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Updated: June 3, 2025
Reconnaissance had developed the fact that the enemy occupied the village of El Caney, and that their first line of works surrounded the city of Santiago at a distance of about a mile, crowning a semicircular ridge.
Now and then a piece of artillery, with its flashes of crimson, would pass through the advancing columns amid the waving of hats and a great cheering to take position against the stone fort at Caney or at El Poso, to be trained on the block-house at San Juan.
After a period of comparative idleness the campaign was opened in earnest Friday, July 1, when General Shafter's army began an attack at dawn upon the Spanish fortifications. Shatter had come from Cuero to El Caney with his army, making headquarters at Siboney.
During this week of waiting, the chief excitement was to walk out a mile and a half beyond the outposts to the hill of El Poso, and look across the basin that lay in the great valley which leads to Santiago. The left of the valley was the hills which hide the sea. The right of the valley was the hills in which nestle the village of El Caney.
General W. R. Shafter, in his official report of the operations around Santiago, says: “On June 30th I reconnoitred the country about Santiago and made my plan of attack. From a high hill, from which the city was in plain view, I could see the San Juan Hill and the country about El Caney.
If General Shafter believed that these Spanish reinforcements were "some distance away" and that they would "not get into Santiago," it is difficult to understand why he should have so far lost his grip, after the capture of Caney and San Juan Hill, as to telegraph the War Department that he was "seriously considering the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear."
He pictured the Negro choosing slavery rather than extinction; recalled Crispus Attucks shedding his blood at the beginning of the American Revolution, that white Americans might be free, while black Americans remained in slavery; rehearsed the conduct of the Negroes with Jackson at New Orleans; drew a vivid and pathetic picture of the Southern slaves protecting and supporting the families of their masters while the latter were fighting to perpetuate black slavery; recounted the bravery of coloured troops at Port Hudson and Forts Wagner and Pillow, and praised the heroism of the black regiments that stormed El Caney and Santiago to give freedom to the enslaved people of Cuba, forgetting, for the time being, the unjust discrimination that law and custom make against them in their own country.
But the right flank of this wing was entirely unsupported, and the road by the way of Fort Canosa to San Juan, passing by the portion of the line subsequently occupied by the dynamite gun, marked the extreme position of the right of this wing of the army. The enemy was already well toward its right, and had the excellent El Caney road to move upon.
To these monuments the Society of Santiago will add four more, which will mark the landing place of the army at Daiquairi and the fights at Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan Hill. But I believe even more than this might be done to preserve to the place its proper values. These values are sentimental, historical, and possibly to the military student, educational.
As soon as the surrender was assured the refugees came streaming back in an endless squalid procession down the Caney road to Santiago.
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