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Updated: May 3, 2025
With the victory at El Caney and San Juan Hill fresh in their minds, the American people believed that the war was well-nigh at an end. Information that Spain had sued for peace was hourly expected. There was much to be done, however, before the enemy was willing to admit himself beaten.
I faithfully promised to do so, and again called for an army wagon, leaving all supplies that were useful for the men in camp sending to El Caney what was most needed there and taking only our personal effects, started for Siboney. In less than twenty minutes the rain was pouring on us and for two hours it fell as if from buckets.
In view of this, I decided to begin the attack next day at El Caney with one division, while sending two divisions on the direct road to Santiago, passing by the El Pozo house, and as a diversion to direct a small force against Aguadores, from Siboney along the railroad by the sea, with a view of attracting the attention of the Spaniards in the latter direction and of preventing them from attacking our left flank.
Michelson, a wealthy resident merchant, and two or three other foreign residents of Santiago, Miss Barton opened a soup-kitchen on shore, as soon as provisions enough had been landed from the State of Texas to make a beginning, and before Tuesday night the representatives of the Red Cross had given bread and hot soup to more than ten thousand sick and half-starved people, most of them returned refugees from Caney, who could not get a mouthful to eat elsewhere in the city, and who were literally perishing from hunger and exhaustion.
Meanwhile the battle was raging fiercely at Caney and Aguadores. In General Lawton's division the Second Massachusetts up to the middle of the day sustained the heaviest loss, although other regiments were more actively engaged. During the afternoon the fight for the possession of Caney was most obstinate, and the ultimate victory reflects great credit upon the American troops.
The lists from El Caney were throbbing over the wires, and the country, so long immune from peril and suffering, was awakening to the cost of victory.
After the battles of El Caney and San Juan Hill, many wounded American soldiers who were able to travel were given furloughs to their respective homes in the United States, and Lieutenant Thomas Roberts, of this city, was one of them.
The normal population of the city at that time was about fifty thousand, but a large part of it had fled to Caney and other suburban villages to escape the bombardment, and more than half the houses were closed and deserted. General Shafter had entered the city with a single regiment the Ninth Infantry at noon, and had raised the American flag over the palace of the Spanish governor.
El Caney and San Juan Hill were seized on July 2 after a bloody struggle in which the Spanish stuck to their defenses heroically and inflicted 1600 casualties. By their own figures the Spanish on this day had only 1700 men engaged, though there were 36,500 Spanish troops in the province and 12,000 near at hand.
Nothing daunted, you responded eagerly to the order to close upon the foe, and, attacking at El Caney and San Juan, drove him from work to work until he took refuge within his last and strongest entrenchment immediately surrounding the city.
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