Admiral William T. Sampson.
Schley had the fortune to be senior officer during his chief’s temporary absence. He fought his ship, the Brooklyn, to perfection, and, while it was not of record that he issued any orders to other commanders, his prestige and well-known battle frenzy inspired all, contributing much to the victory. The early accounts deeply impressed the public, and they made Schley the central figure of the battle. Unfortunately Sampson’s first report did not even mention him. Personal and political partisans took up the strife, giving each phase the angriest possible look. Admiral Schley at length sought and obtained a court of inquiry.
Admiral W. S. Schley
The court found Schley’s conduct in the part of the campaign prior to June 1, 1898 (which our last chapter had not space to detail), vacillating, dilatory, and lacking enterprise. It maintained, however, that during the battle itself, despite the Brooklyn’s famous “loop,” which it seemed to condemn, his conduct was self-possessed, and that he inspired his officers and men to courageous fighting. Admiral Dewey, president of the court, held in part a dissenting opinion, which carried great weight with the country. He considered Schley the actual fleet commander in the battle, thus giving him the main credit for the victory.
Legally, it turned out, Sampson, not Schley, commanded during the hot hours. Moreover, the evidence seemed to reveal that the court’s strictures upon Schley, like many criticisms of General Grant at Shiloh and in his Wilderness campaign, were probably just. In both cases the public was slow to accept the critics’ view.
Both before and after his resignation, July 19, 1899, Secretary of War Alger was subjected to great obloquy. Shafter’s corps undoubtedly suffered much that proper system and prevision would have prevented. The delay in embarking at Tampa; the crowding of transports, the use of heavy uniforms in Cuba and of light clothing afterward at Montauk Point, the deficiency in tents, transportation, ambulances, medicines, and surgeons, ought not to have occurred. Indignation swept the country when it was charged that Commissary-General Eagan had furnished soldiers quantities of beef treated with chemicals and of canned roast beef unfit for use. A commission appointed to investigate found that “embalmed beef” had not been given out to any extent. Canned roast beef had been, and the commission declared it improper food.
The commission made it clear that the Quartermaster’s Department had been physically and financially unequal to the task of suddenly equipping and transporting the enlarged army—over ten times the size of our regular army—for which it had to provide. If wanting at times in system the department had been zealous and tireless. At the worst it was far less to blame than recent Congresses, which had stinted both army and navy to lavish money upon objects far less important to the country. The army system needed radical reform. There was no general staff, and the titular head of the army had less real authority than the adjutant-general with his bureau.
These imbroglios had little significance compared with the problems connected with our new dependencies. The Senate ratified the peace treaty February 6, 1899, by the narrow margin of two votes—forty-two Republicans and fifteen others in favor, twenty-four Democrats and three others opposing. But for the advocacy of the Democratic leader, William J. Bryan, who thought that the pending problems could be dealt with by Congress better than in the way of diplomacy, ratification would have failed.
The ratification of the Treaty of Paris marked a momentous epoch in our national life and policy. In a way, the very fact of a war with Spain did this. A century and a quarter before a Spanish monarch had furnished money and men to help the American colonies become free from England. “The people of America can never forget the immense benefit they have received from King Carlos III.,” wrote George Washington. At that time a Spaniard predicted that the American States, born a pigmy, would become a mighty giant, forgetful of gratitude, and absorbed in selfish aggression at Spain’s expense. Our change to quasi-alliance with Great Britain against Spain seemed to not a few the fulfilment of that prophecy. Europe declared that we had hopelessly broken with our ideals. Cynics there applied to the United States the Scriptures: “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like one of us? . . . How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”