General Shatter estimates in his report the American forces as numbering 16,072 with 815 officers. CHAPTER III. SERGEANT-MAJOR PULLEN OF THE 25TH INFANTRY DESCRIBES THE CONDUCT OF THE NEGRO SOLDIERS AROUND EL CANEY. THE TWENTY-FIFTH U.S. INFANTRY--ITS STATION BEFORE THE SPANISH AMERICAN WAR AND TRIP TO TAMPA, FLORIDA--THE PART IT TOOK IN THE FIGHT AT EL CANEY. When our magnificent battleship Maine was sunk in Havana harbor, February 15, 1898, the 25th U.S. Infantry was scattered in western Montana, doing garrison duty, with headquarters at Fort Missoula. This regiment had been stationed in the West since 1880, when it came up from Texas where it had been from its consolidation in 1869, fighting Indians, building roads, etc., for the pioneers of that state and New Mexico. In consequence of the regiment's constant frontier service, very little was known of it outside of army circles. As a matter of course it was known that it was a colored regiment, but its praises had never been sung. Strange to say, although the record of this regiment was equal to any in the service, it had always occupied remote stations, except a short period, from about May, 1880, to about August, 1885, when headquarters, band and a few companies were stationed at Fort Snelling, near St. Paul, Minnesota. [Illustration: SERGEANT FRANK W. PULLEN, Who was in the Charge on El Caney, as a member of the Twenty-fifth U.S. Infantry.] Since the days of reconstruction, when a great part of the country (the South especially) saw the regular soldier in a low state of discipline, and when the possession of a sound physique was the only requirement necessary for the recruit to enter the service of the United States, people in general had formed an opinion that the regular soldier, generally, and the Negro soldier in particular, was a most undesirable element to have in a community. Therefore, the Secretary of War, in ordering changes in stations of troops from time to time (as is customary to change troops from severe climates to mild ones and _vice versa_, that equal justice might be done all) had repeatedly overlooked the 25th Infantry; or had only ordered it from Minnesota to the Dakotas and Montana, in the same military department, and in a climate more severe for troops to serve in than any in the United States. This gallant regiment of colored soldiers served eighteen years in that climate, where, in winter, which lasts five months or more, the temperature falls as low as 55 degrees below zero, and in summer rises to over 100 degrees in the shade and where mosquitos rival the Jersey breed. Before Congress had reached a conclusion as to what should be done in the Maine disaster, an order had been issued at headquarters of the army directing the removal of the regiment to the department of the South, one of the then recently organized departments.