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Updated: May 27, 2025
The time when a reinforcing column of five thousand men will reach the enemy ought not to be a matter of vague belief it should be a matter of accurate foreknowledge; and if General Shafter had sent a couple of officers with a few Rough Riders out on the roads leading into Santiago from Manzanillo, he might have had information that would have made the arrival of Colonel Escarrio less unexpected.
The explanation of the entrance of the Spanish reinforcements given by General Shafter in his official report of the campaign is as follows: "General Garcia, with between four and five thousand Cubans, was intrusted with the duty of watching for and intercepting the reinforcements expected. This, however, he failed to do, and Escarrio passed into the city along my extreme right and near the bay."
We know now and General Shafter should have known then that the column of reinforcements from Manzanillo was not led by General Pando, but by Colonel Escarrio, and that at the very time when Shafter, in successive telegrams, was placing it "at Palma," "six miles north," "near a break in the railroad," and "some distance away," it was actually in the Santiago intrenchments, ready for business.
But it was a mistaken calculation. If he had delayed General Shafter's column, by obstinately resisting its advance through the woods on the Siboney road, he would have given Colonel Escarrio time enough to reach Santiago with the reinforcements from Manzanillo before the decisive battle, and would also have given the climate and the Cuban fever more time to sap the strength and depress the spirits of our badly equipped and improperly fed troops.
This may or may not be so; but the chance if chance there was vanished when Colonel Escarrio, on the morning after the battle, marched around the head of the bay and into the city with a reinforcing column of five thousand regulars.
General Shafter says, in his official report, that "the arrival of General Escarrio was not anticipated" because "it was not believed that his troops could arrive so soon."
The operations and manoeuvers of our army in front of Santiago have already been described and commented upon by a number of expert observers, and the only additional criticisms that I have to make relate to General Shafter's neglect of reconnaissances, as a means of ascertaining the enemy's strength and position; his apparent loss of grip after the battle of July 1-2; and his failure not only to prevent, but to take any adequate steps to prevent, the reinforcement of the Santiago garrison by a column of five thousand regulars from Manzanillo under command of Colonel Escarrio.
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