Significance of the Fall of Santiago: Spain and San Juan
In respect of the importance of the forces engaged on land and the display of recognized scientific military operations, the land battles before Santiago were mere skirmishes beside Waterloo, Gettysburg and Sedan. But in respect of the revelation resulting from measuring the fighting and enduring qualities of the American soldier by the standard obtaining in the standing army of Spain, the result was of the highest significance. Among the people of the United States it confirmed and established the confidence they had long cherished in the efficiency of their race. It was more important to us than Gettysburg, in that, while it erased every jarring memory of Gettysburg itself, it sanctified and heightened the one glorious -- of the valor of all Americans who met on that field of heroic struggle; and that the reunited devotion to one country and one flag was sealed in sacrifice of blood and life by North and South together fighting side by side. It revealed to us, as by inspiration, the strength and character of our population, and the resourceful intelligence springing from liberty restricted only by the rights of man. That this revelation was understood by all foreign observers was confessed. They were sent to observe both sides; not merely the tools of war, but the nature and power of the men who wielded them. It is for the purpose of studying forces as possible adversaries that such observations are made.
When the combined operations of the army and navy at Santiago are considered, it is not improbable that the Spanish defeat will prove, by future results, to have been more significant than any other battle of the century.
The overwhelming and quick defeat of Spain was confidently prepared for and expected by the United States. The progress of the war did not appreciably interrupt the regular course of our every-day life or business.
It was also conceded by all other nations that Spain must be defeated, if the prosecution of the war was not averted by the intervention of European powers. But some grave authorities abroad did not dream that it was possible for Spain in a hundred days to be stripped of all her colonies, her splendid fleet annihilated, her ocean commerce paralyzed, her finances demoralized, her population maddened to the point of revolution, an important body of her army captured within its own fortified places by a smaller army, and the prisoners transported back to Spain, at the expense of the conquerors, as an act of compassionate charity, founded upon good "Yankee" economy.
And all this without the enemy being able to strike a single blow in return, or to disarrange in any particular the ordinary course of life in this country.
The significance of Santiago lay in this: that those who had considered Dewey's action at Manila to be a miracle of good fortune, saw it repeated at Santiago, at Manzanillo, at San Juan de Porto Rico, and at Nipe. Those who thought the 95 deg at Las Guasimas were reckless daredevils, who won out of sheer audacity, saw the same quality of indomitable courage repeated by increased forces, with equal success, at San Juan and El Caney.
When Santiago surrendered, the republic of the United States, so long scorned by Europe as a nation of money-getters and sordid adventurers, with no traditions of dignity or glory; so long treated with contempt by Europe in its accredited representatives as being a government of ignorance and corrupt politicians and mercenaries -- that republic, after Santiago, stood before the world suddenly revealed in its real strength, taking undisputed place in the first rank of nations, unsurpassed in its practical ability to provide for offence or defence, and with a capacity for future influence in the whole world, and for the increase of its strength restricted only within the national purpose, whatever that might be.
The surrender of Santiago was the death-blow to Spain, and sudden warning to Europe.
Even after the destruction of the Maine the Spanish government did not expect war with the United States. That act of cruel perfidy was so well shrouded in mystery, as Spain viewed it, that it might be made the subject of endless diplomacy, or, if put to it, the "mercenaries" of America could be pacified with a money indemnity. No allowance was made for the existence of a profound public sentiment in the United States aroused by the murder of our seamen. Once before Spanish authorities had shot to death the crew of the Virginius, filibusters from this country going to aid Cuban revolutionists, and nothing had come of the outrage. The idea that the United States possessed any actual sympathy for Cubans who perished under Spanish cruelty, neither Canovas nor Sagasta could comprehend as anything more than rhetorical declamation covering a pretence to forward some scheme of sharp practice that our government was preparing to present. They frankly admitted that Spain could not be victorious in a war with the United States, but they did not expect war -- diplomacy, and money indemnity, at the proper time, would dispose of American protestations of honorable purpose and humane motives.