antry, and the Gatling-gun
battery of Lieutenant Parker, which supported the charging line by
enfilading the enemy's trenches from a position on the left, the summit
of the long ridge was soon cleared, the blockhouse captured, and the
battle won before two o'clock in the afternoon.

Whether General Sumner or General Kent directly and personally ordered
this charge or not, I cannot say; but from statements made to me by
officers and men who participated in it, I am inclined to believe that
it really was--as it has since been called--a "great popular movement,"
the credit for which belongs chiefly to the regimental and company
officers and their men. That General Shafter had nothing to do with it
is evident. He might have ordered it if he had been there; but he was
not there. One of the wounded men in the field-hospital told me a story
of a sergeant in one of the colored regiments, who was lying, with his
comrades, in the woods, under the hot fire from the San Juan heights.
Getting no order to advance, and tiring of the inaction, he finally
sprang to his feet and rushed out into the open, shouting to the men of
his company: "Come on, boys! Let's knock h--l out of the
blankety-blanks!" whereupon the whole regiment rose like a single man,
and started, at a dead run, for the hill. The story is doubtless
apocryphal, but it will serve as an illustration of the way in which the
charge up the slope of San Juan may have originated. Our men in the edge
of the woods, in the bushes, and in the grain-fields had perhaps become
so tired of inaction, and so exasperated by the deadly fire which was
picking them off, one by one, as they lay, that they were ready for any
desperate venture; and when somebody--no matter who--started forward, or
said, "Come on, boys!" they simply rose en masse and charged. I cannot
find, in the official reports of the engagement, any record of a
definite order by any general officer to storm the heights; but the men
were just in the mood for such a movement, and either with orders or
without orders they charged up the hill, in the face of a tremendous
fire from batteries, trenches, and blockhouses, and, in the words of an
English officer, quoted by General Breckenridge in his testimony before
the Investigating Commission, they not only covered themselves with
glory, but extricated their corps commander "from a devil of a fix."

When the divisions of Generals Kent and Wheeler had been distributed
along the cr