Tag: Spanish American war

On a False Accusation

Mingo Sanders, First Sergeant, Company B, 25th Infantry Regiment, found himself in Cuba as part of the contingent of American soldiers in the Spanish-American War. He and his fellow soldiers had been assigned to the western US before the war started, and they were some of the first regular army troops to go to Cuba. The 25th Regiment was a Black outfit that had all-white officers, and Sergeant Sanders was one of the Black non-coms who formed the backbone of the troops. They were a proud group of men who were not new at their jobs, unlike many of the young and eager and inexperienced soldiers who had volunteered when the war fever broke out in April of 1898. Interestingly, Black soldiers made up around 25% of all US troops in Cuba during the conflict.

Sergeant Sanders was with his outfit one day in Cuba when another regiment arrived nearby. This was one of those all-volunteer units, and the way they set up their camp, well, a veteran could tell immediately that they didn’t have the expertise that Sanders and his fellow regular army comrades did. That evening, the commander of those troops, a colonel of the volunteer group, came to Sanders with a request. It seemed that his supply wagons had been delayed; could Sanders and his men please share some of their supply of hardtack with his white volunteers? Now, for those who don’t know, hardtack is like a large cracker that is, well, hard. You would usually soak it in coffee or water to soften it before eating, but the hardness allowed for it to be stored for a long time without decaying or breaking down. It wasn’t great food, but it was filling. And, of course, Sergeant Sanders was happy to give the young colonel and his volunteers some of their provisions. The young officer was grateful and said so. I tell you this to show you the type of man Mingo Sanders was.

Sanders and his regiment distinguished themselves in the war. Later, they were posted on the other side of the world, in the Philippines, to fight in that insurrection against the Americans. It was there that Sanders saved the lives of several men in an action and earned himself a medal for bravery under fire. At the end of that conflict, he and his men were stationed in Brownsville, Texas, right on the Mexican border. And it was there that everything went wrong for Sanders and the soldiers of the 25th Regiment.

It seems that the town wasn’t that thrilled to have Black soldiers stationed there. This was in the depths of the Jim Crow era in Texas, and racism practically hung in the air. The troops were given strict orders about avoiding any kind of confrontation with locals, and passes into town from the base were limited. That said, on August 13, 1906, two white citizens of Brownsville were shot; one of them was killed. The locals immediately blamed soldiers from the 25th. An inquiry was immediately launched, but the white officers of the 25th insisted that all their men were on the base the evening the violence occurred. Sanders and the other non-commissioned officers also vouched for the presence of all men in the barracks at the time of the shootings.

These assurances that the 25th wasn’t involved didn’t seem to matter to most folks. When local authorities could find no member of the regiment who could be definitively connected with the shooting, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a special investigation to Brownsville to sus out the truth of the matter. Each soldier of the 25th was interviewed, including the officers. Still, all insisted that the regiment, to a man, had not left base that night. They knew better, they all said. When the investigation reported to Roosevelt that no one in the regiment confessed or even pointed to any of the soldiers’ involvement, he did something odd.

Bowing to pressure from the white community of Brownsville, Roosevelt ordered that all members of the 25th Infantry Regiment be given dishonorable discharges. There would be no chance for appeal or any trial before a military court.

For Mingo Sanders, he was stunned. His 26 year army career was over without any due process or any official court martial. He lost his pension and his position and his pride took a major blow. And, in what may have been the most unkind cut of all was the fact that he lost it all due to this particular Commander in Chief’s order.

You see, Theodore Roosevelt was the same young colonel Sergeant Mingo Sanders helped by giving those green volunteers some of his regiment’s hardtack a few years earlier.

On a Rough Rider

We have largely forgotten the Spanish-American War. Perhaps the only thing most remember from the war was the propulsion of Theodore Roosevelt to national prominence—and, eventually the White House—as a result of the exploits of the troops under his command, the Rough Riders.  Roosevelt had helped to put the unit together, billing it as being made up of mostly western cowboy-type cavalry men. In reality, it was a fairly diverse volunteer unit of troops and included several Ivy League and upper class friends of Roosevelt’s as officers. Ironically, even though they were cavalry, they fought the war in Cuba on foot because their horses never arrived.

The Rough Riders and Roosevelt won their notoriety in a famous charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba. Roosevelt made sure that plenty of reporters were on the ground in Cuba with his troops so that his heroics there could be documented. Today, we would say that the reporters were embedded with the troops, and, indeed, several reporters even took up arms in the conflict. These reporters described the battle in glowing terms, giving credit to Roosevelt for his leadership and coolness under fire. Such was the popularity of this type of reporting that President William McKinley, running for reelection in 1900, chose the young Roosevelt as his running mate.
In many ways, the Spanish-American conflict was a war created by and for tabloid journalism. When tensions were rising between Spain and the United States, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst sent artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to report on the situation. Supposedly, Remington sent a telegram back to Hearst stating that there was no real conflict to report on. Hearst, possibly apocryphally, said something to the effect that the artist should provide pictures and Hearst would provide the war. The idea was that Hearst would whip up sympathy for the American cause and hatred towards Spain that would result in a war fever. He was not far from wrong. Newspapers were the major source of news for the United States in the era before electronic media. However, sensationalism ruled, and the public ate up the lurid details of Spanish atrocities against the United States—even if the “atrocities “ had been fabricated by newspaper men like Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.
Thus, Teddy Roosevelt’s rise to fame was a part of this pro-war propaganda. However, not all Roosevelt did in Cuba received good press. You see, the Rough Riders had been in another engagement in the days before the famous charge up San Juan Hill. And, unlike San Juan Hill, a previous battle, called
Las Guasimas, was the opposite of glorious. Accounts are muddled, but it appears that the Rough Riders and Roosevelt blundered into a Spanish ambush. Oh, the Spanish were retreating anyway, but the fact that Roosevelt and his troops gained control of the battlefield caused TR to claim a victory despite the fact that the Spanish outfoxed and outfought the Americans. Several American troops were killed including one of Roosevelts officers.
One reporter’s story back home headlined the battle of Las Guasimas this way: Roosevelt’s Rough Riders’ Loss Due to a Gallant Blunder. The reporter criticized the American troops and leadership for ignoring the warning signs of the ambush and for not listening to their Cuban scouts who had warned them of trouble ahead. The reporter credited this to an American overconfidence when prudence and caution would have saved American lives. It made Roosevelt and the other leaders look foolish.
Roosevelt was furious when he heard about this report. He knew how important reporting such as this would be seen, especially to someone like him who had political ambition. He later spoke of what he called cheap novelists posing as reporters who wanted to strike out against anyone they considered to be their superiors. In his book about the war, written a year later, Roosevelt tried to set the record straight regarding the ambush at Las Guasimas. In fact, Roosevelt portrayed himself as being such a hero, one critic of his memoir said that the book should have been titled Alone in Cuba.  Luckily for Roosevelt, the positive press that surrounded the charge up San Juan Hill quickly obliterated any negative reporting that may have happened after Las Guasimas. Some historians have argued that Roosevelt led the impetuous charge up San Juan Hill in an effort, in part, to change any possible negative public perception that the ambush had caused.
And who was this reporter who struck such a nerve with the future president? He was, in fact, a novelist. Roosevelt got that part right.
The novelist was Stephen Crane, the author of The Red Badge of Courage.