Frank Norris on the Battles of El Caney and San Juan Hill

NOTES FRANK NORRIS ON THE BATTLES OF EL CANEY AND SAN JUAN HILL Joseph Katz University of South Carolina One of the great controversies of the Spanish-American War concerned the Seventy-First New York Regiment at the Battle of San Juan Hill. The trouble started with a front-page article in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World for July 15, 1898. Titled "Conduct of the 71st New York at Charge of San Juan," the unsigned article spoke of demoralized men fleeing in panic while better-disciplined troops forced past them to fight. The next day William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal reprinted the story on its front page under the headline "Slurs on the Bravery of the Boys of the 71st" and attacked the World. Another of the Hearst-Pulitzer circuses had begun. This one drew a vast audience that included as a most interested member Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt. On July 1, 1898, just before the Seventy-First disgraced itself, the First Volunteer Cavalry—the Rough Riders—had taken a little hill to the east of San Juan. It was an insignificant hill which the men nicknamed "Kettle Hill" after a sugar kettle they found at its top, but Roosevelt managed to blend the minor battle with the major in order to build a legend. Most of the numerous correspondents in the Santiago campaign fixed their attention on Roosevelt ____ because he was good press. When the brouhaha started over the Seventy- __ First, therefore, the Rough Riders glittered in contrast. Within a couple ____ of weeks the New York Times was openly calling for Roosevelt's nom- _____ ination as Governor of the state for the fall elections. Although the__________ Republican machine in New York disliked and mistrusted the maverick _____ politician, they had no choice but to lead where they were being pushed._____ Roosevelt was elected Governor. Within two years, however, he had _______ caused the bosses so many problems that they manipulated his nomi- _______ nation as William McKinleys running mate in the 1900 elections. Roosevelt became the twenty-sixth President of the United States. Historians agree that what happened in Cuba effected the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. The circus that revolved around the Seventy-First came to affect other prominent people. Decades after he died, for example, Stephen Crane was wrongly identified as the author of the World article, and the legend grew that the newspaper fired him for the trouble it caused.1 More immediately, the trouble embarrassed Captain Edward A. Selfridge of the Seventy-First. 218Notes Frank Norris, on July 1 a novelist whose first novel was still in press, was a close friend of Selfridge's since their years at the University of California at Berkeley. Selfridge was a fraternity brother as well and one of the "very congenial and more than usually capable set of youths" on whom Norris depended throughout the rest of his life.2 When Selfridge gave Norris his version of what happened to the Seventy-First at San Juan Hill, Norris published it. The circumstances are unusual. Norris was one of the correspondents in the Santiago campaign who did not go with Roosevelt towards San Juan Hill. He had attached himself instead to the First Infantry Regiment, regular army and not volunteers or national guardsmen like the Rough Riders and the Seventy-First because they had been in garrison at the Presidio in San Francisco. Until recently that city had been his home and he knew some of the regiment. On July 1 General Shafter split his forces: while the cavalry and General Kent's division pressed westward to the hills before Santiago, General Lawton's division was sent to El Caney more than two miles to the northeast. Norris went with Lawton and the First Infantry to El Caney and was there until after the capture of Kettle and San Juan hills. Although he could speak authoritatively on what happened at El Caney, his information about the Seventy-First at San Juan Hill came from Selfridge.3 It appears in an unrecorded interview with Norris published in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 28, 1898 (p. 8). This interview is now the fifth...