The Spanish-American War

Battalion: An Organizational Study of the United States Infantry

Frederic Remington, The Scream of Shrapnel on San Juan Hill, 1898

The estate of the late John Sayen has graciously given the Tactical Notebook permission to serialize his study of the organizational evolution of American infantry battalions. The author’s preface and the previous section of this book may be found via the following links:

The War with Spain in 1898 was the Army’s first chance since the Civil War to show that it could do more than chase Indians or suppress unruly labor unionists. The war itself was immensely popular with both the public and the politicians but the question of who would fight it became very controversial. On the one hand, there was a traditional school that viewed a large standing army as forever threatening the liberties of a free people. They believed that US Volunteers drawn from the state militias (of which many traditionalists were members) should fight America’s wars. The Regular Army should only be a peacetime caretaker. This view, like the militia itself, hailed from British tradition and memories of the military dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. Traditionalists also tended to be anti-intellectual. They regarded warfare as being largely a test of manhood and believed that free men fighting for their liberties should need little training and few preparations in order to win. In support of this notion they liked to cite the American victories over British “professionals” in 1775-83 and 1812-15, while conveniently overlooking the many disasters and the fact that troops trained to professional standards had won most of the successes. Even today, this romantic view of American military history exerts great influence and is experiencing a revival. Class prejudice was also a factor. Traditionalists tended to see the Regular Army’s officers as hidebound West Point martinets and its enlisted men as social and/or economic failures who had joined the Army as their last resort.[1]

Opposing the traditionalists were the disciples of the Regular Army’s leading intellectual of the post-Civil War era, Brevet Major General Emory Upton. An 1861 West Point graduate, Upton’s service in the Civil War soon won him a reputation as an innovative combat leader and skilled tactician. Appalled by the incompetence he saw Upton advocated dramatic improvements in military education, particularly for officers. As a protégé of Major General William T. Sherman, Upton wrote the Army’s 1867 manual on infantry tactics. This volume set forth ideas that Upton had put to good use during the Wilderness and Spotsylvania battles. In response to the increasingly destructive power of the breech-loading rifle, Upton abandoned the traditional two-ranked firing line as the standard combat formation, prescribing instead a single rank of soldiers who could produce more than adequate firepower while presenting less of a target. Maneuvers were based on four-man elements, readily controlled by a set of simplified commands. Because his new formations featured greater dispersion and a corresponding reduction in the officers’ ability to exert tactical control, Upton also emphasized the encouragement of individual initiative.[2]

In 1874-75 Upton headed a commission that embarked on a world tour to observe the principal European and Asiatic armies, in search of new ideas for the United States Army. In 1876 Upton published his findings as The Armies of Europe and Asia. He devoted a chapter to each army visited, summarized what he had learned and then sketched ways of applying them in America. Upton especially admired the German army, with its general staff and sophisticated mobilization system. He wanted the United States Army to become a similar force, operating as a training cadre in peacetime, and expanding itself in wartime with large numbers of draftees and trained reservists. Upton also proposed a system of rotating officers through the Army staff and several field commands in order to broaden their experience. He wanted to either eliminate the state militias, along with their politically appointed and frequently incompetent officers, or reduce them home guards. Upton particularly railed against untutored American congressmen or cabinet members who often made decisions about such purely military matters as army organization, mobilization, and training. Upton’s next book, The Military Policy of the United States, was to be his masterwork. It set forth a wealth of statistical data illustrating how a reliance on amateur soldiers to fight its wars only led the United States to one disaster after another. Lessons were rarely remembered from one war to the next and victories had only been gained through greatly superior numbers and/or resources, blunders committed by the enemy.[3]

Unfortunately, Upton rested his thesis solely on military considerations. He expected American society to place the needs of its military ahead of politics, culture, and traditions. He did recognize that any peacetime army, which the American public would support, would have to be small. However, he did not reckon with limited war situations that did not justify a national mobilization but would be too much for his small regular army to handle. Upton also did not anticipate the effects that the greatly increased size of America’s late Twentieth Century military would have on his ideas of manpower management.

Upton never finished The Military Policy of the United States. In 1884, after carrying it up through 1862, he retired from the Army and committed suicide. His death was partly due to the effects of a probable brain tumor and partly due to depression brought on by the premature death of his wife and by despair of his own ideas ever being adopted. Upton, however, had far more influence than he knew. Although his second book was not actually published until 1904, it had considerable impact even as it circulated in manuscript form. His The Armies of Europe and Asia was also widely read. However, republicans (small “r”) who strongly supported civilian control over the military even at the expense of combat efficiency opposed Upton’s ideas. So too did lazy romantics who wanted the glory and social prestige of military rank without the hard work. Few wanted to give up their hometown militia units. By late in the century many were as much social clubs as military organizations. At first, the Uptonians could do little more than try to improve Regular Army officer training and education by, among other things, instituting mandatory promotion examinations. For more substantial reforms, they would have to bide their time.[4]

The first serious clash between Uptonians and traditionalists came in March of 1898. War with Spain was imminent but not yet declared.  Congressman John A. T. Hull (R. Iowa), a staunch Uptonian and, since 1894, chairman of the House committee on Military Affairs, sponsored a bill (largely written by Uptonians in the Army’s Adjutant General Department) to strengthen the Army for the coming conflict. Hull considered National Guard and other militia units as useless for offensive action. Instead, he backed an Uptonian expansible army based on a large and Federally controlled, trained, and equipped reserve. The bill he proposed would authorize a wartime expansion of the Army from 27,000  to 104,000 enlisted men.[5] The additional officers that this expansion required would come from the regular noncommissioned ranks and from lists of civilians selected by the President. Each infantry regiment would expand from eight companies to 12 in three permanent four-company battalions. For the existing infantry regiments alone this would create 50 new battalion commands and 100 new companies. Promotion would at last be available for the deserving and company and battalion commands could at last go to younger men. The Hull Bill avoided the sensitive issue of expansion of the peacetime Army by promising that the Army’s new battalions would only be active in wartime. However, wartime expansion would have to be massive and rapid. An existing infantry regiment, for example (compare the 1896 and 1898 units in Apendix 1.1 and 1.2) would have to triple its enlisted strength in order to get from its peacetime to wartime manning levels. Additional regiments of federally recruited United States Volunteers (as opposed to US Volunteers raised from the state militias) would be raised from scratch to serve for the duration of the war. The President would designate particular states as recruiting areas for volunteer regiments and for the expansion of specific Regular Army regiments. It was hoped that the Regular Army would become more attractive to recruits if its regiments were associated with particular localities.[6] Few state units would be necessary as the Hull Bill already provided for enough federal troops for field operations. It was hoped that trained militiamen would leave their state organizations as individuals and provide the bulk of the Federal volunteers.

At first it seemed that the Hull Bill, enjoying as it did the full support of the McKinley administration, would easily pass. However, as it made its way through the House, riders were attached that required the immediate reduction of the Army back to 27,000 men as soon as the war was over. Also, the Bill could not go into effect until war was actually declared. This latter clause was a setback to the bill’s backers who had hoped that expansion could begin earlier. Worse, neither Congressman Hull nor his Uptonian military advisors (nor the President, for that matter) had reckoned with the power of the traditionalists, led by an aroused and militant National Guard.[7]

Ever since February 1898, a war fever had possessed the nation and both federal and state authorities were deluged with offers of military service. National Guardsmen were very much a part of this movement. Although the National Guard organizations in the seaboard states were fairly certain of being called up at least to man the coastal fortresses, those from the inland states had no such assurances. The Hull Bill would not only deny them their opportunity to serve but also, by idling the National Guard while the war was fought out, would kill any chance of future legislation to solidify the Guard’s status as a national wartime reserve. Worse, National Guard officers would not even be allowed to serve in the Federal forces as individuals unless they first gave up their commissions. Not only was this unthinkable, but even National Guard enlisted men were reluctant to serve on an equal footing with their perceived social inferiors in the Regular Army. Guardsmen constituted solid voting blocs in most states and, together with Southern Democrats still smarting over Reconstruction, populists who feared a large professional army’s potential as an instrument of repression, and various Army dissidents with technical objections, they formed a powerful coalition against the Hull Bill. By early April support for the Bill collapsed under an avalanche of praise for the National Guard’s citizen soldiers (mainly for their Civil War service) and declarations that an enlarged Regular Army was the first step towards militarism and the suppression of individual liberty.[8]

The military authorities then went “back to the drawing board” and brought forward a new proposal for a wartime Army of about the same total size but including 40,000 state volunteers for field service and another 20,000 for the coastal defenses. The Regular Army would only expand its enlisted strength to 60,000 (by filling out its existing regiments but not creating any new ones). A new law passed on 22 April assured National Guardsmen of their right to become US Volunteers in their own organizations and under their own officers. However, even this was unsatisfactory because the 60,000 National Guardsmen that the Army was calling for would mobilize only about half of the units that wanted to participate. Politically powerful militia officers would miss out on their Volunteer commissions, and forfeit the glory and prestige that went with them. Rather than risk the embarrassment of being left on the shelf many Guard units passed resolutions declaring that all would go to war or none. The Army could not ignore such threats. If it was going to accept large numbers of volunteers it at least wanted trained ones and most trained volunteers would have to come from the Guard. In addition, President McKinley was being advised not to repeat Lincoln’s mistake of not asking for enough volunteers early when war fever was at its height. Therefore, on 23 April, the President asked the state governors for 125,000 volunteers, enough to accommodate literally everyone.

Major General Nelson A. Miles, then the Commanding General of the Army, was horrified. He predicted (accurately) that such a large number of men would be not only unnecessary but also nearly impossible to supply and equip. Nevertheless, the President’s call smoothed the way for the passage of a new Hull Bill that gave the Regular Army a war-strength of 61,000 plus three nationally recruited US Volunteer cavalry regiments totaling 3,000. Regular infantry regiments could adopt a 12-company/three battalion organization for at least the duration of the war and the state volunteer infantry would do so as well. Of the three US Volunteer cavalry regiments, the First became the famous “Rough Riders” of Teddy Roosevelt fame. The proposed recruiting districts were dropped. As before, expansion could not begin until war was declared and the Army would have to revert to its prewar strength of 27,000 as soon as peace was restored. On April 25, the United States declared war on Spain.[9]

As matters turned out the National Guard could supply the Army with plenty of infantry but little cavalry or artillery and no engineers at all. In building their militias, state governors preferred infantry because they were cheaper to train and equip and useful for such non-military duties as disaster relief and the control of civil disturbances. Further, most states only maintained their militia companies at about 60% of their wartime strength. When a company entered Federal service about half its men would either fail their physical examinations or ask to be excused, thus dropping its strength to 30%. This situation provoked a second call for another 90,000 volunteers. Of these 75,000 would fill gaps in the state recruited volunteer regiments and 15,000 would serve in new Federally recruited volunteer organizations that included three regiments of badly needed engineers, a regimental-sized corps of signalers, and 10 infantry regiments composed of men alleged to be immune to tropical diseases.[10]

All of these Regular and Volunteer regiments would train to fight under a major revision of Emory Upton’s tactical doctrine that the Army had adopted in 1891. This expanded the Uptonian concept of maneuver by fours to encompass the maneuver of eight-man squads arranged in up to four platoons per company. This was consistent with German doctrine, which Upton much admired. Thus the Army structured a war strength 1898 company so that it could form up to 12 Upton style squads with a corporal and seven privates in each (see Appendix 1.2). These squads could then group themselves into as many as four platoons (each under a sergeant) with up to three squads apiece. A British rifle company organized itself for combat in a similar way, grouping its squads into four “sections.” In practice, however, American units were usually well below their authorized strengths. A Volunteer company typically mustered about 80 men, or enough for nine squads (or three platoons). A Regular Army company would initially have had only about 50 men, or five squads (two platoons). Regular Army units were not only less popular among potential recruits but also many of them went overseas early and thus had less time to do what recruiting they could. Few Regular regiments reached their full strength before the end of the war.[11]

It should be understood that in 1898 an infantry battalion was just a grouping of four companies within an infantry regiment. It had a commanding officer but he had no one to assist him apart from a sergeant major and two lieutenants serving as adjutant and quartermaster (supply and transportation officer), respectively. A full battalion totaled just 15 officers and 425 men and it occupied a small enough frontage that its commander could see most of what was going on for himself and could transmit his orders by voice or messenger. The battalion’s parent regiment had diminished in importance as a tactical command echelon but it still provided important administrative and logistical functions. The regimental headquarters (Appendix 1.1) included the senior adjutant and quartermaster officers plus the commissary officer (coordinating food supply) and their enlisted assistants. With the band these brought the total strength of the regiment to 50 officers and 1,309 men, excluding the personnel attached from the Army Medical Department (about four officers and perhaps 20 men). However, the organization tables did not provide for the 30 to 50 messengers, orderlies, cooks, drivers, and other assistants that a regimental headquarters, its subordinate battalion headquarters, and its parent brigade needed in order to operate. A regimental commander could only obtain these men by weakening his companies.[12]

The 1898 campaign itself was very significant in terms of its effect on the future of both the Army and the Marine Corps so it is worth examining in some detail. Prewar projections on how the Army might be employed accepted the notion that it would primarily be supporting a naval campaign. Since Spanish possessions were all on islands, control of the sea-lanes was clearly crucial. In its offensive role, the Army would seize Spanish territories after the Navy had isolated them. It would also secure the overseas bases and anchorage’s which the Navy would require. In Cuba, the Army and Navy agreed that the Army would conduct raiding operations to keep the Spanish off balance and facilitate the transfer of arms and supplies to the Cuban insurgents. Later plans became much more ambitious and called for direct assaults on the main Spanish garrisons around Havana. However, the war itself progressed quite differently. It had scarcely begun when a cruiser squadron under Commodore George Dewey destroyed a flotilla of Spanish gunboats and small cruisers in Manila Bay and thereby opened the Philippine Islands to American conquest. Meanwhile, the main Spanish fleet lay in home waters. From there it was supposedly able to deploy rapidly to either the Philippines or the Caribbean. However, most of its warships were in very bad condition and its real combat power was hopelessly weak. Nevertheless, Rear Admiral Pascual de Cervera y Topete created a great stir when he left the Cape Verde Islands with four armored cruisers and three destroyers and headed for the Caribbean. The Americans were unable to find Cervera until late May after he had already arrived at the port of Santiago, located on Cuba’s southeast coast. The United States battle fleet under Rear Admiral William T. Sampson immediately blockaded him. However, Sampson feared that while his ships blockaded Cervera, other Spanish warships would be free to do mischief elsewhere. Of course if Santiago could be captured or if Sampson could slip his heavy ships inside the harbor, Cervera would be doomed. Neither of these things, however, would be particularly easy to accomplish. The town of Santiago lay at the northern end of a bay that was accessible only through a narrow, winding channel whose entrance was dominated by high cliffs. The Spanish had mined the channel and erected batteries on the cliffs west of the channel (the Socapa) and to the east (the Morro). Although not very powerful the batteries could still prevent the removal of the mines and Sampson would not risk his ships in the channel while the mines were there. Santiago, however, was much more vulnerable to a land attack. Not only were its fixed defenses only adequate against lightly armed insurgents but also its garrison had been seriously weakened by food shortages, sickness, and by the need to send out detachments to hold other points against the guerrillas.[13]

For the capture of Santiago, the Army promised Sampson the services of Major General William R. Shafter’s Fifth Corps. While Sampson chafed with impatience as he waited for Shafter to arrive, on the other side of the world George Dewey was also fuming over the fact that his own lack of land forces had left him powerless to exploit his newly-won naval supremacy in the Philippines. The Army regiments that were supposed to join him were far from ready. The only soldiers Dewey had were the Marines already serving aboard his ships. Admiral Sampson could count on more substantial Marine help, however. In 1896, Congress had finally decided to increase the Marine Corps by 500 enlisted men (but no new officers). These extra men became critically important when, in April 1898, just before war was declared, the Navy instructed the Marines to form two four-company battalions at Key West for unspecified duties with Sampson’s fleet. Manpower, however, was so short that despite the 1896 increase, there were still only enough Marines available for one battalion with five rifle companies and an artillery company. The latter would have four of the Navy’s new 3-inch “landing guns.” The full battalion included a lieutenant colonel, three majors (of whom one was the quartermaster and the other two had probably been earmarked to command the two smaller battalions), six captains, 13 lieutenants (two per company plus an adjutant), a Navy surgeon, and 631 enlisted Marines.[14] In early June the Marine Battalion was ordered to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where it would secure a fleet anchorage from which the Santiago blockade could be supported. This task it accomplished with relative ease. Admiral Sampson then hoped to use the Battalion, reinforced by additional sailors and Marines from his fleet, to storm the Spanish batteries on the Socapa cliffs if the Army would agree to capture the Morro. General Shafter, however, having finally landed his troops on 22 June at the village of Daiquiri, made it clear that he did not believe that the fall of the Morro would end the campaign soon enough to enable his army to avoid the onset of yellow fever. Instead, he would seek to conclude matters more quickly by heading inland, directly for Santiago.

On 1 July, Shafter launched his main attack against the village of El Caney and against San Juan and Kettle Hills. These positions guarded the main routes into Santiago. Fortunately, the Spaniards had ineptly deployed their troops in poorly sited positions that left them disastrously weak at several critical points. Though numerically inferior overall Shafter’s men would enjoy a local numerical superiority of ten to one. Even so, Shafter threw away many of his advantages with a frontal assault that exposed his men to the full fury of the Spaniards’ very modern and efficient Mauser rifles. Although the Americans took all their objectives and probably could have taken Santiago as well, they had sustained over 1,400 casualties. They therefore halted their advance and dug in.

Despite this reprieve, the Spanish knew that all was lost. Not only was food and ammunition running short but also their opponents could now overlook the city’s inner defenses and cut off its water supply. The Americans, however, believed that Santiago was too strong to be reduced by anything less than a formal siege. They had experienced great difficulty in landing their supplies across the beaches at Daiquiri and Siboney and even more difficulty moving them over the primitive Cuban roads to the Santiago siege lines. They were now suffering serious privations that could only be relieved by a complete unloading of Shafter’s ships. However, this could not take place without the use of Santiago’s port facilities. Admiral Sampson, meanwhile, continued to press General Shafter for an attack on the Morro so he could finish off Cervera but Shafter feared another Pyrrhic victory or, worse, a bloody repulse. Sampson likewise refused Shafter’s demand that the Navy force a passage into Santiago harbor and use its heavy guns to support the Army’s assault on the City. He declared that this was impossible until someone at least removed the mines from the channel. He and Shafter continued to argue until July 3 when Cervera solved their dilemma by making a desperate attempt to escape. Sampson’s fleet easily caught him and destroyed all his ships but Santiago did not capitulate until July 16. The war ended on 13 August. It had lasted less than four months[15]

Editor’s Note: The format of the many appendices to this work fit poorly with Substack. For that reason, I have placed them on a PDF file that can be found at Military Learning Library, a website that I maintain.

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[1]  For recent examples of this genre see the numerous books by Stephen Ambrose on the experiences of American GI’s during World War II (for example, Citizen Soldiers [New York 1998]). Ambrose recounts many examples of heroism and success by American soldiers, despite serious shortcomings in their selection and training. While the incidents recounted may be individually true (more or less, or at least according to the best recollections of survivors) and are usually uplifting and exciting they are frequently atypical of the larger events they are meant to depict. They can thus convey a distorted and excessively rosy picture. Good examples of similar writing are the numerous and successful books by the German writer Paul Carell (such as Unternehmen Barbarossa, Der Marsch nach Russland, [Frankfurt 1963] later published in English as Hitler Moves East). However, entertaining they may be, such books make an exceedingly weak foundation upon which to base military policy but people are often attracted by what is comfortable and flattering.

[2]  Weigley, pp. 275-281

[3]  See Emory Upton, The Armies of Asia and Europe (New York, the Greenwood Press, undated reprint) and Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the United States (New York, the Greenwood Press, facsimile reprint first published 1904).

[4]  Weigley, op cit pp. 270-271 and 279-81.

[5] The Army had increased slightly because Congress had recently authorized two additional artillery regiments.

[6]  Cosmas pp. 90-91.

[7]  Ibid pp. 92-93.

[8]  Ibid pp. 93-97.

[9] Ibid pp. 97-102 & 108-110.

[10] Cosmas op cit, pp. 12-14 and 134-136; and Lerwill op cit p. 146.

[11] Urwin p. 139; Mahon & Danysh pp. 33-34; Cosmas 113, and 174-176.

[12] Ibid. Some of these figures are interpolated from the official US Army Tables of Organization of February 1914.

[13]  This account of the war comes primarily from David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (New York Macmillan Publishing 1981). Information on the Spanish forces is from US Office of Naval Intelligence, Notes on the Spanish-American War (Washington DC, US Government Printing Office 1901) which contains translations of a number of Spanish accounts.

[14]  Ibid. For the operations and composition of the US Marine battalion, see Shulminson pp. 168-196.

[15]      Ibid. Shulminson also follows the Shafter-Sampson controversy as does Trask. See also Smith p 64 and Weigley pp. 302-307. For an excellent overall account of the war see Albert A. Nofi, The Spanish-American War, 1898 (Conshohocken PA, Combined Books 1996).