The 24th Infantry and the 9th Cavalry soon left for Tampa, Florida, whither they were followed by the 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry, thus bringing the entire colored element of the army together to prepare for embarkation. The work done at Tampa is thus described officially by Lieutenant-Colonel Daggett in general orders addressed to the 25th Infantry, which he at that time commanded. On August 11th, with headquarters near Santiago, after the great battles had been fought and won, he thus reviewed the work of the regiment: "Gathered from three different stations, many of you strangers to each other, you assembled as a regiment for the first time in more than twenty-eight years, on May 7, 1898, at Tampa, Florida. There you endeavored to solidify and prepare yourselves, as far as the oppressive weather would permit, for the work that appeared to be before you." What is here said of the 25th might have been said with equal propriety of all the regular troops assembled at Tampa.
In the meantime events were ripening with great rapidity. The historic "first gun" had been fired, and the United States made the first naval capture of the war on April 22, the coast trader Buena Ventura having surrendered to the American gunboat Nashville. On the same day the blockade of Cuban ports was declared and on the day following a call was issued for 125,000 volunteers. On May 20th the news that a Spanish fleet under command of Admiral Cervera had arrived at Santiago was officially confirmed, and a speedy movement to Cuba was determined upon.
Almost the entire Regular Army with several volunteer regiments were organized into an Army of Invasion and placed under the command of Major-General W.R. Shafter with orders to prepare immediately for embarkation, and on the 7th and 10th of June this army went on board the transports. For seven days the troops lay cooped up on the vessels awaiting orders to sail, a rumor having gained circulation that certain Spanish gunboats were hovering around in Cuban waters awaiting to swoop down upon the crowded transports. While the Army of Invasion was sweltering in the ships lying at anchor off Port Tampa, a small body of American marines made a landing at Guantanamo, and on June 12th fought the first battle between Americans and Spaniards on Cuban soil. In this first battle four Americans were killed. The next day, June 13th, General Shafter's army containing the four colored regiments, excepting those left behind to guard property, sailed for Cuba.[13]
The whole number of men and officers in the expedition, including those that came on transports from Mobile, amounted to about seventeen thousand men, loaded on twenty-seven transports. The colored regiments were assigned to brigades as follows: The Ninth Cavalry was joined with the Third and Sixth Cavalry and placed under command of Colonel Carrol; the Tenth Cavalry was joined with the Rough Riders and First Regular Cavalry and fell under the command of General Young; the Twenty-fourth Infantry was joined with the Ninth and Thirteenth Infantry and the brigade placed under command of Colonel Worth and assigned to the division commanded by General Kent, who, until his promotion as Brigadier-General of Volunteers, had been Colonel of the Twenty-fourth; the Twenty-fifth Infantry was joined with the First and Fourth Infantry and the brigade placed under command of Colonel Evans Miles, who had formerly been Major of the Twenty-fifth. All of the colored regiments were thus happily placed so that they should be in pleasant soldierly competition with the very best troops the country ever put in the field, and this arrangement at the start proves how strongly the black regular had entrenched himself in the confidence of our great commanders.
Thus sailed from Port Tampa the major part of our little army of trained and seasoned soldiers, representative of the skill and daring of the nation.[14] In physique, almost every man was an athlete, and while but few had seen actual war beyond an occasional skirmish with Indians, all excepting the few volunteers, had passed through a long process of training in the various details of marching, camping and fighting in their annual exercises in minor tactics. For the first time in history the nation is going abroad, by its army, to occupy the territory of a foreign foe, in a contest with a trans-Atlantic power. The unsuccessful invasions of Canada during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 can hardly be brought in comparison with this movement over sea. The departure of Decatur with his nine ships of war to the Barbary States had in view only the establishment of proper civil relations between those petty, half-civilized countries and the United States. The sailing of General Shafter's army was only one movement in a comprehensive war against the Kingdom of Spain. More than a month earlier Commodore Dewey, acting under orders, had destroyed a fleet of eleven war ships in the Philippines. The purpose of the war was to relieve the Cubans from an inhumane warfare with their mother country, and to restore to that unhappy island a stable government in harmony with the ideas of liberty and justice.
Up to the breaking out of the Spanish War the American policy with respect to Europe had been one of isolation. Some efforts had been made to consolidate the sentiment of the Western world, but it had never been successful. The fraternity of the American Republics and the attempted construction of a Pan-American policy had been thus far unfulfilled dreams. Canada was much nearer to the United States, geographically and socially, than even Mexico, although the latter is a republic. England, in Europe, was nearer than Brazil. The day came in 1898, when the United States could no longer remain in political seclusion nor bury herself in an impossible federation. Washington's advice against becoming involved in European affairs, as well as the direct corrollary of the Monroe Doctrine, were to be laid aside and the United States was to speak out to the world. The business of a European nation had become our business; in the face of all the world we resolved to invade her territory in the interest of humanity; to face about upon our own traditions and dare the opinions and arms of the trans-Atlantic world by openly launching upon the new policy of armed intervention in another's quarrel.
While the troops were mobilizing at Tampa preparatory to embarking for Cuba the question came up as to why there were no colored men in the artillery arm of the service, and the answer given by a Regular Army officer was, that the Negro had not brains enough for the management of heavy guns. It was a trifling assertion, of course, but at this period of the Negro's history it must not be allowed to pass unnoticed. We know that white men of all races and nationalities can serve big guns, and if the Negro cannot, it must be because of some marked difference between him and them. The officer said it was a difference in "brains," i.e., a mental difference. Just how the problem of aiming and firing a big gun differs from that of aiming and firing small arms is not so easily explained. In both, the questions of velocity, gravitation, wind and resistance are to be considered and these are largely settled by mechanism, the adjustment of which is readily learned; hence the assumption that a Negro cannot learn it is purely gratuitous. Several of the best rifle shots known on this continent are Negroes; and it was a Negro who summerized the whole philosophy of rifle shooting in the statement that it all consists in knowing where to aim, and how to pull—in knowing just what value to assign to gravitation, drift of the bullet and force of the wind, and then in being able to pull the trigger of the piece without disturbing the aim thus judiciously determined. This includes all there is in the final science and art of firing a rifle. If the Negro can thus master the revolver, the carbine and the rifle, why may he not master the field piece or siege gun?
But an ounce of fact in such things is worth more than many volumes of idle speculation, and it is remarkable that facts so recent, so numerous, and so near at hand, should escape the notice of those who question the Negro's ability to serve the artillery organizations. Negro artillery, both light and heavy, fought in fifteen battles in the Civil War with average effectiveness; and some of those who fought against them must either admit the value of the Negro artilleryman or acknowledge their own inefficiency. General Fitz-Hugh Lee failed to capture a Negro battery after making most vigorous attempts to that end. This attempt to raise a doubt as to the Negro's ability to serve in the artillery arm is akin to, and less excusable, than that other groundless assertion, that Negro officers cannot command troops, an assertion which in this country amounts to saying that the United States cannot command its army. Both of these assertions have been emphatically answered in fact, the former as shown above, and the latter as will be shown later in this volume. These assertions are only temporary covers, behind which discomfitted and retreating prejudice is able to make a brief stand, while the black hero of five hundred battle-fields, marches proudly by, disdaining to lower his gun to fire a shot on a foe so unworthy. When the Second Massachusetts Volunteers sent up their hearty cheers of welcome to the gallant old Twenty-fifth, as that solid column fresh from El Caney swung past its camp, I remarked to Sergeant Harris, of the Twenty-fifth: "Those men think you are soldiers." "They know we are soldiers," was his reply. When the people of this country, like the members of that Massachusetts regiment, come to know that its black men in uniform are soldiers, plain soldiers, with the same interests and feelings as other soldiers, of as much value to the government and entitled from it to the same attention and rewards, then a great step toward the solution of the prodigious problem now confronting us will have been taken.
Note.—"I had often heard that the physique of the men of our regular army was very remarkable, but the first time I saw any large body of them, which was at Tampa, they surpassed my highest expectations. It is not, however, to be wondered at that, for every recruit who is accepted, on the average thirty-four are rejected, and that, of course, the men who present themselves to the recruiting officer already represent a physical 'elite'; but it was very pleasant to see and be assured, as I was at Tampa, by the evidences of my own eyes and the tape measure, that there is not a guard regiment of either the Russian, German or English army, of whose remarkable physique we have heard so much, that can compare physically, not with the best of our men, but simply with the average of the men of our regular army."—Bonsal.