General Merritt in command of the expedi tionary force to the Philippines had arrived 25 July. Accompanying him was a force of 4,847 officers and men, part of which did not arrive until 21 July.• He had been preceded by the expedition under General Anderson with a force of 2,501, arriving at Cavite 30 .Tune, and by that under Gen. F. V. Greene of 3,586 July 17.
The situation at the time of General Mer ritt's arrival was quiescent, but was seriously complicated by the presence of a Filipino army of probably 12,000 well-armed men under Agui naldo, who had proclaimed an independent gov ernment. The investment, however, proceeded without reference to this force and under the strain of considerable firing from the Spanish lines at night. A joint demand on the part of the military and naval commanders-in-chief for surrender was made 7 August. The governor general declined but offered to refer to his gov ernment. This was declined by the American commanders and the city was taken with but a show of resistance, 13 August. The total army casualties during the investment and as sault were 17 enlisted men killed and 10 officers and 96 men wounded. Commodore Watson, relieved in the second command of the blockade on the north coast of Cuba by Commodore Howell, had been assigned 7 July to the com mand of the squadron to join Admiral Dewey in the Philippines. This was to proceed, until their separation in the eastern part of the Medi terranean, in company with the whole available armored force under Admiral Sampson. The protocol suspending hostilities, signed 12 August, of course ended the expedition and Sampson with the battleships and armored cruisers of his fleet arrived at New York 20 August, meeting an improvised reception which in spontaneity, magnitude and picturesqueness, combined as they were with the sentiment at taching to a victorious fleet, has never been equaled in our country. The total losses had been in the army 279 killed, 1,465 wounded; in the navy 16 killed, 68 wounded.
The Spanish War, short and comparatively bloodless as it was, lifted the United States to a new plane. They became at once one of the dominant factors in world politics. Whatever the divergence of views, ethical or financial, in regard to the territorial acquisitions, there can be none as to the vastness of the change, con sidered politically. The primary cause of the war, the freeing of Cuba, has become a second ary event in face of the great changes wrought in our relation to the Caribbean and more par ticularly to the momentous question of domi nancy in the Pacific. The ownership of Hawaii and the Philippines (the former a direct out come of the war also) are elements in this natu ral destiny of the highest importance. From this point of view, and there is nothing facing the world of greater import than the future of eastern Asia, the war did much to put the United States in a position to meet the coming. emergency. It also gave us a navy, an adequate army and the necessary bases for action, if action be forced upon us.
Bibliography.— Chadwick, F. E., 'Relations of the United States with Spain) (1910) ; Flack, H. E., 'Spanish American Diplomatic Relations Preceding the War of 1898' (1906) ; Hobson, R. P., 'Sinking of the Merrimac> (New York 1899) ; Kennan, G., 'Campaigning in Cuba' (New York 1899) ; Lodge, H. C., 'The War with Spain' (New York 1899) ; Mahan, A. T., 'Lessons of the War with Spain' (Boston 1899) ; Roosevelt, T., 'The Rough Riders' (New York 1899; new ed., 1905) ; Sargent, H. H., 'Campaign in Santiago de Cuba' (3 vols., Chicago 1907) ; Sigsbee, C. D., 'Story of the Maine> (New York 1899) ; Spears, J. R., 'Our Navy in the War with Spain' (New York 1898) ; Titherington, R. H., 'History of the Spanish-American War of 1898' (New York 1900) ; Wheeler, T., 'Santiago Campaign 1898' (Philadelphia 1899) ; United States Official Re ports (Washington 1898).