" With such training and experience they were well
fitted to take their place in that selected host of fighting men which
afterwards became the Fifth Army Corps, placed under command of
Major-General William R. Shafter, the first Lieutenant-Colonel of the
Twenty-fourth Infantry.
When the news of the blowing up of our great battleship Maine, in the
harbor of Havana, with the almost total loss of her crew, flashed over
the country, carrying sadness to hundreds of homes, and arousing
feelings of deepest indignation whether justly or unjustly, it was
easy to predict that we should soon be involved in war with Spain. The
Cuban question, already chronic, had by speeches of Senators Thurston
and Proctor been brought to such a stage of aggravation that it needed
only an incident to set the war element in motion. That incident was
furnished by the destruction of the Maine. Thenceforth there was no
power in the land sufficient to curb the rapidly swelling tide of
popular hate, which manifested itself in the un-Christian but truly
significant mottoes: "Remember the Maine," "Avenge the Maine," and "To
hell with Spain." These were the outbreathings of popular fury, and
they represented a spirit quite like that of the mob, which was not to
be yielded to implicitly, but which could not be directly opposed.
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