Our War with Spain for Cuba's Freedom

by Trumbull White

Those familiar with the history of English administrative methods during this period will find little to choose between them and the methods of Spain. The season of the year most unwholesome to the inhabitants of a temperate climate had already set in, with all its train of pestilences, when the British arrived. Though deluged by the tremendous rains of the tropics from day to day, the water supply was wholly insufficient, and the little obtainable was so tainted as to make its use fraught with danger. There was no pilot who knew the roadstead in order to lead the ships against the Morro and the Puntal for many days. In throwing up the parallels and approaches to the walls of the city on the landward side, the soldiers found such scarcity of earth, the blanket over the rocks being of the thinnest sort, that this necessary material for covering an attack had to be brought from a distance. Then, too, it was charged with the germs of disease, and all who handled it suffered extremely. Despite all the precautions of the officers, the sanitary condition surrounding the camp was horrible, and the troops died like dogs.

YANKEES IN CUBA.

Meanwhile there was a large force of British regulars in North America, stationed there ever since the fall of the French empire in the new world in 1760. Four thousand of these soldiers were gathered in New York City. To them the colonies of East and West Jersey added a regiment of 500 men, New York another of 800, while Lyman raised a full thousand in Connecticut. When these, too, had been assembled in New York, Lyman was made Brigadier General of the colonial troops, and his Lieutenant Colonel, Israel Putnam, was made Colonel of the Connecticut soldiers in his stead. This was the same Putnam who fought the wolf single-handed in its cave, and who was to take that breakneck ride a few years later to escape the very troops with whom he was now associated. The entire force of 2,300 provincials under General Lyman's command was not a mere bevy of raw militia. Nearly all of them had seen service against the French in those well trained and active forces which were given the general name of "Rangers;" the officers especially, of whom Putnam was hardly more than a type, being men of extended experience. The fact that so many men were willing to volunteer in this arduous and, as it turned out, desperate service for the King, speaks volumes for what could have been done with such men had Pitt and not Bute been at the head of the English nation at that time. The advices from Havana showed that the army there was in great need of reinforcements, so by great efforts the regulars and provincials were stowed way in fourteen transports, and with an escort of a few frigates they set sail for the South about the middle of May. There were the usual shouts of an admiring populace and the tears of sweethearts and wives; but it is easy to say that there would have been no rejoicing if the people of Connecticut, the Jerseys, and New York could have foreseen that hardly one of every fifty of their volunteers would see his home again.

AMERICANS WERE WRECKED.

Just before the arrival of these welcome reinforcements on July 20, some English merchantmen had come along with cargoes of cotton bags, which were pressed into immediate use for the lines which were now closing around Havana; and in the ships were also found several pilots. Then the forces from the North came amidst general rejoicings, but without Putnam and 500 of his Yankees. These, in a transport which was skirting the dangerous coast much too closely, were shipwrecked on one of the treacherous shoals thereabouts. Putnam, with true New England fertility of resource, extemporized rafts from the fragments of the vessel and got all his men ashore without the loss of a life. They landed near the City of Carthagena, threw up breastworks, and were found ready to repel a force of thousands of Spaniards when the ships from before Havana arrived for their rescue, their own companions wisely pressing on and sending aid back from the headquarters.

The American troops went bravely to work, engaging themselves chiefly with the undermining of one of the walls. To reach this it was necessary for them to pass along a narrow eminence where they were in plain view and easy range of the Spaniards. A number were lost in this dangerous enterprise, but their valor was dimmed neither by this nor by the still heavier losses which came upon them through the diseases prevalent in every portion of the British camp. Though men of such hardiness that they must have been equal in resisting power to the British, their losses were comparatively much greater, proving that they occupied positions of greater danger, either from bullets or the fevers of the region.

MORRO CASTLE TAKEN.

Five days after the arrival of the reinforcements, Lord Albemarle judged himself sufficiently strong to assault Morro Castle, and the word was accordingly given. The sunken ships were blown up early on the morning of July 25, and the British ships sailed into the fury of the Spanish cannon, belching shot from all along the shore. The big guns of the ships could not be elevated sufficiently to silence the fire from Morro Castle, and this was accordingly left to be carried by assault. The Puntal was silenced, troops landed, and after five days of ferocious fighting, in which the British and American losses were enormous by reason of their exposed position, and where every one concerned exhibited the utmost valor, Morro Castle was carried by the bayonet. The fighting within its walls after an entry had been made was exceedingly fierce. The Marquis of Gonzalez was killed by his own cowardly men for refusing to surrender. The cannon from the other Spanish batteries were turned upon the Morro as soon as the Spanish flag had been lowered, and the British ensign run up in its place; and then the slow and disastrous work of the siege was taken up again.

As the lines grew nearer and nearer, and the last hope of the Spaniard for relief was given up, there was the usual attempt made to buy the attacking party off. Though it would have been a hopeless undertaking at any time, the amount offered for the ransom of the city was so far below the treasure which was known to be in the town that the offer was made a subject for derisive laughter. Fifteen days after Morro Castle had fallen, though the mortality in the trenches was so great that a few weeks more must have seen the abandonment of the enterprise, the city fell, the garrison stipulating for a passage out with all the honors of war, which was freely accorded them, owing to the climatic predicament in which Lord Albemarle found himself. It was also stipulated that private property should be respected. This was strictly observed, though Spain had set repeated examples of giving a captured city over to plunder in the face of a stipulation to the contrary.

August 14, 1762, the British entered, the glory of their victory over such heavy odds even then dimmed by the enormous mortality. It was reckoned that the few days of August had wrought more damage to the invading forces than all the weeks of hard labor and open assault which had gone before. In the city—the Havannah, as it was then called—treasure was found to the amount of $7,000,000, much of it in such shape that there had been abundant time to withdraw it either to Spain or into the interior of the island, had there been any other than Spaniards at the head of affairs.