THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. What is called the Spanish-American war occurred seven years after the foregoing articles were written. It was not much of a war, not as many men being killed in the entire war, so-called, as were killed in any one of many of the small battles of the war between the States; and the United States, as a nation, has little to boast of in connection with it; but, such as it was, the South-the much maligned, deeply wronged South, suffering still and doomed to suffer through many long years to come from the ravages of a bitter and cruel war of destruction and a yet more bitter and heartless war of reconstruction, that left her prostrate and bleeding at every pore-was promptly at the front, as usual, with more than her quota, maintaining her old-time record and precedence in deeds of heroism under the very flag that but a little while before had waved in triumph over her awful agony. That's the South. It was Wheeler, of Alabama-Georgian by birth, and a lieutenant-general of the Confederate armywho, quitting a seat in Congress at the age of 62, was among the first to be mustered in as a majorgeneral of the volunteer army of the United States in the Spanish-American war. Let Northern witnesses bear further testimony of him: "I am sorry," said Mr. Dolliver, of Iowa, in a speech in Congress in January, 1899, "I am sorry that I do not see in his seat our old friend from Alabama, General Wheeler. I have served with him in this House for ten years, a large part of that time sitting with him on the same committee, and I have learned to look upon the old soldier with a filial affection. I did my best to persuade him against going into the Cuban campaign. I tried to get him to see that his duty was here in the House of Representatives, leaving to the younger generation the dangers and diseases of the field and the camp; but the old man said he must go. He weighed only 98 pounds, and he said he could ride a horse all day without tiring the horse. So he went down there and bore the part of a patriot and a soldier. "At the time of the attack upon Santiago he was sick and unable to leave his tent, but when he heard the firing he got into an ambulance and started for the front. When he met details of men carrying the wounded to the rear he told the boys to let the wounded ride, and asked them to get him out of the ambulance and put him upon his horse; and all day long on the firing line at Santiago he kept the field, directing the movement of his troops." Said the Public Ledger, of Philadelphia (March 20, 1899,): "All observant readers of official and other reports on the Santiago campaign will recognize the truth of Governor Roosevelt's remark that 'General Wheeler was the backbone of the campaign.'' The Ledger's remarks had reference to the well known fact that General Wheeler persistently opposed the retreat of the army that was contemplated by its commanding general just before the Santiago fight. It was Richmond P. Hobson, of Alabama, who performed the exploit of which Julian Hawthorne (a Northern historian) says: "On June 3d a deed was done which immediately took its place as the most daring and brilliant of the war, and one of the most heroic ever planned and executed in naval history. "It all seems like a chapter of romance by Stevenson or Cooper. "Was ever fairy tale more wonderful? The matter-of-fact, prosaic Nineteenth Century vanishes as we read, and the great days of classic heroism are with us once more. * "One might almost say that this exploit marked the crisis of the war." It was Worth Bagley, of North Carolina, who was the first officer of the American navy to fall in that war-slain on the deck of his boat by a shell from a hidden shore battery whose fire he was daringly endeavoring to draw. First to shed his blood on Cuban soil was John Blair Gibbs, a Virginian, who was a physician in the city of New York, with a practice worth $10,000 a year, which he gave up to serve as surgeon in the navy during the war; and he was the first physician in that city to enlist for that war in the medical corps of the army or navy, and the first to be accepted as a surgeon under President McKinley's first call for volunteers. It was Arthur L. Willard, of Maryland, who planted the first American flag in Cuba; and Thomas M. Brumby, of Georgia, who raised the flag over Manila; and Calvin Anderson, a Virginian, who fired the first gun on El Caney and the first salute at the surrender of Santiago; and the only captain promoted to first rank, and to whom this promotion was given for gallantry on the field, was Micah Jenkins, "a gentle and courteous South Carolinian," wrote his commanding officer, Col. Roosevelt, "on whom danger acted like wine." As it was a Southerner who performed the most heroic exploit on the sea in that war, so were the most noted, daring and perilous missions on land executed by Southern men. When the war department wanted to send a message, fraught with much moment, across the island of Cuba to General Garcia, it was Lieutenant Andrew Summers Rowan, a Virginian, who was selected for the dangerous and difficult task. Through the swamps and underbrush and over the mountains of Cuba he carried the message to Garcia, brought back the information that was of such service to the American army, and for the skill, courage and promptness with which he performed his mission he was promoted from lieutenant to lieutenant-colonel. When Admiral Sampson was perplexed with doubt, uncertain which way to turn, for lack of certain knowledge as to the Spanish fleet-knowledge which it required a high order of courage and a rare degree of coolness to obtain-it was Lieutenant Victor Blue, a North Carolinian, whom he dispatched to obtain that knowledge, and who obtained it and brought it to his commander by going seventy miles alone within the enemy's lines, and counting their ships one by one as they lay at anchor in Santiago harbor. Death as a spy would have been his fate if he had been caught, and he knew it. It was this same North Carolinian who but a little while before had traversed the lines of Spanish gunboats and soldiers to communicate with General Gomez, the Cuban commanderin-chief. "Admiral Sampson paced his deck, With troubled brow and eye, "A light came into the Admiral's eye- As he said to his orderly waiting there- "In the shadow that night a little craft "And Victor Blue was there alone, Serene and well content |