all, and not well fed, and the prospect of
going back to their homes had as much to do with conforming their
views to our wishes as anything that was done during the campaign.

"Meanwhile ten or twelve days had elapsed and I had received quite a
number of volunteer regiments--two from Michigan, the First District
of Columbia, a Massachusetts regiment, and an Ohio regiment, the
Eighth Ohio--all splendid troops and well equipped, and while they
were not there at the hardest of the fighting they were there during
the suffering, and everything that soldiers were called upon to do
they did like men.

"It is a great deal harder to stand up day after day and see companions
go from sickness and disease than it is to face the perils of battle.

"When I told General Toral that we would carry his men back he said:
'Does that include my entire command?' I said: 'What is your command
and where are they?' He replied the Fourth Army Corps; 11,500 men in
the city, 3,000 twenty miles in the rear of us; 7,500 he said were
up the coast less than sixty miles, and about 1,500 125 to 150 miles
off on the northeastern coast.

"There were 3,440 odd, and at a place less than sixty miles east
there were 7,500 and a few over, because we counted them and took
their arms. The result of that surrender was as unexpected to us as
probably it was to every person in the United States. There was simply
a little army there, which had gone down to assist the navy in getting
the Spanish fleet out and capturing that town, and we expected no other
result from it than victory at the spot at the utmost, but in attacking
the limb we got the whole body. It was expected that, beginning about
the first of October, the objective point of the campaign was to be
Havana, where we knew there were from 125,000 to 150,000 men, and
it was expected that about the first of October a large army would
be sent over there, and the battle that would decide the war would
be fought in the vicinity of Havana. I think that was the universal
feeling. The loss of that city and of those 24,000 men--23,376, to
be accurate--so dispirited them that within a week the proposition
of Spain to close the war was made, and, happily, the war was ended.

"The difficulties of that campaign were not in the fighting. That
was the easiest part of it. The difficulties were in getting food
and medicine to the front. There was but a single road, a muddy and
terrible road, and with five or six wagon