Departure from the United States On May 29, 1898, 1,060 Rough Riders and 1,258 of their horses and mules made their way to the Southern Pacific railroad to travel to
Tampa, Florida, where they would set off for Cuba. The lot awaited orders for departure from Major General
William Rufus Shafter. Under heavy prompting from Washington D.C., General Shafter gave the order to dispatch the troops early before sufficient traveling storage was available. Due to this problem, only eight of the 12 companies of The Rough Riders were permitted to leave Tampa to engage in the war, and many of the horses and mules were left behind. Aside from Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt's first-hand mention of deep, heartfelt sorrow from the men left behind, this situation resulted in a premature weakening of the men. Approximately one-fourth of them who received training had already been lost, most dying of
malaria and
yellow fever. This sent the remaining troops into Cuba with a significant loss in men and morale. Upon arrival on Cuban shores on June 23, 1898, the men promptly unloaded themselves and the small amount of equipment they carried with them. Camp was set up nearby and the men were to remain there until further orders had been given to advance. Further supplies were unloaded from the ships over the next day including the very few horses that were allowed on the journey. "The great shortcoming throughout the campaign was the utterly inadequate transportation. If they had been allowed to take our mule-train, they could have kept the whole cavalry division supplied," Roosevelt later wrote. The American side included the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, under
Leonard Wood, the
1st U.S. Regular Cavalry, and the
10th U.S. Regular Cavalry (this consisted of
Afro-American soldiers, then called
Buffalo soldiers). Supported by artillery, the American forces numbered 964 men, supported by 800 men from Castillo. The Spanish held an advantage over the Americans by knowing their way through the complicated trails in the area of combat. They predicted where the Americans would be traveling on foot and exactly what positions to fire on. They also were able to utilize the land and cover in such a way that they were difficult to spot. Along with this, their guns used
smokeless powder which did not give away their immediate position upon firing as other gunpowders would have. This increased the difficulty of finding the opposition for the U.S. soldiers. In some locations, the jungle was too thick to see very far. General
Young, who was in command of the regulars and cavalry, began the attack in the early morning. Using long-range, large-caliber
Hotchkiss guns, he fired at the opposition, who were reportedly concealed along trenches, roads, bridges, and jungle cover. Colonel Wood's men, accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, were not yet in the same vicinity as the other men at the start of the battle. They had a more difficult path to travel around the time the battle began, and at first they had to make their way up a very steep hill. "Many of the men, footsore and weary from their march of the preceding day, found the pace up this hill too hard, and either dropped their bundles or fell out of line, with the result that we went into action with less than five hundred men." Trooper Jesse D. Langdon of the 1st Volunteer Infantry, who accompanied Col. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in their assault on Kettle Hill, reported: "We were exposed to the Spanish fire, but there was very little because just before we started, why, the Gatling guns opened up at the bottom of the hill, and everybody yelled, 'The Gatlings! The Gatlings!' and away we went. The Gatlings just enfiladed the top of those trenches. We'd never have been able to take Kettle Hill if it hadn't been for Parker's Gatling guns." A Spanish counterattack on Kettle Hill by some 600 infantry was quickly devastated by one of Lt. Parker's Gatling guns recently emplaced on the summit of San Juan Hill, which killed all but 40 of the attackers before they had closed to within of the Americans on Kettle Hill. Col. Roosevelt was so impressed by the actions of Lt. Parker and his men that he placed his regiment's two 7 mm Colt–Browning machine guns and the volunteers manning them under Parker, who immediately emplaced them—along with 10,000 rounds of captured 7 mm Mauser ammunition—at tactical firing points in the American line. Colonel Roosevelt gave a large share of the credit for the successful charge to Lt. Parker and his Gatling Gun Detachment: "I think Parker deserved rather more credit than any other one man in the entire campaign ... he had the rare good judgment and foresight to see the possibilities of the machine-guns..He then, by his own exertions, got it to the front and proved that it could do invaluable work on the field of battle, as much in attack as in defense." America's conflict with Spain was later described as a "splendid little war" and for Theodore Roosevelt it certainly was. His combat experience consisted of one week's campaign with one day of hard fighting. "The charge itself was great fun", he declared, and "Oh, but we had a bully fight." His actions during the battle earned a recommendation for the
Medal of Honor, but politics intervened and the request was denied. The rejection crushed Roosevelt, yet notability from the charge up San Juan Hill was instrumental in propelling him to the governorship of New York in 1899. The following year Roosevelt was selected to fill the vice presidential spot in President McKinley's successful run for a second term. With McKinley's assassination in September 1901, Roosevelt became president. In the confusion surrounding their departure from Tampa, half the members of the Rough Riders were left behind along with most of the horses. The volunteers made the charge up San Juan Hill on foot. They were joined in the attack by the 10th (Negro) Cavalry. Though the 10th never received the glory for the charge that the Rough Riders did, one of their commanders—
Captain "Black Jack" Pershing (who later commanded American troops in World War I)—was awarded the
Silver Star.
Siege of Santiago The Rough Riders played a key role in the outcome of the
Spanish–American War by assisting the American forces in forming a constricting ring around the city of Santiago de Cuba. The ultimate goal of the Americans in capturing the San Juan Heights (also known as Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill) was to attain a strategic position from which to move downhill and attack Santiago, a strong point for the Spanish military. The Spanish had a fleet of cruisers in port. The United States drove the Spanish cruisers out of their port by taking areas around Santiago and subsequently moving in on the city from multiple directions. Two days after the battle on San Juan Heights, the US navy destroyed Spain's Caribbean cruiser fleet at
Santiago Bay. This took a tremendous toll on the Spanish military due to their widespread empire and heavy reliance upon naval capabilities. The primary objective of the American
Fifth Army Corps' invasion of Cuba was the capture of the city of
Santiago de Cuba. U.S. forces had driven back the Spaniards' first line of defense at the
Battle of Las Guasimas, after which General
Arsenio Linares pulled his troops back to the main line of defense against Santiago along San Juan Heights. In the charge at the
Battle of San Juan Hill U.S. forces captured the Spanish position. At the
Battle of El Caney the same day, U.S. forces took the fortified Spanish position and were then able to extend the U.S. flank on San Juan Hill. The destruction of the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba allowed U.S. forces to safely besiege the city. However, the sinking of the Spanish cruisers did not mean the end of the war. Battles continued in and around Santiago. On July 16, after both governments agreed to the terms of capitulation ("surrender" was avoided), in which Toral surrendered his garrison and all troops in the Division of Santiago, an additional 9,000 soldiers. The Spanish also ceded
Guantanamo City and
San Luis. The Spanish troops marched out of Santiago on July 17. By July 17, 1898, the Spanish forces in Santiago surrendered to General Shafter and the United States military. Various battles in the region continued on and the United States was continuously victorious. On August 12, 1898, the Spanish Government surrendered to the United States and agreed to an armistice that relinquished their control of Cuba. The armistice also gained the United States the territories of
Puerto Rico,
Guam, and the
Philippines. This large acquisition of land elevated the United States to the level of an imperial power. The Spanish–American War also began a trend of United States intervention in foreign affairs which has lasted to the present day. == Aftermath ==