Army Life at Camp Thomas, Georgia, During the Spanish-American War

ment finally faced head-on the possibility of war with Spain, a struggle for which the Americans were far from prepared. Though hostilities would not officially break out for more than two months, the American government began immediate efforts to gear its army for possible fighting, a herculean task in view of the military's unreadiness for such a conflict. In early 1898 the Regular Army numbered only 28,000 men, scattered in outposts throughout the country. With this rather meager force the United States faced a Spanish army which in Cuba alone amounted to well over 200,000 men. In addition to the obvious problem of the number of men available for war, the government lacked the machinery and equipment necessary to supply any new forces or to manufacture new material quickly. The government machinery was altogether inadequate to meet the emergency, noted Russell Alger, President McKinley's secretary of war. It had, during thirty years, been called upon only to plan for and meet the requirements of the Regular Army in time of peace, and naturally enough had become quite fixed in the narrow grooves of peace.1 Ill-equipped, ill-prepared, and with few trained forces, the United States found itself on the verge of war. To meet the initial lack of preparedness, the government took measures before the actual outbreak of hostilities both to increase the size of the army and to gear the military for a conflict. As war was generally considered inevitable, the most