He needed war.
He needed the limelight.
He needed “his boys.”
And America needed…
THE ROUGH RIDERS
The war against Spain in 1898 was one of the more popular conflicts in American history. Victory
came easily, there were relatively few casualties, and the cause seemed just in the minds of most
Americans. From it, the United States acquired the Philippine Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, and a
virtual protectorate over Cuba. The nation acquired several heroes as well. Admiral Dewey to name
one, but none more colorful than the flamboyant Teddy Roosevelt. His exploits in Cuba, at the head
of the Rough Riders, made him a legend in his own lifetime and helped make him President of the
United States.
Roosevelt was in the prime of his life when the war broke out. Not yet 40 years old, he possessed
an imposing if somewhat overweight physique which he kept fit by almost daily exercise. In his
regard he was a self-made man. Spindly and a trifle owlish as a youngster, Roosevelt, through what
one of his biographers termed the “Cult of Strenuosity,” had built up his body by relentless physical
activity. Only one of his faculties had failed to respond – his eyesight. Cursed from boyhood with
extreme nearsightedness, which grew worse over the years, Roosevelt was very self-conscious about
this weakness in an otherwise healthy organism. During the war he was so worried it would betray
him in combat that he had at least a half-dozen pair of spectacles sewn into various parts of his
uniform as insurance.
Mentally, Roosevelt was a complex individual. Exceedingly bright, he read voraciously, and
penned his own books and articles without the help of a ghostwriter. He was, or would become,
friendly with some of the leading intellectuals of the era. One side of him, however, remained boyish
until the day he died. “You must always remember,” a British diplomat wrote a friend some years
later, “that the President [Roosevelt] is about six.” Without in any way belittling his patriotism, it
seems safe to say that Teddy’s enthusiasm for fighting the Spaniards stemmed at least from his
desire to have a “bully” [good] time doing it.
No one ever accused Roosevelt of being a pacifist. During the 1880s and 1890s, the United
States had gotten into a number of scrapes with other nations over issues large and small. Almost
invariably T.R. had called for the most militant actions in response to these situations, and had
denounced those who urged caution. War to him was not a catastrophe to be avoided; it could be a
tonic to the nation’s bloodstream. A country too long at peace, he believed, tended to grow soft and
effeminate, while war encouraged “manliness,” a characteristic he prized above all else.
Before 1897 Roosevelt held no office which dealt directly with military or foreign affairs. He had
served in the New York legislature as a federal Civil Service Commissioner, and as a commissioner
of the New York City Police Department. Despite having held such prestigious jobs for a man of his
years, Roosevelt’s political future was clouded by his tendency to alienate some of those who could
help him and by the strident views on foreign policy which he never hesitated to voice – often to the
great embarrassment of his own party. When, as a reward for his services in the election of 1896,
T.R.’s friends began pushing for his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the new
Republican administration, they encountered stiff opposition. The President-elect himself had
reservations about Teddy, but named him anyway. “I hope he has no preconceived plans,” McKinley
said wistfully, “which he would wish to drive through the moment he got in.”
McKinley hoped in vain. Within two months of his appointment, Roosevelt wrote the well-known
naval expert, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, that:
If I had my way, we would annex those islands [Hawaii] tomorrow. If that is impossible, I would establish a
protectorate… I believe we should build the Nicaraguan Canal at once, and should build a dozen new battleships, half
of them on the Pacific Coast. I am fully alive to the danger of Japan.
These and similar sentiments clearly demonstrated that T.R. had no intention of vanishing into the
bureaucracy. Nor did he. A short time later, when Secretary of the Navy John D. Long went on
vacation, one newspaper reported that Roosevelt soon had “the whole Navy bordering on a war
footing. It remains only to sand down the decks and pipe to quarters to action.” Teddy did not try to
conceal his delight in being left to mind the store. “The Secretary is away,” he wrote in one letter,
“and I am having immense fun running the Navy.” One story had it that when asked about his
Assistant Secretary, Long dourly responded, “Why ‘Assistant’”?
Sticking pins in maps and running around on inspection tours must have amused him, but
Roosevelt wanted some real action. Spain provided the most likely source. Once the possessor of a
world empire, Spain by this time was a minor power clinging grimly to its few remaining territories.
One of these, Cuba, lay less than 100 miles from American shores, and for several years had
smoldered with insurrection against Spanish domination. Though he refrained from speaking out
publicly, Roosevelt, in private talks and correspondence, recommended war against Spain almost
from the day he became Assistant Secretary. American honor demanded it, he said, and a brief war
would help rekindle martial instincts which had flagged through years of peace. There would be an
additional dividend, he wrote on one occasion, that being “the benefit done our military forces by
trying both the Army and Navy in actual practice.
Roosevelt did not bring on the war with Spain, of course, however much he tried. Cuban
propaganda, sensationalist American newspapers, and jingoes in and outside Congress, combined to
keep talk of war before the public. Still, through 1897, President McKinley refused to be stampeded,
and the Spanish Government (which very much wished to avoid war) repeatedly gave in to American
demands over the treatment of Cuba.
Then, early in 1898, two events occurred which made war virtually inevitable. First, a letter critical
of McKinley, written by the Spanish minister in Washington, was stolen from the mails and reprinted
in the American press. Trivial in itself, this blunder enraged many Americans. More important, the
warship, Maine blew up in a Cuban harbor with the loss of more than 200 sailors. Though not a
shred of evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Spanish were responsible, most Americans
(abetted by much of the press) assumed that they were and demanded revenge. McKinley simply
was not strong enough to stand against this pressure. On April 10 he asked Congress for what
amounted to a declaration of war.
Well before the war began, Roosevelt had told others that if it came he would not be content to
remain in Washington. He was true to his word. By March he was beseeching New York state
officials to permit him to raise a regiment of volunteers, which unit, he promised, would be “jimdandy.” That he had never served in the military, let alone seen combat, fazed Teddy not at all. He
was greatly miffed when his generous offer was spurned.
Roosevelt, of course, had other irons in the fire. Due to the minuscule size of the Regular Army,
Congress had authorized the recruitment of three volunteer cavalry regiments from the Southwest.
Because of his political connections, which he used to the utmost, Roosevelt was offered the
command of one of these units. Modesty suddenly descended upon him. Estimating that it might
take him a month or so to familiarize himself thoroughly with military procedures and tactics, T.R.
asked that his friend, Captain Leonard Wood (at that time a military surgeon), be promoted to colonel
and given command of the regiment. He would be satisfied with a mere lieutenant-colonelcy and
would serve under Wood. Roosevelt’s light could not be hidden, however, and from the start the First
Volunteer Cavalry was known as “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.”