Page:A Brief History of South Dakota.djvu/193

 CHAPTER XXX THE WAR WITH SPAIN AND IN THE PHILIPPINES

the war with Spain began in the spring of 1898, South Dakota promptly responded with much more than her quota of men. Under the President's call for troops South Dakota's quota was nine hundred and twenty-five men, but she furnished in all twelve hundred and fifty, having a larger percentage of volunteers to population than any other state. A regiment of the National Guard had been in existence here since the territorial days, receiving more or less state aid, and in anticipation of a declaration of war, after the destruction of the battleship Maine, in Havana Harbor, this regiment was recruited to its full allowance of men, one thousand and eight in all.

The regiment was ordered to mobilize at Sioux Falls, on April 30, and there the men were subjected to the most rigid examination by the medical officers, who rejected every person who was not in all respects fit. Lieutenant Alfred Frost, an officer of the regular army who had for a long time been upon detail as military instructor at the State Agricultural College at Brookings, was appointed colonel; Lee Stover of Watertown, lieutenant-colonel; Charles A. Howard of Aberdeen, and William F. Allison of Brookings, majors; Dr. R. C. Warne of 187