Out of the "Blunders and "Inefficiencies" of the Spanish-American War Emerged the 20th-Century U.S. Army

A Fanciful Depiction of the Initial Landing in Cuba

The Coming of War

[When war with Spain was decided] A desperately overworked and understaffed War Department, suddenly confronted by the strange necessity of actually waging a war, found itself signing contracts, issuing orders, and trying to prepare its plans in an appalling and developing confusion.  . . 

While above the whole of this incomparable chaos there reigned a mild-mannered, inoffensive gentleman who was permitted by the exigencies of our democratic institutions to give to it anything but his undivided attention. Incredible as it may seem, we have it upon Secretary Russell Alger's own statement: "The office of the Secretary was daily visited by not less than one hundred persons whose business or position entitled them to a personal hearing. So urgent was the pressure that almost the entire day was given up to them. Therefore it became necessary to devote the greater part of the night and Sundays to the consideration of the administrative features of department work. . . 

In this atmosphere the plans were made; and in this way the nation swung cheerfully into a war which it was to allow its War Secretary to conduct only in his spare time. . . there was no general plan; the various troop concentrations were ordered, cancelled, ordered again, enlarged, postponed, from week to week, and no one ever, at any given moment, knew where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. "There were," as the Quartermaster-General later pathetically testified, "so many changes."

The Spanish-American War was a kind of unconscious parody of the great struggles that had preceded it, as it became a parody of those that were to follow. Therein lay its real tragedy, rather than in its very brief toll of death and destruction. . . [Yet] the war was directly responsible for the rapid upbuilding of the Navy which had made us by 1909 the world's second naval power. The Army reforms, unavoidable after the blunders and inefficiencies of 1898, laid the foundations for the organization, command and staff planning, and weapons design which alone made possible the massive intervention in Europe in 1918.

Quotes from The Martial Spirit by Walter Millis

Two Secretaries of War

Russell Alger (Wartime) & Elihu Root (Postwar)

The Reforms

The United States participation in the Spanish-American War exposed the military establishment's overall ineptitude. It was likely that a fight against a stronger foe than Spain would have resulted in disaster. The army, in particular, was in need of thorough reorganization. President McKinley, in one of his most astute moves, appointed Elihu Root to head the Department of War. The successful corporation lawyer from New York remained in that office during the first administration of Theodore Roosevelt. Major accomplishments made during the period from 1900 to 1903 included:

• A fourfold increase in the army's size, resulting in a 100,000-man force

• Federalizing the National Guard, a response to numerous problems generated by volunteer forces largely under states' control during the recent war

• Improved officer training through the creation of the Army Staff College and the Army War College

• The creation of a general staff (later to be the Joint Chiefs of Staff) as an advisory body for the secretary of war (later the secretary of defense).

There is a parallel account about the U.S. Navy's experience in the Spanish-American War that will be presented here some day. MH.

Sources: U-S-History.com