The Roughest Riders Read online

  Modern civil rights advocates recognized the true inequality of the period. “With white supremacy challenged throughout the South, many whites sought to protect their former status by threatening African Americans who exercised their new rights,” wrote black educator Henry Louis Gates.

  Florida led the way along the path of infamy with laws mandating the separation of races on trains. Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, and other southern states followed quickly in Florida’s wake. These states singled out the idea of integrated train travel as particularly offensive since it forced people of different races to come into physical contact with one another, the men and women of both races given no option but to mingle with one another in close quarters, black skin rubbing up against white skin.

  Laws enforcing segregation did much to damage the push for equality, but the most vicious prong in the overall attack was vigilante justice in the form of lynching, primarily of black males. During the 1890s, an average of 187 lynchings occurred every year—between three and four murders a week for more than a decade. The familiar picture was that of bigoted rednecks implementing their savage form of retribution under the cover of night, but the truth was even more horrifying. Lynchings of black Americans had become a spectator sport, as eager onlookers, fueled by gallons of alcohol, reveled in the violence in broad daylight. It was more or less an official pastime, a latter-day version of the public games held at the Colosseum in Rome. And as in those ancient ceremonies, the lynchings themselves were not always a quick deliverance of the victim into eternity, since an unspeakable ritual of torture often preceded the actual execution. The police did not intervene.

  Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African American journalist of the period writing for a newspaper called Free Speech, compiled a list of reasons why black citizens might readily find themselves with nooses around their necks: “insubordination; talking disrespectfully; striking a white man; slapping a white boy; writing an insulting letter; a personal debt of fifty cents; a funeral bill of ten dollars; organizing sharecroppers; being too prosperous,” and the list goes on. More often than not, raping a white woman was also included, and an accusation of such was often punished without a semblance of proof.

  There was only one thing left for African Americans to do, claimed Wells-Barnett, and that was to save their money and move to a part of the country that recognized their rights as free and equal human beings. She encouraged black citizens to look for places that would provide them with fair trials when they were accused of crimes, instead of murdering them in cold blood whenever they were targeted by racist whites.

  The larger problem, of course, was there was no place to go that offered blacks that much more protection than they had in the deeper regions of the South. The North was hardly more receptive, although the hostility was less overt. The landed classes in New York, Boston, and other northern cities were busy vilifying the new immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Poland, Russia, Italy, and China, and actively fighting for legislation to limit the foreign hordes that came swarming onto American soil in increasing numbers during the later decades of the nineteenth century. These xenophobic Northerners were not about to champion the cause of oppressed black people, whom most of them regarded as genetically inferior in the first place.

  That great compendium of knowledge, the Encyclopædia Britannica, contained the following entry under the heading negro in its 1903 edition: “By the nearly unanimous consent of anthropologists[,] this type occupies the lowest position in the evolutionary scale, thus affording the best material for the comparative study of the highest anthropoids and the human species…. The fundamental equality [desired for African Americans] by ignorant philanthropists is belied by the whole history of the race.”

  On May 18, 1896, the highest court in the land, the US Supreme Court, rendered a notorious 7–1 decision on segregation in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson: “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.”

  In other words, racial separation was the best policy for the nation.

  Except on the battlefield! While black and white combat units were themselves segregated, there was no distinction between the two in the line of fire. Arrows, bullets, and cannonballs discriminated against no one; they hit their mark where they fell, obliterating lives and crippling soldiers without regard to race. They struck down white and black alike.

  This, then, was the world the Buffalo Soldiers came home to after their years in the wilderness fighting for their country. Many of those who survived wore the scars of their injuries proudly, only to find that they couldn’t work at the same places, attend the same schools, eat at the same lunch counters, or drink from the same water fountains as the white people they had fought alongside. Those who tried were likely to be brutalized and hanged.

  Then something came along to change the status quo: America went to war again. Naturally enough, the nation had a new need for strong, healthy, young bodies to serve in combat against the country’s latest enemy, and black soldiers, who had fought so well in earlier battles, were the obvious choice.

  3

  At 9:40 on Tuesday evening, February 15, 1898, deliverance of sorts arrived when a horrific explosion shattered the tropical stillness in the harbor off Havana, Cuba. “Maine blown up in Havana Harbor at 9:40 tonight, and destroyed,” read the dispatch sent to Secretary of the Navy John D. Long by the ship’s captain, Charles Dwight Sigsbee. “Many wounded and doubtless more killed or drowned,” continued the report. Long received the news at 1:40 in the morning of February 16 and directly sent Commander D. W. Dickens to the White House to awaken President William McKinley.

  “The president came out in his dressing gown,” Dickens recalled later. “I handed him the dispatch, which he read with great gravity. He seemed to be very deeply impressed with the news,” reading it over two or three times before replying.

  The American battleship the USS Maine had been anchored facing the harbor, five hundred yards from the arsenal and two hundred yards from the floating dock there. It was an intensely dark night, with low-hanging rainclouds that drenched the area immediately after the explosion. The detonation ripped through the bowels of the vessel, with its 355-man crew aboard, including 290 sailors, 39 marines, and 26 officers. The eruption obliterated the first third of the ship, where most of the men were sleeping or resting, and the remaining wreckage quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor. Two hundred and fifty-three men were killed instantly, and eight others succumbed to their injuries shortly afterward. Of the ninety-four survivors, only sixteen escaped unscathed. Black sailors were among the dead and wounded. The explosion rocked the Havana waterfront, knocked out the harbor’s electrical power, toppled a long network of telegraph and telephone poles, and ignited fires for blocks around. The noise and concussion roused the entire city and swamped many smaller boats in the harbor.

  Tensions between the United States and Spain had been mounting for some time, particularly in response to the situation in Cuba. The Spanish colony had been struggling to free itself from Spain’s oppression for more than thirty years, and in 1868 the citizens had risen up against their overlords and persisted in that struggle for a decade. The United States, which had strong economic ties and real estate interests on the island, sided with the revolutionaries, lending them moral and financial support. America also nearly stepped in with military force in 1873 when the Spanish captured the American munitions and personnel ship Virginius, executing fifty-three men, including US citizens. The incident ultimately passed without America declaring war on Spain, and US support for the Cubans remained strong, especially when the islanders rebelled again in April 1895.

  Spain responded by dispatch
ing General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau to suppress the insurgents. Weyler soon earned the sobriquet “The Butcher” when he adopted a Pol Pot–style solution of sorts, relocating innumerable Cubans to concentration camps near Spanish military headquarters. His brutal policies resulted in the starvation of more than one hundred thousand Cubans and incited war fever in the United States. The so-called yellow press of the era demanded that President McKinley take forceful action to protect American interests on the island.

  US minister to Spain Stewart L. Woodford told the Spanish government to “take Weyler out of Cuba or we will do it for you.” Spain recalled Weyler on October 2, 1897, but it was too late to have much effect. Although Spain replaced Weyler with a more conciliatory officer, General Ramón Blanco, the Cubans were not about to be mollified. They had long since reached the tipping point under Spanish domination. Cuba’s economy lay in tatters, with unemployment soaring and Spain still maintaining a tight rein on the citizens themselves. On January 24, 1898, McKinley gave in to the pressure and ordered the USS Maine to sail from Key West, Florida, to Havana. It departed from Florida at 11:00 PM that night and arrived in Cuba at 9:30 the following morning, anchoring at Buoy Number 4 in thirty-six feet of water, between the Alfonso XII, a Spanish battle cruiser, and the Gneisenau, a German training steamer.

  Spain reluctantly accepted the presence of the American ship in Cuban waters, as long as the crew remained on board and did not try to stir up trouble on land. Consequently, all crewmembers were confined to the vessel from the time it arrived until it was destroyed, with only officers permitted to go ashore when necessary. The American battleship was indeed impressive. It was originally designed as an armored cruiser with more than seven thousand square feet of canvas, and was later redesigned as a second-class battleship.

  The Maine measured 324 feet and 4 inches in length. It had a beam of 57 feet, a draft of 22 feet, 6 inches, and was divided into 214 watertight compartments. It displaced 6,650 tons of water and was propelled by twin screws that generated a horsepower of more than 9,000, with a maximum speed of 17 knots. The vessel was fitted out with a ramming bow, giving it the appearance of a gargantuan waterborne battering ram. It was also designed for effective naval combat; two main winged or “sponsoned” gun turrets containing four ten-inch guns pointed menacingly over the sides, with the ability to fire fore and aft in any kind of ship-to-ship confrontation. Six six-inch guns, seven rapid-fire six-pounders, and torpedoes that could be launched through four tubes fleshed out the ship’s military might. Spain cast a wary eye on the US battleship but took no action to expel it from Havana Harbor.

  And then the ship exploded, prompting the US government to establish a naval court of inquiry to investigate the incident on February 17. The delegation, headed by Captain William T. Sampson of the battleship Iowa, traveled to Havana to determine exactly what had happened. Sampson and his team began their investigation on February 21. The inquiry dragged on for more than four long weeks, with the investigation hampered by the absence of any floating debris. The entire wreck lay submerged at the bottom of the harbor, preventing close and detailed examination. The board concluded that the Maine had been sunk by an external device, most likely a mine floating in the water. The team returned to the States without fixing the blame directly on Spain, but the American public was not satisfied by such an ambiguous outcome. Spain, many decided, was guilty by implication if not by actual fact. War fever mounted, and the drums of impending war grew louder in the distance, fanned by newspapers demanding that Spain be held accountable, even without definitive proof.

  The explosion aboard the USS Maine on February 15, 1898, obliterated the first third of the ship, where most of the men were sleeping or resting, and the remaining wreckage quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor. Two hundred and fifty-three men were killed instantly.

  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-det-4a14340)

  The New York Journal, owned by William Randolph Hearst, offered a $50,000 reward for “the conviction of the criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their deaths.” That figure was revised later. Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World was not quite as shrill yet also insisted that a Spanish mine had caused the destruction. Privately, however, Pulitzer admitted that “nobody outside a lunatic asylum” really believed Spain would trigger such an event. The Chicago Tribune took a different tack, opining that “the people want no disgraceful negotiations with Spain” and that “should the president plunge his administration into that morass, he and his party would be swept out of power in 1900 by a fine burst of popular indignation. An administration which stains the national honor will never be forgiven.”

  President McKinley wavered briefly, still hoping for a diplomatic solution, but the pressure proved impossible to ignore. He had already been labeled as “weak, and catering to the rabble, and, besides, a low politician,” by the Spanish minister in Washington, Dupuy de Lôme, in a letter de Lôme wrote to an editor in Madrid. McKinley was still seething because of the attack on his character, and on April 21 he accelerated military preparations and imposed a naval blockade of Cuba. At the same time, he ordered Spain to withdraw from Cuba immediately. The Spanish, who had denied all along any involvement in the incident, were incensed. Their own position hardened. They declared war on the United States two days later. On April 25, McKinley issued his first call for 125,000 volunteers, along with a war appropriations bill, which sailed through Congress without a single dissenting vote.

  A second board of inquiry conducted in 1911 proved more detailed, but no more decisive. When Congress approved funds to salvage the wreckage, US army engineers built a cofferdam around the battleship and floated it to the surface, finally allowing a panel of naval technicians the opportunity to view the damage firsthand. Finding the bottom hull plates bent backward and inward, they declared that a mine had detonated under the magazine and destroyed the ship. Still, the matter was not concluded to everyone’s satisfaction.

  A book published in 1976 by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, backed the conclusion reached by the 1911 board of inquiry. Rickover, wondering if scientific advances over the decades would be more decisive on the matter, commissioned two experts on explosions to examine the documents generated by the first two inquiries, plus information on the construction and ammunition of the Maine. His panel concluded that the damage caused to the ship was inconsistent with the external explosion of a mine. The most likely cause, they speculated, was spontaneous combustion of coal in the bunker next to the magazine. To this day, the true cause of the detonation remains a mystery—one of those great riddles of history that will likely never be resolved.

  The bottom line for McKinley, however, was that the American public was in an uproar, demanding that Spain be held to account for the explosion, lack of definitive proof notwithstanding. By this point, a diplomatic solution was politically out of the question. War with Spain had become increasingly inevitable, thrummed into the public consciousness by the energy of war fever, a jingoistic press, and homegrown political warlords longing to propel the United States more deeply into world affairs.

  4

  In any event, America was at war again. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt had been champing at the bit to take on Spain and other foreign powers for some time. He admitted that he was a quietly rampant Cuba Libre man who couldn’t wait to go to war with Spain: “I had preached, with all the fervor and zeal I possessed, our duty to intervene in Cuba, and to take this opportunity of driving the Spaniard from the Western World.”

  His imperialistic impulses were no secret to anyone. A year before becoming assistant secretary of the navy, Roosevelt wrote a letter stating that, if he had his own way, the United States would annex the Hawaiian Islands the very next day. If that proved impossible, he at least wanted to establish a protectorate over them. Roosevelt also advocated immediately building a canal across Nicaragua and commissioning a dozen new battleships, half of which wou
ld be anchored off the Pacific Coast to protect America from dangers presented by the Japanese. He considered Japan to have nothing but ill will toward the United States, and it behooved the government to take preemptive action against the hostile country.

  As it happened, Roosevelt got his wish, thanks to an explosion ninety miles off the coast of the United States. He wrote in a letter to a friend before the explosion that he desired a war with Spain for several reasons: he believed the United States should act on behalf of the Cubans from a place of both humanity and self-interest; he thought the war would be a giant step forward in freeing America from European domination; and he said the American people would benefit from the exercise by having something to think about other than the quest for material gain. Roosevelt believed a justifiable war would prepare US military forces for the kind of empire he envisioned, by testing the army and navy in challenging battle conditions. He added that he would be extremely sorry if the experiment was not attempted.

  Roosevelt’s warlike inclinations intensified in the wake of the Maine disaster. He called the incident an act of treachery on the part of the Spaniards and said he would give anything “if President McKinley would order the fleet to Havana tomorrow.” He took advantage of his boss’s brief absence from Washington to confer with Henry Cabot Lodge, a senator from Massachusetts and fellow imperialist. The two crafted a war strategy based on the presumption that Roosevelt was in charge when Long, the secretary of the navy, was out of town. Roosevelt dispatched three squadrons of ships on different routes to Cuba, an action that stunned Long when he returned to the nation’s capital the next day.