Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/172

This page needs to be proofread.

1 62 /^cz'iczi's of Books the rear guard arrived and joined Captain Taylor's main body within two hours after his reporting the convoy's arrival to Admiral Sampson. The remarkable success attending this transporting of a great force of 50 ships and 17,000 men without loss or detriment, is the best proof that there was no improper stragglii-.g, no disobedience on the part of the trans- ports, no unforeseen confusion or lack of water. A'hether Shafter should ha-e chosen Daiquiri to land ; whether he should have come at all to Santiago ; are questions of tactics and strategy as to which men differ. It is neld by some that consistent strategy would have been to block the harbor-mouth with the Merrimac, watch it with a few ships, and then direct Shafter' s army as well as the main force of the fleet to other fields of action, such as Havana, Cienfuegos or Porto Rico, and that the strategic alternative of that plan would have been to hold the strength of the fleet at the entrance and bring the army there, but to leave the entrance unblocked, and see to it that it remained open and clear. However the strategy may be, the proper tactics appear clear and well defined. The army should have held to the coast line, occupied the ridge at Aguadores, moved thence along the ridge upon the Morro, and from that vantage-point, with the aid of the fleet, captured the Socapa and Punta Gorda batteries, when the fleet would have quickly destroyed the mines, entered the harbor and engaged the ships lying there. The movement of the army into the interior, far from the support of the fleet, is regarded by most military students as false tactics. The book is too full of the details of the campaign to permit all of its good points to be noted in the short space allowed this review. Mr. Wilson touches lightly but clearly upon the Merrimac incident, upon the responsibility for our delay in blockading Cervera in Santiago, and is at his best in his discussion of Cervera' s correspondence with Blanco, upon which his clear deductions throw a light which dispels much of the doubt which has hung about their relations. Of the battle of Santiago the author should be allowed to speak without criticism, and no one can read unmoved his lucid description and sometimes dramatic recital of the events of that great day. H. C. T.A.VLOR. Tlie Philadelphia Negro : A Social Study. By W. E. Burgh.-rdt Du Bois, Ph.D. [Publications of the University of Pennsyl- vania, Series in Political Economy and Public Law, No. 14.] (Boston : Ginn and Company. 1S99. Pp. xv, 520.) Dr. Du Bois is a negro who was graduated from Fisk and Harvard Universities, studied in Germany, was for a time assistant in sociology in the University of Pennsylvania, and is professor of economics and history in Atlanta University. His history of the Suppression of the African Slave Trade was the first volume of the Harvard Historical Studies. He was engaged by the University of Pennsj'lvania for the special purpose of