THE CHARGE AT EL CANEY.

It was the Tenth Cavalry that had this effect on the Spaniards.  At San Juan the Ninth Cavalry distinguished itself, its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton, being killed.  The fourth of the Negro regiments, the Twenty-fifth Infantry, played an especially brilliant part in the battle of El Caney on July 1st.  It was held in reserve with the rest of Colonel Miles’ brigade, but was ordered to support General Lawton’s brigade toward the middle of the day.  At that hour marching was an ordeal, but the men went on at a fast pace.  With almost no rest they kept it up until they got into action.  The other troops had been fighting hard for hours, and the arrival of the Twenty-fifth was a blessing.  The Negroes went right ahead through the tired ranks of their comrades.  Their charge up the hill, which was surmounted by Spanish rifle pits and a stone fort, has been told.  It was the work of only a part of the regiment, the men coming chiefly from three companies.  Colonel Milts had intended having his whole brigade make the final charge, but the Twenty-fifth didn’t wait for orders.  It was there to take that hill, and take the hill it did.

One of the Spanish officers captured there seemed to think that the Americans were taking an unfair advantage of them in having colored men who fought like that.  He had been accustomed to the Negroes in the insurgent army, and a different lot they are from those in the United States army.

“Why,” he said ruefully, “even your Negroes fight better than any other troops I ever saw.”

The way the Negroes charged up the El Caney and San Juan hills suggested inevitably that their African nature has not been entirely eliminated by generations of civilization, but was bursting forth in savage yells and in that wild rush some of them were fairly frantic with the delight of the battle.  And it was no mere craziness.  They are excellent marksmen, and they aim carefully and well.  Woe to the Spaniards who showed themselves above the trenches when a colored regiment was in good range.  MAGNIFICENT SHOWING MADE BY THE NEGROES—­THEIR SPLENDID COURAGE AT SANTIAGO THE ADMIRATION OF ALL OFFICERS.

They were led by Southern Men—­Black Men from the South Fought Like Tigers and end a Question often debated—­In only One or Two Actions of the Civil War was there such a loss of Officers as at San Juan.

[TELEGRAM TO COMMERCIAL.]

WASHINGTON, July 6, 1898.

Veterans who are comparing the losses at the battle of San Juan, near Santiago, last Friday, with those at Big Bethel and the first Bull Run say that in only one or two actions of the late war was there such a loss in officers as occurred at San Juan hill.

The companies of the Twenty-fourth Infantry are without officers.  The regiment had four captains knocked down within a minute of each other.  Capt.  A.C.  Ducat was the first officer hit in the action, and was killed instantly.  His second lieutenant, John A. Gurney, a Michigan man, was struck dead at the same time as the captain, and Lieutenant Henry G. Lyon was left in command of Company D, but only for a few minutes, for he, too, went down.  Liscum, commanding the regiment, was killed.