Then the cannon of Spain crash over the main and their splendor flecks the ports
As the crackling thunder rolls along the frowning fleet and forts;
But the Olympia in her majesty leads up the broadening bay
And behind her come gaunt ships and dumb toward crested Cavité.
All pearl and rose the dawnlight glows, and ruddy and gray the gloom
Of battle over their squadron sinks as we sweep like a vast simoom;
When our broadsides flash and ring at last—in a hoarsening, staggering crush
On the arsenal and fleet in wrath our lurid lightnings rush.
Malate knows us, Cavité, Cañacoa crazed with hate;
But Corregidor shall speak no more, El Fraile fears his fate.
Montojo fights as fought the knights by the Cid Campeador;
He leaves his flagship all afire, the Cuba takes him o'er
The Don Antonio roars and fumes, the Austria lights and lifts;
From Sangley to Manila Mole the battle vapor drifts;
But the Queen Christine in one great blast dies as becomes her name,
Her funeral shroud a pillar of cloud all filagreed with flame.
From peak to peak our quick flags speak, the rattling chorus ends;
And cheer on cheer rolls over the sea at the word the signal sends.
From Commodore to powder-boy, from bridge to stoker's den,
No battle rips have found our ships, nor wounds nor death our men.
We cheer and rest, we rest and cheer; and ever above the tides
The flag that knows no conquering foes in newer glory rides.
When the reek of war is rolled afar by the breezes down the bay
We turn our deadly guns again on the walls of Cavité.
The Spaniard dreamed of victory—his final hope is flown
As winged destruction up and down our batteries have strown—
In horrid havoc, red and black, the storm throbs on amain
Till in the glare of carnage there fade all the flags of Spain.
In old Madrid sad eyes are hid for an empire sore bestead:
Manila's mad with misery, Havana sick with dread,
As the great bells toll each gallant soul Castile shall see no more,
Toll Fraile's rock a thing for sport, toll lost Corregidor—
Spain's fortresses are fluttering with banners blanched and pale;
Her admiralty in agony lies shattered, steam and sail.
And the home we sought was cheaply bought, for no mother, wife, nor maid
From Maine to Loma Point bewails the lad for whom she prayed;
Now everywhere, from Florida to the blue Vancouver Straits,
The flag we've flown abroad is thrown, and a word of cheer awaits.
The ships and men that never failed the nation from her birth
Have done again all ships and men may do upon this earth.
Glistering high in the noontide sky the starry banners soar
To crown anew the height so soon uncrowned, Corregidor.
They bring the promise of the free to Philip's jewelled isles,
And hearts oppressed thrill hard with hope whene'er that promise smiles;
For the spirit of Old Ironsides broods o'er that tropic day
And the wildfire lights as Dewey fights on the broad Manila Bay.
Wallace Rice.
"OFF MANILLY"
Aye, lads, aye, we fought 'em,
And we sent 'em to the bottom,
And you'll say that I'm a-talkin' like a silly;
I hear your cheers and jokes,
But, lads, them's human folks
What is soakin' in the water off Manilly.
Aye, lads, and when we shot
It's just as like as not
We hit some mother's heart in old Granady.
She didn't sink no Maine,
'Way over there in Spain,
But she won't never see her laddy's body.
I kin see a black-eyed gal,
Somethin' like my little Sal,
What is cryin' out her eyes in old Sevilly;
There's a widow in Madrid
With a pore little kid,
And his daddy has went down off Manilly.
Aye, lads, aye, we fought 'em,
And we sent 'em to the bottom,
And I hopes you won't be thinkin' I'm a booby,
But that little black-eyed gal,
What reminds me so of Sal,
She didn't never do no harm to Cuby.
And if instead of Sanchy,
It had been "the hated Yankee,"
Which you know, my lads, is me and Jack, and Billy,
You know who would be cryin'
For us fellers, what was dyin'
And a-soakin' in the water off Manilly.
Edmund Vance Cooke.
MANILA BAY
From keel to fighting top, I love
Our Asiatic fleet,
I love our officers and crews
Who'd rather fight than eat.
I love the breakfast ordered up
When enemies ran short,
But most I love our chaplain
With his head out of the port.
Now, a naval chaplain cannot charge
As chaplains can on land,
With his Bible in his pocket,
His revolver in his hand,
He must wait and help the wounded,
No danger must he court;
So our chaplain helped the wounded
With his head out of the port.
Beneath his red and yellow,
At bay the Spaniard stood
Till the yellow rose in fire
And the crimson sank in blood.
And till the last fouled rifle
Sped its impotent retort,
Our chaplain watched the Spaniard
With his head out of the port.
Then here's our admiral on the bridge
Above the bursting shell;
And here's our sailors who went in
For victory or hell,
And here's the ships and here's the guns,
That silenced fleet and fort;
But don't forget our chaplain
With his head out of the port.
Arthur Hale.
May 1, 1898.
A BALLAD OF MANILA BAY
Your threats how vain, Corregidor;
Your rampired batteries, feared no more;
Your frowning guard at Manila gate,—
When our Captain went before!
Lights out. Into the unknown gloom
From the windy, glimmering, wide sea-room
Challenging fate in that dark strait
We dared the hidden doom.
But the death in the deep awoke not then;
Mine and torpedo they spoke not then;
From the heights that loomed on our passing line
The thunders broke not then.
Safe through the perilous dark we sped,
Quiet each ship as the quiet dead,
Till the guns of El Fraile roared—too late,
And the steel prows forged ahead.
Mute each ship as the mute-mouth grave,
A ghost leviathan cleaving the wave;
But deep in its heart the great fires throb,
The travailing engines rave.
The ponderous pistons urge like fate,
The red-throat furnaces roar elate,
And the sweating stokers stagger and swoon
In a heat more fierce than hate.
So through the dark we stole our way
Past the grim warders and into the bay,
Past Kalibuyo, and past Salinas,—
And came at the break of day
Where strong Cavité stood to oppose,—
Where, from a sheen of silver and rose,
A thronging of masts, a soaring of towers,
The beautiful city arose.
How fine and fair! But the shining air
With a thousand shattered thunders there
Flapped and reeled. For the fighting foe—
We had caught him in his lair.
Surprised, unready, his proud ships lay
Idly at anchor in Bakor Bay:—
Unready, surprised, but proudly bold,
Which was ever the Spaniard's way.
Then soon on his pride the dread doom fell,
Red doom,—for the ruin of shot and shell
Lit every vomiting, bursting hulk
With a crimson reek of hell.
But to the brave though beaten, hail!
All hail to them that dare and fail!
To the dauntless boat that charged our fleet
And sank in the iron hail!
* * * * *
Manila Bay! Manila Bay!
How proud the song on our lips to-day!
A brave old song of the true and strong,
And the will that has its way;
Of the blood that told in the days of Drake
When the fight was good for the fighting's sake!
For the blood that fathered Farragut
Is the blood that fathered Blake;
And the pride of the blood will not be undone
While war's in the world and a fight to be won.
For the master now, as the master of old,
Is "the man behind the gun."
The dominant blood that daunts the foe,
That laughs at odds, and leaps to the blow,—
It is Dewey's glory to-day, as Nelson's
A hundred years ago!
Charles George Douglas Roberts.
THE BATTLE OF MANILA
A FRAGMENT
[May 1, 1898]
By Cavité on the bay
'Twas the Spanish squadron lay;
And the red dawn was creeping
O'er the city that lay sleeping
To the east, like a bride, in the May.
There was peace at Manila,
In the May morn at Manila,—
When ho, the Spanish admiral
Awoke to find our line
Had passed by gray Corregidor,
Had laughed at shoal and mine,
And flung to the sky its banners
With "Remember" for the sign!
With the ships of Spain before
In the shelter of the shore,
And the forts on the right,
They drew forward to the fight,
And the first was the gallant Commodore
In the bay of Manila,
In the doomed bay of Manila—
With succor half the world away,
No port beneath that sky,
With nothing but their ships and guns
And Yankee pluck to try,
They had left retreat behind them,
They had come to win or die!
* * * * *
For we spoke at Manila,
We said it at Manila,
Oh be ye brave, or be ye strong,
Ye build your ships in vain;
The children of the sea queen's brood
Will not give up the main;
We hold the sea against the world
As we held it against Spain.
Be warned by Manila,
Take warning by Manila,
Ye may trade by land, ye may fight by land,
Ye may hold the land in fee;
But not go down to the sea in ships
To battle with the free;
For England and America
Will keep and hold the sea!
Richard Hovey.
This remarkable victory amazed the world, and set America wild with excitement and enthusiasm. Dewey became a popular hero, and Congress made haste to revive the grade of admiral and to confer it upon him.
DEWEY IN MANILA BAY
He took a thousand islands and he didn't lose a man
(Raise your heads and cheer him as he goes!)—
He licked the sneaky Spaniard till the fellow cut and ran,
For fighting's part of what a Yankee knows.
He fought 'em and he licked 'em, without any fuss or flam
(It was only his profession for to win),
He sank their boats beneath 'em, and he spared 'em as they swam,
And then he sent his ambulances in.
He had no word to cheer him and had no bands to play,
He had no crowds to make his duty brave;
But he risked the deep torpedoes at the breaking of the day,
For he knew he had our self-respect to save.
He flew the angry signal crying justice for the Maine,
He flew it from his flagship as he fought.
He drove the tardy vengeance in the very teeth of Spain,
And he did it just because he thought he ought.
He busted up their batteries and sank eleven ships
(He knew what he was doing, every bit);
He set the Maxims going like a hundred cracking whips,
And every shot that crackled was a hit.
He broke 'em and he drove 'em, and he didn't care at all,
He only liked to do as he was bid;
He crumpled up their squadron and their batteries and all,—
He knew he had to lick 'em and he did.
And when the thing was finished and they flew the frightened flag,
He slung his guns and sent his foot ashore,
And he gathered in their wounded, and he quite forgot to brag,
For he thought he did his duty, nothing more.
Oh, he took a thousand islands and he didn't lose a man
(Raise your heads and cheer him as he goes!)—
He licked the sneaky Spaniard till the fellow cut and ran,
For fighting's part of what a Yankee knows!
R. V. Risley.
Another fleet, and a much more powerful one than Dewey's, had been collected at Key West, under command of Admiral Sampson, ready to proceed to Cuba, and on April 21 orders came for it to sail. On the morning of April 22, it put to sea and steamed slowly off toward Havana.
"MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN"
[April 22, 1898]
Behold, we have gathered together our battleships, near and afar;
Their decks they are cleared for action, their guns they are primed for war.
From the East to the West there is hurry; in the North and the South a peal
Of hammers in fort and ship-yard, and the clamor and clang of steel;
And the rush and roar of engines, and clanking of derrick and crane,—
Thou art weighed in the scales and found wanting, the balance of God, O Spain!
Behold, I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the sky:
"She is weighed in the scales and found wanting, the balance God holds on high!"
The balance He once weighed Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, in:
One scale holds thy pride and power and empire, begotten of sin,
Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years,
Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears;
In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain,
Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain!
Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!
Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, Marie Therese.
Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night,
That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came howling to the fight;
From the New World shores they gathered, Inca and Aztec, slain,
To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain!
Summon thy ships together, gather a mighty fleet!
For a strong young nation is arming that never hath known defeat.
Summon thy ships together, there on thy blood-stained sands!
For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands,
A shadowy host of sorrows and of shames, too black to tell,
That reach with their horrible wounds for thee to drag thee down to hell;
Myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain!
Thou art weighed in the scales and found wanting, the balance of God, O Spain!
Madison Cawein.
A blockade was proclaimed of Havana and a number of other ports. But no attempt was made to enter the harbor, which was crammed with mines and defended by strong fortifications.
THE SPIRIT OF THE MAINE
In battle-line of sombre gray
Our ships-of-war advance,
As Red Cross Knights in holy fray
Charged with avenging lance.
And terrible shall be thy plight,
O fleet of cruel Spain!
Forever in our van doth fight
The spirit of the Maine!
As when beside Regillus Lake
The Great Twin Brethren came
A righteous fight for Rome to make
Against the Deed of Shame—
So now a ghostly ship shall doom
The fleet of treacherous Spain:
Before her guilty soul doth loom
The Spirit of the Maine!
A wraith arrayed in peaceful white,
As when asleep she lay
Above the traitorous mine that night
Within Havana Bay,
She glides before the avenging fleet,
A sign of woe to Spain,
Brave though her sons, how shall they meet
The Spirit of the Maine!
Tudor Jenks.
Spain also had a fleet, and a strong one, on the ocean. It had been gathered together at the Cape Verde Islands, and on April 29, 1898, it put to sea, and steamed westward into the Atlantic, for a destination which could only be conjectured.
THE DRAGON OF THE SEAS[15]
They say the Spanish ships are out
To seize the Spanish main;
Reach down the volume, boy, and read
The story o'er again.
How when the Spaniard had the might,
He drenched the earth, like rain,
With human blood, and made it death
To sail the Spanish main.
With torch and steel, and stake and rack,
He trampled out all truce,
Until Queen Bess her leashes slipt,
And turned her sea-dogs loose.
God! how they sprang! And how they tore!
The Grenvilles, Hawkins, Drake!
Remember, boy, they were your sires!
They made the Spaniard quake.
They sprang, like lions, for their prey,
Straight for the throat, amain!
By twos, by scores, where'er they caught
They fought the ships of Spain.
When Spain, in dark Ulloa's bay,
Broke doubly-plighted faith,
Bold Hawkins fought his way through fire
For great Elizabeth.
A bitter malt Spain brewed that day—
She drained it to the lees;
Her faithless guns that morn awoke
The Dragon of the Seas.
From sea to sea he ravaged far,
A scourge with flaming breath—
Where'er the Spaniard sailed his ships
Sailed Francis Drake and Death.
No port was safe against his ire,
Secure no furthest shore;
The fairest day oft sank in fire
Before the Dragon's roar.
He made th' Atlantic surges red
Round every Spanish keel;
Piled Spanish decks with Spanish dead,
The noblest of Castile.
From Del Fuego's beetling coast
To sleety Hebrides,
He hounded down the Spanish host,
And swept the flaming seas.
He fought till on Spain's inmost lakes
'Mid orange bowers set,
La Mancha's daughters feared to sail
Lest they the Dragon met.
King Philip, of his raven reft,
As forfeit claimed his head.
The great Queen laughed his wrath to scorn,
And knighted Drake instead.
And gave him ships and sent him forth
To clear the Spanish main
For England and for England's brood,
And sink the fleets of Spain.
And well he wrought his mighty work,
Till on that fatal day,
He met his only conqueror,
In Nombre Dios Bay.
There, in his shotted hammock swung,
Amid the surges' sweep,
He waits the lookouts' signal
Across the quiet deep.
And dreams of dark Ulloa's bay
And Spanish treachery;
And how he tracked Magellan far
Across the unknown sea.
But if Spain fires a single shot
Upon the Spanish main,
She'll come to deem the Dragon dead
Has waked to life again.
Thomas Nelson Page.
THE SAILING OF THE FLEET
Two fleets have sailed from Spain. The one would seek
What lands uncharted ocean might conceal.
Despised, condemned, and pitifully weak,
It found a world for Leon and Castile.
The other, mighty, arrogant, and vain,
Sought to subdue a people who were free.
Ask of the storm-gods where its galleons be,—
Whelmed 'neath the billows of the northern main!
A third is threatened. On the westward track,
Once gloriously traced, its vessels speed,
With gold and crimson battle-flags unfurled.
On Colon's course, but to Sidonia's wrack,
Sure fated, if so need shall come to need,
For Sons of Drake are lords of Colon's world.
A portion of the American fleet started off to look for the Spaniards, and the remainder engaged in various minor operations off the Cuban coast. On May 11 a party rowed in and cut the cables at Cienfuegos, under a heavy fire.
"CUT THE CABLES"
AN INCIDENT OF CIENFUEGOS
[May 11, 1898]
"Cut the cables!" the order read,
And the men were there; there was no delay.
The ships hove to in Cienfuegos Bay,—
The Windom, Nashville, Marblehead,—
Beautiful, grim, and alert were they,
It was midway, past in the morning gray.
"Cut the cables!" the order said—
Over the clouds of the dashing spray,
The guns were trained and ready for play;
Picked from the Nashville, Winslow led,—
Grim death waits ashore, they say;
"Lower the boats, Godspeed, give way."
Did "our untried navy lads" obey?
Away to their perilous work they sped.
Now, steady the keel, keep stroke the oar!
They must go in close, they must find the wires;
Grim death is alert on that watching shore,
That deadly shore of the "Hundred Fires."
In the lighthouse tower,—along the ledge,—
In the blockhouse, waiting,—the guns are there;
On the lowland, too, in the tall, dry sedge;
They are holding the word till the boats draw near.
One hundred feet from the water's edge,
Dazzling clear is the sunlit air;
Quick, my men,—the moments are dear!
Two hundred feet from the rifle-pit,
And our "untried" lads still show no fear—
When they open now they're sure to hit;
No question, even by sign, they ask,
In silence they bend to their dangerous task.
Quick now!—the shot from a smokeless gun
Cuts close and spatters the glistening brine;
Now follows the roar of the battle begun,
But the boys were bent in the blazing sun
Like peaceful fishermen, "wetting a line."
They searched the sea while a shrieking blast
Swept shoreward, swift as the lightning flies,—
While the fan-like storm of the shells went past
Like a death-wing clearing the hissing skies.
Like a sheltering wing,—for the hurricane came
From our own good guns, and the foe might tell
What wreck was wrought by their deadly aim;
For the foe went down where the hurricane fell.
It shattered the blockhouse, levelled the tower,
It ripped the face of the smoking hill,
It beat the battle back, hour by hour,
And then, for a little, our guns were still.
For a little, but that was the fatal breath,—
That moment's lull in the friendly crash,—
For the long pit blazed with a vicious flash,
And eight fell,—two of them done to death.
Once more the screen of the screaming shot
With its driving canopy covered the men,
While they dragged, and grappled, and, faltering not,
Still dragged, and searched, and grappled again.
And they stayed right there till the work was done,
The cables were found and severed, each one,
With an eighty-foot gap, and the "piece" hauled in,
And stowed in place,—then, under the din
Of that deafening storm, that had swept the air
For three long hours, they turned from shore
("Steady the keel" there; "stroke" the oar),
To the smoke-wreathed ships, and, under the guns,
They went up the side,—our "untried" ones.
Quiet, my brave boys; hats off, all!
They are here, our "untried" boys in blue.
Steady the block, now, all hands haul!
Slow on the line there!—look to that crew!
Six lads hurt!—and the colors there?
Wrap two of them?—hold! Ease back the bow!
Slow, now, on the line!—slack down with care!
Steady! they're back on their own deck now!
The cables are cut, sir, eighty-foot spread,
Six boys hurt, and—two of them dead.
Half-mast the colors! there's work to do!
There are two red marks on the starboard gun,
There is still some work that is not quite done,
For our "untried" boys that are tried and true.
It wasn't all play when they cut the wires,—
Well named is that bay of the "Hundred Fires."
Robert Burns Wilson.
June 2, 1898.
A few days later, on May 24, 1898, the battleship Oregon arrived at Jupiter Inlet, Florida, after one of the most remarkable voyages in history. On March 9 the ship, then at San Francisco, was ordered to circle South America and join the Atlantic squadron, and the journey of nearly fifteen thousand miles was accomplished without starting a rivet.
THE RACE OF THE OREGON
Lights out! And a prow turned towards the South,
And a canvas hiding each cannon's mouth,
And a ship like a silent ghost released
Is seeking her sister ships in the East.
A rush of water, a foaming trail,
An ocean hound in a coat of mail,
A deck long-lined with the lines of fate,
She roars good-by at the Golden Gate.
On! On! Alone without gong or bell,
But a burning fire, like the fire of hell,
Till the lookout starts as his glasses show
The white cathedral of Callao.
A moment's halt 'neath the slender spire;
Food, food for the men, and food for the fire.
Then out to the sea to rest no more
Till her keel is grounded on Chili's shore.
South! South! God guard through the unknown wave,
Where chart nor compass may help or save,
Where the hissing wraiths of the sea abide
And few may pass through the stormy tide.
North! North! For a harbor far away,
For another breath in the burning day;
For a moment's shelter from speed and pain,
And a prow to the tropic sea again.
Home! Home! With the mother fleet to sleep
Till the call shall rise o'er the awful deep;
And the bell shall clang for the battle there,
And the voice of guns is the voice of prayer!
* * * * *
One more to the songs of the bold and free,
When your children gather about your knee;
When the Goths and Vandals come down in might
As they came to the walls of Rome one night;
When the lordly William of Deloraine
Shall ride by the Scottish lake again;
When the Hessian spectres shall flit in air
As Washington crosses the Delaware;
When the eyes of babes shall be closed in dread
As the story of Paul Revere is read;
When your boys shall ask what the guns are for,
Then tell them the tale of the Spanish war,
And the breathless millions that looked upon
The matchless race of the Oregon.
John James Meehan.
BATTLE-SONG OF THE OREGON
The billowy headlands swiftly fly
The crested path I keep,
My ribboned smoke stains many a sky,
My embers dye the deep;
A continent has hardly space—
Mid-ocean little more,
Wherein to trace my eager race
While clang the alarums of war.
I come, the warship Oregon,
My wake a whitening world,
My cannon shotted, thundering on
With battle-flags unfurled.
My land knows no successful foe—
Behold, to sink or save,
From stoker's flame to gunner's aim
The race that rules the wave!
A nation's prayers my bulwark are
Though ne'er so wild the sea;
Flow time or tide, come storm or star,
Throbs my machinery.
Lands Spain has lost forever peer
From every lengthening coast,
Till rings the cheer that proves me near
The flag of Columbia's host.
Defiantly I have held my way
From the vigorous shore where Drake
Dreamed a New Albion in the day
He left New Spain a-quake;
His shining course retraced, I fight
The self-same foe he fought,
All earth to light with signs of might
Which God our Captain wrought.
Made mad, from Santiago's mouth
Spain's ships-of-battle dart:
My bulk comes broadening from the south,
A hurricane at heart;
Its desperate armories blaze and boom,
Its ardent engines beat;
And fiery doom finds root and bloom
Aboard of the Spanish fleet....
The hundredweight of the Golden Hind
With me are ponderous tons,
The ordnance great her deck that lined
Would feed my ravening guns,
Her spacious reach in months and years
I've shrunk to nights and days;
Yet in my ears are ringing cheers
Sir Frank himself would raise:
For conquereth not mine engines' breath
Nor sides steel-clad and strong,
Nor bulk, nor rifles red with death:
To Spain, too, these belong;
What made that old Armada break
This newer victory won:
Jehovah spake by the sons of Drake
At each incessant gun.
I come, the warship Oregon,
My wake a whitening world,
My cannon shotted, thundering on
With battle-flags unfurled.
My land knows no successful foe—
Behold, to sink or save,
From stoker's flame to gunner's aim
The race that rules the wave!
Wallace Rice.
A few days before, Sampson's fleet had bombarded San Juan, Porto Rico, ineffectually, and then came word that the Spanish squadron had slipped into the harbor of Santiago, Cuba, to coal and refit. It was not until May 29 that its presence there was discovered by the Americans, who proceeded at once to blockade the harbor.
STRIKE THE BLOW
The four-way winds of the world have blown,
And the ships have ta'en the wave;
The legions march to the trumps' shrill call
'Neath the flag of the free and brave.
The hounds of the sea
Have trailed the foe,
They have trailed and tracked him down,—
Then wait no longer, but strike, O land,
With the dauntless strength of thy strong right hand,
Strike the blow!
The armored fleets, with their grinning guns,
Have the Spaniard in his lair;
They have tracked him down where the ramparts frown,
And they'll halt and hold him there.
They have steamed in his wake,
They have seen him go,
They have bottled and corked him up;
Then send him home to the under-foam,
Till the wide sea shakes to the far blue dome;
Strike the blow!
The Cuban dead and the dying call,
The children starved in the light
Of the aid that waits till the hero deed
Breaks broad on the tyrant's might.
The starved and the weak
In their hour of woe
Are calling, land, on thee;
Then why delay in thy dauntless sway?
On, on, to the charge of the freedom-way,
Strike the blow!
They have ta'en the winds of the Carib seas,
Thy fleets that know not fear;
Their ribs of steel have yearned to reel
In the dance of the cannoneer.
Thy sons of the blue
That wait to go
Would leap with a will to the charge,
Then send them the word so long deferred;
They have listened late, but they have not heard;
Strike the blow!
They have listened late in the desolate land,
They have looked through brimming eyes,
And starving women have held dead babes
To their heart with a thousand sighs.
On, on to the end,
O land, the foe
Beneath thy sword shall fall,
Thy ships of steel have tracked them home,
Ye are king of the land and king of the foam.
Strike the blow!
On June 1, 1898, a great portion of Sampson's fleet was off the harbor, and it was decided to block the entrance by sinking the collier Merrimac in the channel. The enterprise was intrusted to Lieutenant Richmond Pearson Hobson, and a crew of eight volunteers.
Eight volunteers! on an errand of death!
Eight men! Who speaks?
Eight men to go where the cannon's hot breath
Burns black the cheeks.
Eight men to man the old Merrimac's hulk;
Eight men to sink the old steamer's black bulk,
Blockade the channel where Spanish ships skulk,—
Eight men! Who speaks?
"Eight volunteers!" said the Admiral's flags!
Eight men! Who speaks?
Who will sail under El Morro's black crags?—
Sure death he seeks.
Who is there willing to offer his life?
Willing to march to this music of strife,—
Cannon for drum and torpedo for fife?
Eight men! Who speaks?
Eight volunteers! on an errand of death!
Eight men! Who speaks?
Was there a man who in fear held his breath?
With fear-paled cheeks?
From ev'ry war-ship ascended a cheer!
From ev'ry sailor's lips burst the word "Here!"
Four thousand heroes their lives volunteer!
Eight men! Who speaks?
Lansing C. Bailey.
It was impossible to get the boat ready that night, but at last, at 3:30 on the morning of June 2, she stood away for the harbor. The Spaniards saw her as she entered and rained a storm of fire upon her. A moment later, torn by her own torpedoes and those of the enemy, she sank to the bottom. Hobson and his men were taken prisoners by the Spaniards.
THE MEN OF THE MERRIMAC
[June 3, 1898]
Hail to Hobson! Hail to Hobson! hail to all the valiant set!
Clausen, Kelly, Deignan, Phillips, Murphy, Montagu, Charette!
Howsoe'er we laud and laurel we shall be their debtors yet!
Shame upon us, shame upon us, should the nation e'er forget!
Though the tale be worn with the telling, let the daring deed be sung!
Surely never brighter valor, since this wheeling world was young,
Thrilled men's souls to more than wonder, till praise leaped from every tongue!
Trapped at last the Spanish sea-fox in the hill-locked harbor lay;
Spake the Admiral from his flagship, rocking off the hidden bay,
"We must close yon open portal lest he slip by night away!"
"Volunteers!" the signal lifted; rippling through the fleet it ran;
Was there ever deadlier venture? was there ever bolder plan?
Yet the gallant sailors answered, answered well-nigh to a man!
Ere the dawn's first rose-flush kindled, swiftly sped the chosen eight
Toward the batteries grimly frowning o'er the harbor's narrow gate;
Sooth, he holds his life but lightly who thus gives the dare to Fate.
They had passed the outer portal where the guns grinned, tier o'er tier,
When portentous Morro thundered, and Socapa echoed clear,
And Estrella joined the chorus pandemoniac to hear.
Heroes without hands to waver, heroes without hearts to quail,
There they sank the bulky collier 'mid the hurtling Spanish hail;
Long shall float our starry banner if such lads beneath it sail!
Hail to Hobson! hail to Hobson! hail to all the valiant set!
Clausen, Kelly, Deignan, Phillips, Murphy, Montagu, Charette!
Howsoe'er we laud and laurel we shall be their debtors yet!
Shame upon us, shame upon us, should the nation e'er forget!
Clinton Scollard.
THE VICTORY-WRECK[16]
[June 3, 1898]
O stealthily-creeping Merrimac,
Hush low your fiery breath;
You who gave life to ships of strife
Are sailing unto your death!—
"I am ready and dressed for burial,
Beneath the Cuban wave;
But still I can fight for God and right,
While resting in my grave!"
O men that are sailing the Merrimac,
Your hearts are beating high;
But send a prayer through the smoking air,
To your Captain in the sky!—
"We know there is death in every breath,
As we cling to the gunless deck;
And grand will be our voyage, if we
Can make of our ship a wreck!"
Now drop the bower of the Merrimac,
And swing her to the tide.
Now scuttle her, braves, and bid the waves
Sweep into her shattered side!—
"Through a flying hell of shot and shell,
We passed Death, with a sneer;
We wrenched our life from a novel strife,
And even our foemen cheer!"
Will Carleton.
Examination showed that the channel had not been blocked. The Merrimac had gone too far in, and had sunk lengthwise of the channel instead of across it. So the Spanish ships were not yet "corked."
HOBSON AND HIS MEN
[June 3, 1898]
Hobson went towards death and hell,
Hobson and his men,
Unregarding shot and shell,
And the rain of fire that fell;
Calm, undaunted, fearless, bold,
Every heart a heart of gold,
Steadfast, daring, uncontrolled,—
Hobson and his men.
Hobson came from death and hell,
Hobson and his men,
Shout the tidings, ring the bell,
Let the pealing anthems swell;
Back from wreck and raft and wave,
From the shadow of the grave,
Every honor to the brave.—
Hobson and his men.
Robert Loveman.
Meanwhile, nearer home, things were moving slowly enough, for the War Department developed a startling unpreparedness and inefficiency. Two hundred thousand volunteers were called for, but, though every state responded instantly, the work of mobilizing these troops was conducted in so bungling a fashion that, by the beginning of June, only three regiments, in addition to the regulars, had reached the rendezvous at Tampa, Florida.
THE CALL TO THE COLORS
"Are you ready, O Virginia,
Alabama, Tennessee?
People of the Southland, answer!
For the land hath need of thee."
"Here!" from sandy Rio Grande,
Where the Texan horsemen ride;
"Here!" the hunters of Kentucky
Hail from Chatterawah's side;
Every toiler in the cotton,
Every rugged mountaineer,
Velvet-voiced and iron-handed,
Lifts his head to answer, "Here!
Some remain who charged with Pickett,
Some survive who followed Lee;
They shall lead their sons to battle
For the flag, if need there be."
"Are you ready, California,
Arizona, Idaho?
'Come, oh, come, unto the colors!'
Heard you not the bugle blow?"
Falls a hush in San Francisco
In the busy hives of trade;
In the vineyards of Sonoma
Fall the pruning knife and spade;
In the mines of Colorado
Pick and drill are thrown aside;
Idly in Seattle harbor
Swing the merchants to the tide;
And a million mighty voices
Throb responsive like a drum,
Rolling from the rough Sierras,
"You have called us, and we come."
O'er Missouri sounds the challenge—
O'er the great lakes and the plain;
"Are you ready, Minnesota?
Are you ready, men of Maine?"
From the woods of Ontonagon,
From the farms of Illinois,
From the looms of Massachusetts,
"We are ready, man and boy."
Axemen free, of Androscoggin,
Clerks who trudge the cities' paves,
Gloucester men who drag their plunder
From the sullen, hungry waves,
Big-boned Swede and large-limbed German,
Celt and Saxon swell the call,
And the Adirondacks echo:
"We are ready, one and all."
Truce to feud and peace to faction!
All forgot is party zeal
When the war-ships clear for action,
When the blue battalions wheel.
Europe boasts her standing armies,—
Serfs who blindly fight by trade;
We have seven million soldiers,
And a soul guides every blade.
Laborers with arm and mattock,
Laborers with brain and pen,
Railroad prince and railroad brakeman
Build our line of fighting men.
Flag of righteous wars! close mustered
Gleam the bayonets, row on row,
Where thy stars are sternly clustered,
With their daggers towards the foe!
Arthur Guiterman.
ESSEX REGIMENT MARCH
WRITTEN FOR THE EIGHTH MASSACHUSETTS UNITED STATES VOLUNTEER INFANTRY IN THE SPANISH WAR
[Once more the Flower of Essex] is marching to the wars;
We are up to serve the Country wherever fly her Stars;
Ashore, afloat, or far or near, to her who bore us true,
We will do a freeman's duty as we were born to do.
Lead the van, and may we lead it,
God of armies, till the wrong shall cease;
Speed the war, and may we speed it
To the sweet home-coming, God of peace!
Our fathers fought their battles, and conquered for the right,
Three hundred years victorious from every stubborn fight;
And still the Flower of Essex from the ancient stock puts forth,
Where the bracing blue sea-water strings the sinews of the North.
The foe on field, the foe on deck to us is all the same;
With both the Flower of Essex has played a winning game;
We threw them on the village green, we cowed them in Algiers,
And ship to ship we shocked them in our first great naval years.
We rowed the Great Commander o'er the ice-bound Delaware,
When the Christmas snow was falling in the dark and wintry air;
And still the Flower of Essex, like the heroes gone before,
Where the tide of danger surges shall take the laboring oar.
The Flower that first lay bleeding along by Bloody Brook
Full oft hath Death upgathered in war's red reaping-hook;
Its home is on our headlands; 'tis sweeter than the rose;
But sweetest in the battle's breath the Flower of Essex blows.
At the best a dear home-coming, at the worst a soldier's grave,
Beating the tropic jungle, ploughing the dark blue wave;
But while the Flower of Essex from the granite rock shall come,
None but the dead shall cease to fight till all go marching home.
March onward to the leaguer wherever it may lie;
The Colors make the Country whatever be the sky;
Where round the Flag of Glory the storm terrific blows,
We march, we sail, whoever fail, the Flower of Essex goes.
George Edward Woodberry.
THE GATHERING
We are coming, Cuba,—coming; our starry banner shines
Above the swarming legions, sweeping downward to the sea.
From Northern hill, and Western plain, and towering Southern pines
The serried hosts are gathering,—and Cuba shall be free.
We are coming, Cuba,—coming. Thy sturdy patriots brave,
Who fight as fought our fathers in the old time long ago,
Shall see the Spanish squadrons sink beneath the whelming wave,
And plant their own loved banner on the ramparts of their foe.
We are coming, Cuba,—coming. Across the billow's foam
Our gallant ships are bearing our bravest down to thee,
While earnest prayers are rising from every freeman's home
That freedom's God may lead them on, and Cuba shall be free.
Herbert B. Swett.
It was evident that an army was badly needed to support the fleet at Santiago, and on June 7, 1898, the force at Tampa was ordered to embark for that place, under command of General William Shafter. Everything was confusion, and it was not until June 14 that the transports finally made their way down the bay.
COMRADES
Now from their slumber waking,—
The long sleep men thought death—
The War Gods rise, inhaling deep
The cannon's fiery breath!
Their mighty arms uplifted,
Their gleaming eyes aglow
With the steadfast light of battle,
As it blazed long years ago!
Now from the clouds they summon
The Captains of the Past,
Still sailing in their astral ships
The star-lit spaces vast;
And from Valhalla's peaceful plains
The Great Commanders come,
And marshal again their armies
To the beat of the muffled drum.
His phantom sails unfurling
McDonough sweeps amain
Where once his Yankee sailors fought
The battle of Champlain!
And over Erie's waters,
Again his flagship sweeps,
While Perry on the quarter-deck
His endless vigil keeps.
Silent as mists that hover
When twilight shadows fall,
The ghosts of the royal armies
Foregather at the call;
And their glorious chiefs are with them,
From conflicts lost or won,
As they gather round one mighty shade,
The shade of Washington!
* * * * *
Side by side with the warships
That sail for the hostile fleet,
The ships of the Past are sailing
And the dauntless comrades meet;
And standing shoulder to shoulder,
The armèd spirits come,
And march with our own battalions
To the beat of the muffled drum!
Henry R. Dorr.
The fleet reached Santiago June 20, and Shafter decided to move directly upon the city. But the army had lost or forgotten its lighters and launches, so the task of disembarking it fell upon the navy and was admirably performed. Next morning, General Joseph Wheeler, with four squadrons of dismounted cavalry, was ordered forward. Two of these squadrons were composed of the "Rough Riders," under command of Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt.
WHEELER'S BRIGADE AT SANTIAGO
Beneath the blistering tropical sun
The column is standing ready,
Awaiting the fateful command of one
Whose word will ring out
To an answering shout
To prove it alert and steady.
And a stirring chorus all of them sung
With singleness of endeavor,
Though some to "The Bonny Blue Flag" had swung
And some to "The Union For Ever."
The order came sharp through the desperate air
And the long ranks rose to follow,
Till their dancing banners shone more fair
Than the brightest ray
Of the Cuban day
On the hill and jungled hollow;
And to "Maryland" some in the days gone by
Had fought through the combat's rumble,
And some for "Freedom's Battle-Cry"
Had seen the broad earth crumble.
Full many a widow weeps in the night
Who had been a man's wife in the morning;
For the banners we loved we bore to the height
Where the enemy stood
As a hero should,
His valor his country adorning;
But drops of pride with your tears of grief,
Ye American women, mix ye!
For the North and South, with a Southron chief,
Kept time to the tune of "Dixie."
Wallace Rice.
After great confusion and several days' delay, the remainder of the army came up, and on the afternoon of June 30 a general advance was ordered. By dawn of July 1 the troops were in position and the attack began.
DEEDS OF VALOR AT SANTIAGO
[July 1, 1898]
Who cries that the days of daring are those that are faded far,
That never a light burns planet-bright to be hailed as the hero's star?
Let the deeds of the dead be laurelled, the brave of the elder years,
But a song, we say, for the men of to-day, who have proved themselves their peers!
High in the vault of the tropic sky is the garish eye of the sun,
And down with its crown of guns afrown looks the hilltop to be won;
There is the trench where the Spaniard lurks, his hold and his hiding-place,
And he who would cross the space between must meet death face to face.
The black mouths belch and thunder, and the shrapnel shrieks and flies;
Where are the fain and the fearless, the lads with the dauntless eyes?
Will the moment find them wanting! Nay, but with valor stirred!
Like the leashed hound on the coursing-ground they wait but the warning word.
"Charge!" and the line moves forward, moves with a shout and a swing,
While sharper far than the cactus-thorn is the spiteful bullet's sting.
Now they are out in the open, and now they are breasting the slope,
While into the eyes of death they gaze as into the eyes of hope.
Never they wait nor waver, but on they clamber and on,
With "Up with the flag of the Stripes and Stars, and down with the flag of the Don!"
What should they bear through the shot-rent air but rout to the ranks of Spain,
For the blood that throbs in their hearts is the blood of the boys of Anthony Wayne!
See, they have taken the trenches! Where are the foemen? Gone!
And now "Old Glory" waves in the breeze from the heights of San Juan!
And so, while the dead are laurelled, the brave of the elder years,
A song, we say, for the men of to-day who have proved themselves their peers.
Clinton Scollard.
The morning was consumed in blundering about under the Spanish fire, trying vainly to carry out the orders of a general lying in a hammock far in the rear. Finally, the subordinate commanders acted for themselves; Lawton, Ludlow, and Chaffee took the fort of El Caney, and the Rough Riders charged San Juan.
THE CHARGE AT SANTIAGO
[July 1, 1898]
With shot and shell, like a loosened hell,
Smiting them left and right,
They rise or fall on the sloping wall
Of beetling bush and height!
They do not shrink at the awful brink
Of the rifle's hurtling breath,
But onward press, as their ranks grow less,
To the open arms of death!
Through a storm of lead, o'er maimed and dead,
Onward and up they go,
Till hand to hand the unflinching band
Grapple the stubborn foe.
O'er men that reel, 'mid glint of steel,
Bellow or boom of gun,
They leap and shout over each redoubt
Till the final trench is won!
O charge sublime! Over dust and grime
Each hero hurls his name
In shot or shell, like a molten hell,
To the topmost heights of fame!
And prone or stiff, under bush and cliff,
Wounded or dead men lie,
While the tropic sun on a grand deed done
Looks with his piercing eye!
William Hamilton Hayne.
PRIVATE BLAIR OF THE REGULARS
[July 1, 1898]
It was Private Blair, of the regulars, before dread El Caney,
Who felt with every throb of his wound the life-tide ebb away;
And as he dwelt in a fevered dream on the home of his youthful years,
He heard near by the moan and sigh of two of the volunteers.
He raised him up and gazed at them, and likely lads they were,
But when he bade them pluck up heart he found they could not stir.
Then a bullet ploughed the sodden loam, and his fearless face grew dark,
For he saw through the blur a sharpshooter who made the twain his mark.
And his strength leaped into his limbs again, and his fading eye burned bright;
And he gripped his gun with a steady hand and glanced along the sight;
Then another voice in that choir of fire outspake with a deadly stress,
And in the trench at El Caney there lurked a Spaniard less.
But still the moans of the volunteers went up through the murky air,
And there kindled the light of a noble thought in the brain of Private Blair.
The flask at his side, he had drained it dry in the blistering scorch and shine,
So, unappalled, he crept and crawled in the face of the firing line.
The whirring bullets sped o'erhead, and the great shells burst with a roar,
And the shrapnel tore the ground around like the tusks of the grisly boar;
But on he went, with his high intent, till he covered the space between,
And came to the place where the Spaniard lay and clutched his full canteen.
Then he writhed him back o'er the bloody track, while Death drummed loud in his ears,
And pressed the draught he would fain have quaffed to the lips of the volunteers.
Drink! cried he; don't think of me, for I'm only a regular,
While you have homes in the mother-land where your waiting loved ones are.
Then his soul was sped to the peace of the dead. All praise to the men who dare,
And honor be from sea to sea to the deed of Private Blair!
Clinton Scollard.
The fort on San Juan was carried and held all the next day, despite Spanish attacks. But Shafter was alarmed and considered withdrawing the army, though strongly opposed by General Wheeler, who had been in the thick of the fighting from the very first.
Into the thick of the fight he went, pallid and sick and wan,
Borne in an ambulance to the front, a ghostly wisp of a man;
But the fighting soul of a fighting man, approved in the long ago,
Went to the front in that ambulance, and the body of Fighting Joe.
Out from the front they were coming back, smitten of Spanish shells—
Wounded boys from the Vermont hills and the Alabama dells;
"Put them into this ambulance; I'll ride to the front," he said,
And he climbed to the saddle and rode right on, that little old ex-Confed.
From end to end of the long blue ranks rose up the ringing cheers,
And many a powder-blackened face was furrowed with sudden tears,
As with flashing eyes and gleaming sword, and hair and beard of snow,
Into the hell of shot and shell rode little old Fighting Joe!
Sick with fever and racked with pain, he could not stay away,
For he heard the song of the yester-year in the deep-mouthed cannon's bay—
He heard in the calling song of the guns there was work for him to do,
Where his country's best blood splashed and flowed 'round the old Red, White and Blue.
Fevered body and hero heart! this Union's heart to you
Beats out in love and reverence—and to each dear boy in blue
Who stood or fell 'mid the shot and shell, and cheered in the face of the foe,
As, wan and white, to the heart of the fight rode little old Fighting Joe!
James Lindsay Gordon.
Then, suddenly, sorrow gave place to joy, and discouragement to enthusiasm for a great victory won. At nine o'clock on the morning of Sunday, July 3, 1898, the Spanish fleet came rushing out of the harbor in a mad effort to escape. The American ships closed in, and a battle to the death began, which ended in the total destruction of the Spanish fleet.
SPAIN'S LAST ARMADA
[July 3, 1898]
They fling their flags upon the morn,
Their safety's held a thing for scorn,
As to the fray the Spaniards on the wings of war are borne;
Their sullen smoke-clouds writhe and reel,
And sullen are their ships of steel,
All ready, cannon, lanyards, from the fighting-tops to keel.
They cast upon the golden air
One glancing, helpless, hopeless prayer,
To ask that swift and thorough be the victory falling there;
Then giants with a cheer and sigh
Burst forth to battle and to die
Beneath the walls of Morro on that morning in July.
The Teresa heads the haughty train
To bear the Admiral of Spain,
She rushes, hurtling, whitening, like the summer hurricane;
El Morro glowers in his might;
Socapa crimsons with the fight,
The Oquendo's lunging lightning blazes through her sombre night.
In desperate and eager dash
The Vizcaya hurls her vivid flash,
As wild upon the waters her enormous batteries crash;
Like spindrift scuds the fleet Colon,
And, on her bubbling wake bestrown,
Lurch, hungry for the slaughter, El Furor and El Pluton.
Round Santiago's armored crest,
Serene, in their gray valor dressed,
Our behemoths lie quiet, watching well from south and west;
Their keen eyes spy the harbor-reek;
The signals dance, the signals speak;
Then breaks the blasting riot as our broadsides storm and shriek!
Quick, poising on her eagle-wings,
The Brooklyn into battle swings;
The wide sea falls and wonders as the titan Texas springs;
The Iowa in monster-leaps
Goes bellowing above the deeps;
The Indiana thunders as her terror onward sweeps.
And, hovering near and hovering low
Until the moment strikes to go,
In gallantry the Gloucester swoops down on her double foe;
She volleys—the Furor falls lame;
Again—and the Pluton's aflame,
Hurrah, on high she's tossed her! Gone the grim destroyers' fame!
And louder yet and louder roar
The Oregon's black cannon o'er
The clangor and the booming all along the Cuban shore.
She's swifting down her valkyr-path,
Her sword sharp for the aftermath,
With levin in her glooming, like Jehovah in His wrath.
Great ensigns snap and shine in air
Above the furious onslaught where
Our sailors cheer the battle, danger but a thing to dare;
Our gunners speed, as oft they've sped,
Their hail of shrilling, shattering lead,
Swift-sure our rifles rattle, and the foeman's decks are red.
Like baying bloodhounds lope our ships,
Adrip with fire their cannons' lips;
We scourge the fleeing Spanish, whistling weals from scorpion-whips;
Till, livid in the ghastly glare,
They tremble on in dread despair,
And thoughts of victory vanish in the carnage they must bear.
Where Cuban coasts in beauty bloom,
Where Cuban breakers swirl and boom,
The Teresa's onset slackens in a scarlet spray of doom;
[Near Nimanima's greening hill]
The streaming flames cry down her will,
Her vast hull blows and blackens, prey to every mortal ill.
On Juan Gonzales' foaming strand
The Oquendo plunges 'neath our hand,
Her armaments all strangled, and her hope a showering brand;
She strikes and grinds upon the reef,
And, shuddering there in utter grief,
In misery and mangled, wastes away beside her chief.
The Vizcaya nevermore shall ride
From out Aserradero's tide,
With hate upon her forehead ne'er again she'll pass in pride;
Beneath our fearful battle-spell
She moaned and struggled, flared and fell,
To lie a-gleam and horrid, while the piling fires swell.
Thence from the wreck of Spain alone
Tears on the terrified Colon,
In bitter anguish crying, like a storm-bird forth she's flown;
Her throbbing engines creak and thrum;
She sees abeam the Brooklyn come,
For life she's gasping, flying; for the combat is she dumb.
Till then the man behind the gun
Had wrought whatever must be done—
Here, now, beside our boilers is the fight fought out and won;
Where great machines pulse on and beat,
A-swelter in the humming heat
The Nation's nameless toilers make her mastery complete.
[The Cape o' the Cross] casts out a stone
Against the course of the Colon,
Despairing and inglorious on the wind her white flag's thrown;
Spain's last Armada, lost and wan,
Lies where Tarquino's stream rolls on,
As round the world, victorious, looms the dreadnaught Oregon.
The sparkling daybeams softly flow
To glint the twilight afterglow,
The banner sinks in splendor that in battle ne'er was low;
The music of our country's hymn
Rings out like songs of seraphim,
Fond memories and tender fill the evening fair and dim;
Our huge ships ride in majesty
Unchallenged o'er the glittering sea,
Above them white stars cluster, mighty emblem of the free;
And all a-down the long sea-lane
The fitful bale-fires wax and wane
To shed their lurid lustre on the empire that was Spain.
Wallace Rice.
SANTIAGO
[July 3, 1898]
In the stagnant pride of an outworn race
The Spaniard sail'd the sea:
Till we haled him up to God's judgment-place—
And smashed him by God's decree!
Out from the harbor, belching smoke,
Came dashing seaward the Spanish ships—
And from all our decks a great shout broke,
Then our hearts came up and set us a-choke
For joy that we had them at last at grips!
No need for signals to get us away—
We were off at score, with our screws a-gleam!
Through the blistering weeks we'd watched the bay
And our captains had need not a word to say—
Save to bellow and curse down the pipes for steam!
Leading the pack in its frightened flight
The Colon went foaming away to the west—
Her tall iron bulwarks, black as night,
And her great black funnels, sharp in sight
'Gainst the green-clad hills in their peace and rest.
Her big Hontaria blazed away
At the Indiana, our first in line.
The short-ranged shot drenched our decks with spray—
While our thirteen-inchers, in answering play,
Ripped straight through her frame to her very spine!
* * * * *
Straight to its end went our winning fight
With the thunder of guns in a mighty roar.
Our hail of iron, casting withering blight,
Turning the Spanish ships in their flight
To a shorter death on the rock-bound shore.
The Colon, making her reckless race
With the Brooklyn and Oregon close a-beam,
Went dashing landward—and stopped the chase
By grinding her way to her dying-place
In a raging outburst of flame and steam.
So the others, facing their desperate luck,
Drove headlong on to their rock-dealt death—
The Vizcaya, yielding before she struck,
The riddled destroyers, a huddled ruck,
Sinking, and gasping for drowning breath.
So that flying battle surged down the coast,
With its echoing roar from the Cuban land;
So the dying war-ships gave up the ghost;
So we shattered and mangled the Philistine host—
So the fight was won that our Sampson planned!
Thomas A. Janvier.
The American battleships were practically uninjured, and the fleet had lost only two men, one killed and one injured, both on the Brooklyn. The Spanish loss was 350 killed or drowned, 160 wounded, and 1774 taken prisoners.
THE FLEET AT SANTIAGO
[July 3, 1898]
The heart leaps with the pride of their story.
Predestinate lords of the sea!
They are heirs of the flag and its glory,
They are sons of the soil it keeps free;
For their deeds the serene exaltation
Of a cause that was stained with no shame,
For their dead the proud tears of a nation,
Their fame shall endure with its fame.
The fervor that grim, unrelenting,
The founders in homespun had fired,
With blood the free compact cementing,
Was the flame that their souls had inspired.
They were sons of the dark tribulations,
Of the perilous days of the birth
Of a nation sprung free among nations,
A new hope to the children of earth!
They were nerved by the old deeds of daring,
Every tale of Decatur they knew,
Every ship that, the bright banner bearing,
Shot to keep it afloat in the blue;
They were spurred by the splendor undying
Of Somer's fierce fling in the bay,
And the Watchword that Lawrence died crying,
And of Cushing's calm courage were they.
By the echo of guns at whose thunder
Old monarchies crumbled and fell,
When the warships were shattered asunder
And their pennants went down in the swell;
By the strength of the race that, unfearing,
Faces death till the death of the last,
Or has sunk with the fierce Saxon cheering,
Its colors still nailed to the mast—
So they fought—and the stern race immortal
Of Cromwell and Hampton and Penn
Has thrown open another closed portal,
Stricken chains from a new race of men.
So they fought, so they won, so above them
Blazed the light of a consecrate aim;
Empty words! Who may tell how we love them,
How we thrill with the joy of their fame!
Charles E. Russell.
Particularly gallant was the part played by the Gloucester, a converted yacht with no armor, under Commander Wainwright. She was lying inshore near the harbor mouth, and opened with her little rapid-fire guns on the great battleships as they swept past; then, the moment the Spanish destroyers, Furor and Pluton, appeared, she rushed straight upon them with absolute disregard of the shore batteries. Within twenty minutes, the Pluton went down in deep water and the Furor was beached and sunk.
THE DESTROYER OF DESTROYERS
[July 3, 1898]
From Santiago, spurning the morrow,
Spain's ships come steaming, big with black sorrow:
Over the ocean, first on our roster,
Runs Richard Wainwright, glad on the Gloucester.
Boast him, and toast him!
Wainwright! The Gloucester!
Great ships and gaunt ships, steel-clad and sable,
Roll on resplendent, monsters of fable:
Crash all our cannon, quick Maxims rattle.
Red death and ruin rush through the battle;
Red death and dread death
Ravage and rattle.
Speed on Spain's cruisers, towers of thunder:
Calm rides the Gloucester, though the waves wonder;
Morro roars at her, enemies looming
On their wakes heave her, vast through the glooming;
Thunders and wonders
Speak from the glooming.
Sped are Spain's cruisers; then 'mid the clangor
Dart her destroyers, lurid with anger;
Shouts Richard Wainwright, quivers the Gloucester:
Where the Furor goes Wainwright has crossed her.
Boast him, and toast him!
Wainwright! The Gloucester!
Wide to the westward El Furor flutters;
Hid in bright vapors there Wainwright mutters;
Under Socapa races the faster,
Smiles at Spain's gunners, laughs at disaster;
Aiming and flaming
Faster and faster.
Wide to the westward El Pluton plunges;
At her with rapiers now Wainwright lunges!
Swords of fierce scarlet, blades blue as lightning;
Rapid guns snapping, little guns brightening;
Four-pounders, six-pounders,
Lunging like lightning.
Done the destroyers, blazing and bursting;
Berserker Wainwright rides to their worsting;
Seethe the Pluton's sides, soon to exhaust her;
Flames the Furor's deck, doomed by the Gloucester.
Boast him, and toast him!
Wainwright! The Gloucester!
Where the Pluton lies lifts the red leven—
Fire-clouds prodigious dash against Heaven;
Where the Pluton lay void swells the ocean;
Shattered and sunken, spent her devotion;
Waves where wet graves were,
Deep in the ocean.
Shrieking toward Cuba, agonized, broken,
El Furor's hasting, her fate bespoken;
There in the shallows 'mid the white surges
Her guns, deserted, moan out their dirges;
Swelling and knelling
Through the white surges.
Wainwright in mercy does his endeavor:
Some he shall rescue; more rest for ever—
Say a prayer for them, one kindly Ave.
Spain weeps her wounded, wails a lost navy;
Fails them, bewails them,
Says them an Ave.
Off Santiago, when from beleaguer
Rushed forth Cervera, daring and eager,
Who stood Spain's onset? Who met and tossed her?
Wainwright, the Maine's man, glad on the Gloucester!
Boast him, and toast him!
Wainwright! The Gloucester!
Wallace Rice.
The evolutions of the Brooklyn, under Commodore Winfield Scott Schley, have been the subject of bitter controversy. Schley, finding himself too near the Spaniards, made a wide turn away from them, wishing, he afterwards alleged, to preserve his ship, which was the fastest of our squadron, to head off any of the Spanish ships which might escape.
THE BROOKLYN AT SANTIAGO
[July 3, 1898]
'Twixt clouded heights Spain hurls to doom
Ships stanch and brave,
Majestic, forth they flash and boom
Upon the wave.
El Morro raises eyes of hate
Far out to sea,
And speeds Cervera to his fate
With cannonry.
The Brooklyn o'er the deep espies
His flame-wreathed side:
She sets her banners on the skies
In fearful pride.
On, to the harbor's mouth of fire,
Fierce for the fray,
She darts, an eagle from his eyre,
Upon her prey.
She meets the brave Teresa there—
Sigh, sigh for Spain!—
And beats her clanging armor bare
With glittering rain.
The bold Vizcaya's lightnings glance
Into the throng
Where loud the bannered Brooklyn chants
Her awful song.
Down swoops, in one tremendous curve,
Our Commodore;
His broadsides roll, the foemen swerve
Toward the shore.
In one great round his Brooklyn turns
And, girdling there
This side and that with glory, burns
Spain to despair.
Frightful in onslaught, fraught with fate
Her missiles hiss:
The Spaniard sees, when all too late,
A Nemesis.
The Oquendo's diapason swells;
Then, torn and lame,
Her portholes turn to yawning wells,
Geysers of flame.
Yet fierce and fiercer breaks and cries
Our rifles' dread:
The doomed Teresa shudders—lies
Stark with her dead.
How true the Brooklyn's battery speaks
Eulate knows,
As the Vizcaya staggers, shrieks
Her horrent woes.
Sideward she plunges: nevermore
Shall Biscay feel
Her heart throb for the ship that wore
Her name in steel.
The Oquendo's ports a moment shone,
As gloomed her knell;
She trembles, bursts—the ship is gone
Headlong to hell.
The fleet Colon in lonely flight—
Spain's hope, Spain's fear!—
Sees, and it lends her wings of fright,
Schley's pennant near.
The fleet Colon scuds on alone—
God, how she runs!—
And ever hears behind her moan
The Brooklyn's guns.
Our ruthless cannon o'er the flood
Roar and draw nigh;
Spain's ensign stained with gold and blood,
Falls from on high.
The world she gave the World has passed—
Gone, with her power—
Dead, 'neath the Brooklyn's thunder-blast,
In one great hour.
The bannered Brooklyn! gallant crew,
And gallant Schley!
Proud is the flag his sailors flew
Along the sky.
Proud is his country: for each star
Our Union wears,
The fighting Brooklyn shows a scar—
So much he dares.
God save us war upon the seas;
But, if it slip,
Send such a chief, with men like these,
On such a ship!
Wallace Rice.
The Oregon, which had arrived from her fifteen-thousand-mile voyage from San Francisco, also took a conspicuous part in the battle, and did splendid service.
THE RUSH OF THE OREGON
They held her South to Magellan's mouth,
Then East they steered her, forth
Through the farther gate of the crafty strait,
And then they held her North.
Six thousand miles to the Indian Isles!
And the Oregon rushed home,
Her wake a swirl of jade and pearl,
Her bow a bend of foam.
And when at Rio the cable sang,
"There is war!—grim war with Spain!"
The swart crews grinned and stroked their guns
And thought on the mangled Maine.
In the glimmered gloom of the engine-room
There was joy to each grimy soul,
And fainting men sprang up again
And piled the blazing coal.
Good need was there to go with care:
But every sailor prayed
Or gun for gun, or six to one
To meet them, unafraid.
Her goal at last! With joyous blast
She hailed the welcoming roar
Of hungry sea-wolves curved along
The strong-hilled Cuban shore.
Long nights went by. Her beamèd eye,
Unwavering, searched the bay
Where trapped and penned for a certain end
The Spanish squadron lay.
Out of the harbor a curl of smoke—
A watchful gun rang clear.
Out of the channel the squadron broke
Like a bevy of frightened deer.
Then there was shouting for "steam, more steam!"
And fires glowed white and red;
And guns were manned, and ranges planned,
And the great ships leaped ahead.
Then there was roaring of chorusing guns,
Shatter of shell, and spray;
And who but the rushing Oregon
Was fiercest in chase and fray!
For her mighty wake was a seething snake;
Her bow was a billow of foam;
Like the mailèd fists of an angry wight
Her shot drove crashing home!
Pride of the Spanish navy, ho!
Flee like a hounded beast!
For the Ship of the Northwest strikes a blow
For the Ship of the far Northeast!
In quivering joy she surged ahead,
Aflame with flashing bars,
Till down sunk the Spaniard's gold and red
And up ran the Clustered Stars.
"Glory to share"? Aye, and to spare;
But the chiefest is hers by right
Of a rush of fourteen thousand miles
For the chance of a bitter fight!
Arthur Guiterman.
The high quality of American marksmanship was never more conclusively shown than in this battle. The Spanish ships were literally blown to pieces. Here, as at Manila, the victory had been won by "the men behind the guns."
THE MEN BEHIND THE GUNS
A cheer and salute for the Admiral, and here's to the Captain bold,
And never forget the Commodore's debt when the deeds of might are told!
They stand to the deck through the battle's wreck when the great shells roar and screech—
And never they fear when the foe is near to practise what they preach:
But off with your hat and three times three for Columbia's true-blue sons,
The men below who batter the foe—the men behind the guns!
Oh, light and merry of heart are they when they swing into port once more,
When, with more than enough of the "green-backed stuff," they start for their leave-o'-shore;
And you'd think, perhaps, that the blue-bloused chaps who loll along the street
Are a tender bit, with salt on it, for some fierce "mustache" to eat—
Some warrior bold, with straps of gold, who dazzles and fairly stuns
The modest worth of the sailor boys—the lads who serve the guns.
But say not a word till the shot is heard that tells the fight is on,
Till the long, deep roar grows more and more from the ships of "Yank" and "Don,"
Till over the deep the tempests sweep of fire and bursting shell,
And the very air is a mad Despair in the throes of a living hell;
Then down, deep down, in the mighty ship, unseen by the midday suns,
You'll find the chaps who are giving the raps—the men behind the guns!
Oh, well they know how the cyclones blow that they loose from their cloud of death,
And they know is heard the thunder-word their fierce ten-incher saith!
The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the guns!
John Jerome Rooney.
Admiral Pasquale de Cervera, in command of the Spanish fleet, knew from the first how desperate the venture was. He made it only because forced to do so by direct orders from Madrid, the Spanish authorities fearing that Santiago would be taken and the whole fleet be made captive.
CERVERA
Hail to thee, gallant foe!
Well hast thou struck thy blow—
Hopeless of victory—
Daring unequal strife,
Valuing more than life
Honor and chivalry.
Forth from the harbor's room
Rushing to meet thy doom,
Lit by the day's clear light.
"Out to the waters free!
Out to the open sea!
There should a sailor fight."
Where the red battle's roar
Beats on the rocky shore,
Thunders proclaiming
How the great cannon's breath
Hurls forth a dreadful death,
Smoking and flaming.
While her guns ring and flash,
See each frail vessel dash,
Though our shots rend her,
Swift through the iron rain,
Bearing the flag of Spain,
Scorning surrender.
Hemmed in 'twixt foe and wreck,
Blood soaks each slippery deck,
Still madly racing,
Till their ships burn and reel,
Crushed by our bolts of steel,
Firing and chasing.
Driven to the rocks at last,
Now heels each shattered mast,
Flames the blood drinking,
Each with her load of dead,
Wrapped in that shroud of red,
Silenced and sinking.
Vanquished! but not in vain:
Ancient renown of Spain,
Coming upon her.
Once again lives in thee,
All her old chivalry,
All her old honor.
Ever her past avers,
When wealth and lands were hers,
Though she might love them,
Die for their keeping, yet
Spain, in her pride, has set
Honor above them.
Bertrand Shadwell.
Santiago surrendered a few days later and an army of occupation, under General Nelson A. Miles, landed at Porto Rico and took possession of the island, after a few sharp skirmishes. In the Philippines, operations against Manila were pushed vigorously forward, and on August 13, after sharp actions at Malate, Singalon, and Ermita, the city was captured. Among the killed at Malate was Sergeant J. A. McIlrath, Battery H, Third Artillery Regulars.
McILRATH OF MALATE
[August 13, 1898]
Yes, yes, my boy, there's no mistake,
You put the contract through!
You lads with Shafter, I'll allow,
Were heroes tried and true;
But don't forget the men who fought
About Manila Bay,
And don't forget brave McIlrath
Who died at Malate.
The night was black, save where the forks
Of tropic lightning ran,
When, with a long deep thunder-roar,
The typhoon storm began.
Then, suddenly above the din,
We heard the steady bay
Of volleys from the trenches where
The Pennsylvanias lay.
The Tenth, we thought, could hold their own
Against the feigned attack,
And, if the Spaniards dared advance
Would pay them doubly back.
But soon we marked the volleys sink
Into a scattered fire—
And now we heard the Spanish guns
Boom nigher yet and nigher!
Then, like a ghost, a courier
Seemed past our picket tossed,
With wild hair streaming in his face—
"We're lost—we're lost—we're lost!"
"Front, front—in God's name—front!" he cried:
"Our ammunition's gone!"
He turned a face of dazed dismay—
And through the night sped on!
"Men, follow me!" cried McIlrath,
Our acting sergeant then;
And when he gave the word he knew
He gave the word to men!
Twenty there—not one man more—
But down the sunken road
We dragged the guns of Battery H,
Nor even stopped to load!
Sudden, from the darkness poured
A storm of Mauser hail—
But not a man there thought to pause,
Nor any man to quail!
Ahead, the Pennsylvanias' guns
In scattered firing broke;
The Spanish trenches, red with flame,
In fiercer volleys spoke!
Down with a rush our twenty came—
The open field we passed—
And in among the hard-pressed Tenth
We set our feet at last!
Up, with a leap, sprang McIlrath,
Mud-spattered, worn and wet,
And, in an instant, there he stood
High on the parapet!
"Steady, boys! we've got 'em now—
Only a minute late!
It's all right, lads—we've got 'em whipped—
Just give 'em volleys straight!"
Then, up and down the parapet
With head erect he went,
As cool as when he sat with us
Beside our evening tent!
Not one of us, close sheltered there
Down in the trench's pen,
But felt that we would rather die
Than shame or grieve him then!
The fire so close to being quenched
In panic and defeat,
Leaped forth, by rapid volleys sped,
In one long deadly sheet!
A cheer went up along the line
As breaks the thunder-call—
But, as it rose, great God, we saw
Our gallant sergeant fall!
He sank into our outstretched arms
Dead—but immortal grown;
And Glory brightened where he fell,
And valor claimed her own!
John Jerome Rooney.
Spain had had enough. She recognized the folly of struggling further, and made overtures for peace. On August 12 a protocol was signed and hostilities ceased. Eight days later, the American squadron steamed into New York harbor.
WHEN THE GREAT GRAY SHIPS COME IN[17]
New York Harbor, August 20, 1898
To eastward ringing, to westward winging, o'er mapless miles of sea,
On winds and tides the gospel rides that the furthermost isles are free,
And the furthermost isles make answer, harbor, and height, and hill,
Breaker and beach cry each to each, "'Tis the Mother who calls! Be still!"
Mother! new-found, beloved, and strong to hold from harm,
Stretching to these across the seas the shield of her sovereign arm,
Who summoned the guns of her sailor sons, who bade her navies roam,
Who calls again to the leagues of main, and who calls them this time Home!
And the great gray ships are silent, and the weary watchers rest,
The black cloud dies in the August skies, and deep in the golden west
Invisible hands are limning a glory of crimson bars,
And far above is the wonder of a myriad wakened stars!
Peace! As the tidings silence the strenuous cannonade,
Peace at last! is the bugle blast the length of the long blockade,
And eyes of vigil weary are lit with the glad release,
From ship to ship and from lip to lip it is "Peace! Thank God for peace."
Ah, in the sweet hereafter Columbia still shall show
The sons of these who swept the seas how she bade them rise and go,—
How, when the stirring summons smote on her children's ear,
South and North at the call stood forth, and the whole land answered, "Here!"
For the soul of the soldier's story and the heart of the sailor's song
Are all of those who meet their foes as right should meet with wrong,
Who fight their guns till the foeman runs, and then, on the decks they trod,
Brave faces raise, and give the praise to the grace of their country's God!
Yes, it is good to battle, and good to be strong and free,
To carry the hearts of a people to the uttermost ends of sea,
To see the day steal up the bay where the enemy lies in wait,
To run your ship to the harbor's lip and sink her across the strait:—
But better the golden evening when the ships round heads for home,
And the long gray miles slip swiftly past in a swirl of seething foam,
And the people wait at the haven's gate to greet the men who win!
Thank God for peace! Thank God for peace, when the great gray ships come in!
Guy Wetmore Carryl.
FULL CYCLE
Spain drew us proudly from the womb of night,
A lusty man-child of the Western wave,—
Who now, full-grown, smites the old midwife down,
And thrusts her deep in a dishonored grave.
John White Chadwick.
Peace commissioners from the two countries met at Paris in October, and a treaty of peace was signed on December 10, 1898. Spain relinquished all sovereignty over Cuba, and ceded Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands to the United States, receiving in payment for the latter the sum of twenty million dollars.
BREATH ON THE OAT
Free are the Muses, and where freedom is
They follow, as the thrushes follow spring,
Leaving the old lands songless there behind;
Parnassus disenchanted suns its woods,
Empty of every nymph; wide have they flown;
And now on new sierras think to set
Their wandering court, and thrill the world anew,
Where the Republic babbling waits its speech;
For but the prelude of its mighty song
As yet has sounded. Therefore, would I woo
Apollo to the land I love, 'tis vain;
Unknown he spies on us; and if my verse
Ring not the empyrean round and round,
'Tis that the feeble oat is few of stops.
The noble theme awaits the nobler bard.
Then how all air will quire to it, and all
The great dead listen, America!—For lo,
Diana of the nations hath she lived
Remote, and hoarding her own happiness
In her own land, the land that seemed her first
An exile, where her bark was cast away,
Till maiden grew the backward-hearted child,
And on that sea whose waves were memories
Turned her young shoulder, looked with steadfast eyes
Upon her wilderness, her woods, her streams;
Inland she ran, and gathering virgin joy
Followed her shafts afar from humankind.
And if sometimes her isolation drooped
And yearning woke in her, she put it forth
With a high boast and with a sick disdain;
Actæons fleeing, into antlers branched
The floating tresses of her fancy, and far
Her arrows smote them with a bleeding laugh.
O vain and virgin, O the fool of love!
Now children not her own are at her knee.
For stricken by her path lay one that vexed
Her maiden calm; she reached a petulant hand;
And the old nations drew sharp breath and looked.
The two-edged sword, how came it in her hand?
The sword that slays the holder if he withhold,
That none can take, or having taken drop,
The sword is in thy hand, America!
The wrath of God, that fillets thee with lightnings,
America! Strike then; the sword departs.
Ah God, once more may men crown drowsy days
With glorious death, upholding a great cause!
I deemed it fable; not of them am I.
Yet if they loved thee on the loud May-day
Who with unexultant thunder wreathed the flag,
With thunder and with victory, if they
[Who on the third most famous of our Fourths]
Along the seaboard mountains swept, a storm
Unleashed, whose tread spurned not the wrecks of Spain,
If these thy sons have loved thee, and have set
Santiago and Manila like new stars
Crowding thy field of blue, new terror perched
Like eagles on thy banners, oh, not less
I love thee, who but prattle in the prime
Of birds of passage over river and wood
Thine also, piping little charms to lure,
Uncaptured and unflying, the wings of song.
Joseph Russell Taylor.
But the United States was still involved in a struggle altogether unforeseen and repugnant to many of her citizens. The Philippines had been bought from Spain, and with them the United States had taken over just such an insurrection as Spain had encountered in Cuba.
THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA
God is shaping the great future of the Islands of the Sea;
He has sown the blood of martyrs and the fruit is liberty;
In thick clouds and in darkness He has sent abroad His word;
He has given a haughty nation to the cannon and the sword.
He has seen a people moaning in the thousand deaths they die;
He has heard from child and woman a terrible dark cry;
He has given the wasted talent of the steward faithless found
To the youngest of the nations with His abundance crowned.
He called her to do justice where none but she had power;
He called her to do mercy to her neighbor at the door;
He called her to do vengeance for her own sons foully dead;
Thrice did He call unto her ere she inclined her head.
She has gathered the vast Midland, she has searched her borders round;
There has been a mighty hosting of her children on the ground;
Her search-lights lie along the sea, her guns are loud on land;
To do her will upon the earth her armies round her stand.
The fleet, at her commandment, to either ocean turns;
Belted around the mighty world her line of battle burns;
She has loosed the hot volcanoes of the ships of flaming hell;
With fire and smoke and earthquake shock her heavy vengeance fell.
O joyfullest May morning when before our guns went down
The Inquisition priesthood and the dungeon-making crown,
While through red lights of battle our starry dawn burst out,
Swift as the tropic sunrise that doth with glory shout!
Be jubilant, free Cuba, our feet are on thy soil;
Up mountain road, through jungle growth, our bravest for thee toil;
There is no blood so precious as their wounds pour forth for thee;
Sweet be thy joys, free Cuba,—sorrows have made thee free.
Nor Thou, O noble Nation, who wast so slow to wrath,
With grief too heavy-laden follow in duty's path;
Not for ourselves our lives are; not for Thyself art Thou;
The Star of Christian Ages is shining on Thy brow.
Rejoice, O mighty Mother, that God hath chosen Thee
To be the western warder of the Islands of the Sea;
He lifteth up, He casteth down, He is the King of Kings,
Whose dread commands o'er awe-struck lands are borne on eagle's wings.
George Edward Woodberry.
The people of the Philippines had fought against Spanish sovereignty much as the people of Cuba had. A band of them, under Emilio Aguinaldo, had assisted at the capture of Manila, in the fond hope that the defeat of the Spaniards would mean Philippine independence. Instead, they found that they had merely traded masters. At once they took up arms against the Americans.
BALLADE OF EXPANSION
1899
Time was he sang the British Brute,
The ruthless lion's grasping greed,
The European Law of Loot,
The despot's devastating deed;
But now he sings the heavenly creed
Of saintly sword and friendly fist,
He loves you, though he makes you bleed—
The Ethical Expansionist!
He loves you, Heathen! Though his foot
May kick you like a worthless weed
From that wild field where you have root,
And scatter to the winds your seed;
He's just the government you need;
If you object, why, he'll insist,
And, on your protest, "draw a bead"—
The Ethical Expansionist!
He'll take you to him coûte que coûte!
He'll win you, though you fight and plead.
His guns shall urge his ardent suit,
Relentless fire his cause shall speed.
In time you'll learn to write and read
(That is, if you should then exist!),
You won't, if you his course impede—
The Ethical Expansionist!
ENVOI
Heathen, you must, you shall be freed!
It's really useless to resist;
To save your life, you'd better heed
The Ethical Expansionist!
Hilda Johnson.
Misguided they no doubt were, and the warfare they waged was of the cruelest kind; but to employ against them the troops of a Republic, to shoot them down as "rebels," occasioned in the United States a great outburst of indignation.
"REBELS"
Shoot down the rebels—men who dare
To claim their native land!
Why should the white invader spare
A dusky heathen band?
You bought them from the Spanish King,
You bought the men he stole;
You bought perchance a ghastlier thing—
The Duke of Alva's soul!
"Freedom!" you cry, and train your gun
On men who would be freed,
And in the name of Washington
Achieve a Weyler's deed.
Boast of the benefits you spread,
The faith of Christ you hold;
Then seize the very soil you tread
And fill your arms with gold.
Go, prostitute your mother-tongue,
And give the "rebel" name
To those who to their country clung,
Preferring death to shame.
And call him "loyal," him who brags
Of countrymen betrayed—
The patriot of the money-bags,
The loyalist of trade.
Oh, for the good old Roman days
Of robbers bold and true,
Who scorned to oil with pious phrase
The deeds they dared to do—
The days before degenerate thieves
Devised the coward lie
Of blessings that the enslaved receives
Whose rights their arms deny!
I hate the oppressor's iron rod,
I hate his murderous ships,
But most of all I hate, O God,
The lie upon his lips!
Nay, if they still demand recruits
To curse Manila Bay,
Be men; refuse to act like brutes
And massacre and slay.
Or if you will persist to fight
With all a soldier's pride,
Why, then be rebels for the right
By Aguinaldo's side!
Ernest Crosby.
But the administration felt that it had gone too far to draw back; spellbinders raised the shout that wherever the flag was raised it must remain; new regiments were shipped to the Philippines and the war against the natives pushed vigorously.
ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILIPPINES
Streets of the roaring town,
Hush for him, hush, be still!
He comes, who was stricken down
Doing the word of our will.
Hush! Let him have his state.
Give him his soldier's crown.
The grists of trade can wait
Their grinding at the mill,
But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown.
Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.
Toll! Let the great bells toll
Till the clashing air is dim,
Did we wrong this parted soul?
We will make it up to him.
Toll! Let him never guess
What work we set him to.
Laurel, laurel, yes;
He did what we bade him do.
Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought was good;
Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's blood.
A flag for the soldier's bier
Who dies that his land may live;
Oh, banners, banners here,
That he doubt not nor misgive!
That he heed not from the tomb
The evil days draw near
When the nation, robed in gloom,
With its faithless past shall strive.
Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark,
Home to the heart of his sinning land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.
William Vaughn Moody.
On February 5, 1899, General Ricarti's division of the Filipino army was encountered near Santa Ana, and completely routed. It was at this battle that Lieutenant Charles E. Kilbourne, Jr., and Lieutenant W. G. Miles performed the exploits described in the following poems.
THE BALLAD OF PACO TOWN
[February 5, 1899]
In Paco town and in Paco tower,
At the height of the tropic noonday hour,
Some Tagal riflemen, half a score,
Watched the length of the highway o'er,
And when to the front the troopers spurred,
Whiz-z! whiz-z! how the Mausers whirred!
From the opposite walls, through crevice and crack,
Volley on volley went ringing back
Where a band of regulars tried to drive
The stinging rebels out of their hive;
"Wait, till our cannon come, and then,"
Cried a captain, striding among his men,
"We'll settle that bothersome buzz and drone
With a merry little tune of our own!"
The sweltering breezes seemed to swoon,
And down the calle the thickening flames
Licked the roofs in the tropic noon.
Then through the crackle and glare and heat,
And the smoke and the answering acclaims
Of the rifles, far up the village street
Was heard the clatter of horses' feet,
And a band of signalmen swung in sight,
Hasting back from the ebbing fight
That had swept away to the left and right.
"Ride!" yelled the regulars, all aghast,
And over the heads of the signalmen,
As they whirled in desperate gallop past,
The bullets a vicious music made,
Like the whistle and whine of the midnight blast
On the weltering wastes of the ocean when
The breast of the deep is scourged and flayed.
It chanced in the line of the fiercest fire
A rebel bullet had clipped the wire
That led, from the front and the fighting, down
To those that stayed in Manila town;
This gap arrested the watchful eye
Of one of the signalmen galloping by,
And straightway, out of the plunge and press,
He reined his horse with a swift caress
And a word in the ear of the rushing steed;
Then back with never a halt nor heed
Of the swarming bullets he rode, his goal
The parted wire and the slender pole
That stood where the deadly tower looked down
On the rack and ruin of Paco town.
Out of his saddle he sprang as gay
As a schoolboy taking a holiday;
Wire in hand up the pole he went
With never a glance at the tower, intent
Only on that which he saw appear
As the line of his duty plain and clear.
To the very crest he climbed, and there,
While the bullets buzzed in the scorching air
Clipped his clothing, and scored and stung
The slender pole-top to which he clung,
Made the wire that was severed sound,
Slipped in his careless way to the ground,
Sprang to the back of his horse, and then
Was off, this bravest of signalmen.
Cheers for the hero! While such as he,
Heedless alike of wounds and scars,
Fight for the dear old Stripes and Stars,
Down through the years to us shall be
Ever and ever the victory!
Clinton Scollard.
THE DEED OF LIEUTENANT MILES
[February 5, 1899]
When you speak of dauntless deeds,
When you tell of stirring scenes,
Tell this story of the isles
Where the endless summer smiles,—
Tell of young Lieutenant Miles
In the far-off Philippines!
'Twas the Santa Ana fight!—
All along the Tagal line
From the thickets dense and dire
Gushed the fountains of their fire;
You could mark their rifles' ire,
You could hear their bullets whine.
Little wonder there was pause!
Some were wounded, some were dead
"Call Lieutenant Miles!" He came,
In his eyes a fearless flame.
"Yonder blockhouse is our aim!"
The battalion leader said.
"You must take it—how you will;
You must break this damnèd spell!"
"Volunteers!" cried Miles. 'Twas vain,
For that narrow tropic lane
'Twixt the bamboo and the cane
Was a very lane of hell.
There were five stood forth at last;
God above, but they were men!
"Come!" exultantly he saith!—
Did they falter? Not a breath!
Down the path of hurtling death
The Lieutenant led them then.
Two have fallen—now a third!
Forward dash the other three;
In the onrush of that race
Ne'er a swerve or stay of pace.
And the Tagals—dare they face
Such a desperate company?
Panic gripped them by the throat,—
Every Tagal rifleman;
And as though they seemed to see
In those charging foemen three
An avenging destiny,
Fierce and fast and far they ran.
So a salvo for the six!
So a round of ringing cheers!
Heroes of the distant isles
Where the endless summer smiles,—
Gallant young Lieutenant Miles
And his valiant volunteers!
Clinton Scollard.
So the war went on, with massacre, ambush, and lonely murder. The conquest of the islands was proving a costly one, but the administration held that it must be carried through, at whatever sacrifice. It was a war in which victory and defeat alike brought only sorrow and disgust.
(PATRIOT AND EMPIRE)
When arms and numbers both have failed
To make the hunted patriot yield,
Nor proffered riches have prevailed
To tempt him to forsake the field,
By spite and baffled rage beguiled,
[Strike at his mother and his child].
O land where freedom loved to dwell,
Which shook'st the despot on his throne,
And o'er the beating floods of hell
Hope's beacon to the world hast shown,
How art thou fallen from thy place!
O thing of shame!—O foul disgrace!
Thy home was built upon the height
Above the murky clouds beneath,
In the blue heaven's freest light,
Thy sword flashed ever from its sheath,
The weak and the oppressed to save—
To smite the tyrant—free the slave.
Thy place was glorious—sublime.
What devil tempts thee to descend
To conquest, robbery and crime?
O shameful fate! Is this the end?
Thy hands have now the damning stain
Of human blood—for love of gain.
With weak hypocrisy's thin veil,
Seek not in vain to blind thine eyes;
Nor shall deceitful prayers prevail.
Pray not—for fear the dead should rise
From 'neath their conquered country's sod
And cry against thee unto God.
Bertrand Shadwell.
The capture of Aguinaldo, March 23, 1901, put a virtual end to organized resistance; though sporadic outbreaks continued for several years. As late as March, 1906, such an affair occurred, a band of Moros, men, women, and children, being surrounded and killed on the summit of a crater at Dajo, no prisoners being taken.
THE FIGHT AT DAJO
[March 7, 1906]
There are twenty dead who're sleeping near the slopes of Bud Dajo,
'Neath the shadow of the crater where the bolos laid them low,
And their comrades feel it bitter, and their cheeks grow hot with shame,
[When they read the sneering comments] which have held them up to blame.
They were told to scale the mountain and they stormed its beetling crest,
Spite of all the frantic Moros, though they did their level best,
Though the bullets whistled thickly, and the cliff was lined with foes,
Though the campilans were flashing and the kriss gave deadly blows.
There was little time for judging ere they met in deadly strife
What the sex might be that rushing waved aloft the blood-stained knife;
For the foe was drunk with frenzy and the women in the horde
Thought that paradise was certain could they kill first with the sword.
They'd been freely offered mercy, but they'd scorned the proffered gift,
For their priests had told them Allah promised victory sure and swift.
They were foolish and their folly cost the lives of wife and son,
But they fought their fight like heroes; there were none that turned to run.
Though they'd robbed and slain and ravaged, though their crimes had mounted high,
Though 'tis true that naught became them like the death they chose to die,
One would think to read the papers that the troops who scaled their fort
Were a lot of brutal ruffians shooting girls and babes for sport.
More than one who's sleeping soundly 'neath the shade of Bud Dajo
Lost his life while giving succor to the one who dealt the blow,
Yet his comrades feel more bitter and they give a far worse name
To the men who dubbed them "butchers" and have smirched the army's fame.
Alfred E. Wood.
The Philippines, meanwhile, had been placed under a civil government; but no promise was given them of ultimate independence. Their commerce was crippled by the high tariff party in control of Congress; and while their condition was vastly better than it had been under Spanish rule, it was not such as a Republic, working for their good, might have made it. The acquisition and conquest of the islands is believed by many intelligent and patriotic persons to be one of the darkest blots upon American history.
AN ODE IN TIME OF HESITATION
(WRITTEN AFTER SEEING AT BOSTON THE STATUE OF ROBERT GOULD SHAW,
KILLED WHILE STORMING FORT WAGNER, JULY 18, 1863,
AT THE HEAD OF THE FIRST ENLISTED NEGRO REGIMENT, THE FIFTY-FOURTH MASSACHUSETTS)
I
[Before the living bronze Saint-Gaudens made]
Most fit to thrill the passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To the good memory of Robert Shaw,
This bright March morn I stand
And hear the distant spring come up the land;
Knowing that what I hear is not unheard
Of this boy soldier and his negro band,
For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,
For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.
The land they died to save from death and shame
Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name,
And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.
II
Through street and mall the tides of people go
Heedless; the trees upon the Common show
No hint of green; but to my listening heart
The still earth doth impart
Assurance of her jubilant emprise,
And it is clear to my long-searching eyes
That love at last has might upon the skies.
The ice is runnelled on the little pond;
A telltale patter drips from off the trees;
The air is touched with southland spiceries,
As if but yesterday it tossed the frond
Of pendent mosses where the live oaks grow
Beyond Virginia and the Carolines,
Or had its will among the fruits and vines
Of aromatic isles asleep beyond
Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
III
Soon shall the Cape Ann children laugh in glee,
Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose
Go honking northward over Tennessee;
West from Oswego to Sault Saint-Marie,
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,
And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young,
Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,
With restless violent hands and casual tongue
Moulding her mighty fates,
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;
And like a larger sea, the vital green
Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung
Over Dakota and the prairie states.
By desert people immemorial
On Arizonan mesas shall be done
Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;
Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice
More splendid, when the white Sierras call
Unto the Rockies straightway to arise
And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,
Clashing their windy cedars as for shawms,
Unrolling rivers clear
For flutter of broad phylacteries;
While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas
That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep
To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,
And Mariposa through the purple calms
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms
Where East and West are met,—
A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set
To say that East and West are twain,
With different loss and gain:
The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.
IV
Alas! what sounds are these that come
Sullenly over the Pacific seas,—
Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb
The season's half-awakened ecstasies?
Must I be humble, then,
Now when my heart hath need of pride?
Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men;
By loving much the land for which they died
I would be justified.
My spirit was away on pinions wide
To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood
And ease it of its ache of gratitude.
Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay
On me and the companions of my day.
I would remember now
My country's goodliness, make sweet her name.
Alas! what shade art thou
Of sorrow or of blame
Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow,
And pointest a slow finger at her shame?
V
Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage
Are noble, and our battles still are won
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have not sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat
And scramble in the market-place of war;
Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.
Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,
This delicate and proud New England soul
Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet,
Up the large ways where death and glory meet,
To show all peoples that our shame is done,
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.
VI
Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand
All night he lay, speaking some simple word
From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,
Holding each poor life gently in his hand
And breathing on the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;
And lo, the shard the potter cast away
Was grown a fiery chalice, crystal-fine,
Fulfilled of the divine
Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,—
They swept, and died like freemen on the height,
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust
Obscurely in a common grave with him
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.
Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb
In nature's busy old democracy
To flush the mountain laurel when she blows
Sweet by the southern sea,
And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:—
The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew
This mountain fortress for no earthly hold
Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old
Of spiritual wrong,
Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,
Expugnable but by a nation's rue
And bowing down before that equal shrine
By all men held divine,
Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.
VII
O bitter, bitter shade!
Wilt thou not put the scorn
And instant tragic question from thine eyes?
Do thy dark brows yet crave
That swift and angry stave—
Unmeet for this desirous morn—
That I have striven, striven to evade?
Gazing on him, must I not deem they err
Whose careless lips in street and shop aver
As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek
Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak?
Surely some elder singer would arise,
Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn
Above this people when they go astray.
Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn?
Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away?
I will not and I dare not yet believe!
Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve,
And the spring-laden breeze
Out of the gladdening west is sinister
With sounds of nameless battle overseas;
Though when we turn and question in suspense
If these things be indeed after these ways,
And what things are to follow after these,
Our fluent men of place and consequence
Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase,
Or for the end-all of deep arguments
Intone their dull commercial liturgies—
I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut!
I will not hear the thin satiric praise
And muffled laughter of our enemies,
Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword
Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd
Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut;
Showing how wise it is to cast away
The symbols of our spiritual sway,
That so our hands with better ease
May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.
VIII
Was it for this our fathers kept the law?
This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth?
Are we the eagle nation Milton saw
Mewing its mighty youth,
Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth,
And be a swift familiar of the sun
Where aye before God's face His trumpets run?
Or have we but the talons and the maw,
And for the abject likeness of our heart
Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?—
Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat?
Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?
IX
Ah no!
We have not fallen so.
We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!
'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry
Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!"
Then Alabama heard,
And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho
Shouted a burning word;
Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,
And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,
East, west, and south, and north,
Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,
By the unforgotten names of eager boys
Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung
With the old mystic joys
And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,
But that the heart of youth is generous,—
We charge you, ye who lead us,
Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!
Turn not their new-world victories to gain!
One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays
Of their dear praise,
One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,
The implacable republic will require;
With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon,
Or subtly, coming as a thief at night,
But surely, very surely, slow or soon
That insult deep we deeply will requite.
Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity!
For save we let the island men go free,
Those baffled and dislaurelled ghosts
Will curse us from the lamentable coasts
Where walk the frustrate dead.
The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite,
Eaten the sour bread of astonishment,
With ashes of the hearth shall be made white
Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent:
Then on your guiltier head
Shall our intolerable self-disdain
Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain;
For manifest in that disastrous light
We shall discern the right
And do it, tardily.—O ye who lead,
Take heed!
Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.
William Vaughn Moody.