If General Shafter believed that these Spanish reinforcements were "some distance away" and that they would "not get into Santiago," it is difficult to understand why he should have so far lost his grip, after the capture of Caney and San Juan Hill, as to telegraph the War Department that he was "seriously considering the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear." His troops had not been defeated, nor even repulsed; they had been victorious at every point; and the Spaniards, as we afterward learned in Santiago, were momentarily expecting them to move another mile to the front, rather than five miles to the rear. It is the belief of many foreign residents of Santiago, including the English cable-operators, who had the best possible means of knowing the views of the Spanish commanders, that if our army had continued the attack after capturing Caney and San Juan Hill it might have entered the city before dark. This may or may not be so; but the chance--if chance there was--vanished when Colonel Escarrio, on the morning after the battle, marched around the head of the bay and into the city with a reinforcing column of five thousand regulars. General Shafter says, in his official report, that "the arrival of General Escarrio was not anticipated" because "it was not believed that his troops could arrive so soon." The time when a reinforcing column of five thousand men will reach the enemy ought not to be a matter of vague belief--it should be a matter of accurate foreknowledge; and if General Shafter had sent a couple of officers with a few Rough Riders out on the roads leading into Santiago from Manzanillo, he might have had information that would have made the arrival of Colonel Escarrio less unexpected. But he seems to have taken no steps either to ascertain the movements of the latter or to prevent his junction with Linares.
General O. O. Howard, in an interview published in the New York "Tribune" of September 14, 1898, explains the apparent indifference of General Shafter to the approach of these reinforcements as follows: "In regard to the Cubans allowing the Spanish reinforcements to enter Santiago from Manzanillo, I would say that I met General Shafter on board the _Vixen_, and from my conversation with him I infer that he intended to allow the Spaniards to enter the city, so as to have them where he could punish them more."