WAR DEPARTMENT, June 7.

_Major-General Shafter, Port Tampa, Florida:_

You will sail immediately, as you are needed at destination at
once. Answer.

[Signed] R. A. ALGER,
Secretary of War.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
June 7, 1898, 8:50 P.M.

_Major-General Shafter, Port Tampa, Florida:_

Since telegraphing you an hour since, the President directs you to
sail at once with what force you have ready.

[Signed] R. A. ALGER,
Secretary of War.

Upon receipt of these "rush" orders, General Shafter hastily embarked
his army, amid great confusion and disorder, and telegraphed the
Secretary of War that he would be ready to sail, with about seventeen
thousand officers and men, on the morning of June 8. Before the
expedition could get away, however, Commodore Remey cabled the Secretary
of the Navy from Key West that two Spanish war-ships--an armored cruiser
and a torpedo-boat destroyer--had been seen in Nicholas Channel, off the
northern coast of Cuba, on the night of June 7, by Lieutenant W. H. H.
Southerland of the United States gunboat _Eagle_. Fearing that these
Spanish vessels would intercept the fleet of transports and perhaps
destroy some of them, Secretary Alger telegraphed General Shafter not to
leave Tampa Bay until he should receive further orders.

Scouting-vessels of the navy, which were promptly sent to Nicholas
Channel in search of the enemy, failed to locate or discover the two
war-ships reported by the commander of the _Eagle_, and on June 14
General Shafter's army, after having been held a week on board the
transports in Tampa Bay, sailed for Santiago by way of Cape Maysi and
the Windward Passage. The Spanish fleet under command of Admiral Cervera
had then been in Santiago harbor almost four weeks.

It is hard to say exactly where the responsibility should lie for the
long delay in the embarkation and despatch of General Shafter's
expedition. When I passed through Tampa on my way south in June, the two
railroad companies there were blaming each other, as well as the
quartermaster's department, for the existing blockade of unloaded cars,
while army officers declared that the railroad companies were unab