The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (125 page)

But all this clamor only served to convince Roosevelt that he must do what he had to do. Evidently his friends and admirers had never quite believed his vow to fight when the time for battle came. It was therefore vital that he prove himself, once and for all, a man of his word. If he backed down now, what of any future promises he might make to the American people? “I know perfectly well that one is never able to analyze with entire accuracy all of one’s motives,” he wrote in formal reply to the
Sun
. “But … I have always intended to act up to my preachings if occasion arose. Now the occasion has arisen, and I ought to meet it.”
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O
N
W
EDNESDAY, 20
A
PRIL
, President McKinley signed the Cuba resolution, with its noble disclaimer of any “intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island,” and its promise “to leave the government and control of the Island to its people” once liberation had been achieved.
⁹⁹
On Thursday the American Minister in Madrid was told that diplomatic relations between the United States and Spain had been severed. On Friday morning before dawn, warships of the North Atlantic Squadron
slipped quietly out of Key West Harbor and headed southeast into the Caribbean.
¹⁰⁰

On Saturday the President issued a call for 125,000 volunteers to swell the ranks of the 28,000-man Regular Army. Included in this general summons was an extraordinary provision for three regiments “to be composed exclusively of frontiersmen possessing special qualifications as horsemen and marksmen.”
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Secretary Alger would not have to look far for someone to be colonel of the first regiment, since the nation’s most prominent frontiersman, horseman, and marksman was already pounding on his desk at the War Department. That same day, he offered the command to Theodore Roosevelt.
¹⁰²

As long ago as 1886 Roosevelt had talked of leading a troop of “harum-scarum roughriders” into battle, without much conviction that such a dream would ever come true. Now, miraculously, it had; fate seemed to be adapting itself to his own peculiar abilities. Here at last was supreme opportunity for personal and military glory. Yet with supreme self-control Roosevelt turned the offer down. He told the Secretary that while he had been a captain in the New York National Guard, he lacked experience in hard military organization. He was sure he could “learn to command the regiment in a month,” but that very month might make the difference between fighting at the front or languishing behind and missing the war. He would be happy to serve as lieutenant colonel if the colonelcy went to Leonard Wood.
¹⁰³

After some deliberation, Alger accepted this arrangement.
¹⁰⁴

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
, Sunday, 24 April, Secretary Long dispatched the order that Dewey had been expecting since Roosevelt’s “Keep full of coal” cable of two months before. Within forty-eight hours of receipt the Commodore put out of Hong Kong and vanished into the vastness of the China Sea.
¹⁰⁵

W
AR PROPER WAS DECLARED
by Spain the same day. Icily formal to the last, the United States replied on 25 April with a declaration backdated to 23 April.
¹⁰⁶
But by now Roosevelt was too busy
to be bothered with diplomatic trivialities. As chairman of the new Naval War Board, he was responsible for putting into execution the war plan which he had argued before President McKinley the previous September.
¹⁰⁷
As second-in-command of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, he had to assist Leonard Wood in recruiting and equipping the new regiment.

Although neither man had yet received his commission, the announcement of their appointments was made on 25 April, and by 27 April sacks of applications were thumping in from all parts of the country.
¹⁰⁸
The majority of these applications (which eventually numbered twenty-three thousand, enough for an entire division) were addressed to Roosevelt. He, Secretary Alger, the President, and Congress might imagine Wood to be the true commander of the regiment, but the American public was not fooled. Already Western newspapers were hailing the formation of “Teddy’s Terrors,” and every day brought a fresh crop of suggested names, all with the same alliterative connotation: “Teddy’s Texas Tarantulas,” “Teddy’s Gilded Gang,” “Teddy’s Cowboy Contingent,” “Teddy’s Riotous Rounders” (and then, gradually, as the Lieutenant Colonel let it be known he did not like the nickname), “Roosevelt’s Rough ’Uns,” and “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.” The last name stuck, and was soon common usage. “Colonel Wood,” commented the
New York Press
, “is lost sight of entirely in the effulgence of Teethadore.”
¹⁰⁹

Wood, fortunately, was an offstage personality who did not mind operating in the shadow that surrounds the spotlight. Roosevelt could grin and posture as much as he liked, as long as he heeded quiet orders coming from the wings. Moving with remarkable speed and efficiency, the colonel completed in two days all the preliminary work of organizing the Rough Riders in Washington. Then, leaving Roosevelt behind to handle Northeastern applications and ensure that his requisitions passed smoothly through the Ordnance and Quartermaster Bureaus, Wood departed for the regimental muster camp in San Antonio, Texas.
¹¹⁰

L
ATE ON THE AFTERNOON
of 1 May 1898, Americans were stunned to hear of a near-incredible naval victory by an unfamiliar commander in an archipelago on the other side of the world—about
ten thousand miles away from what they imagined to be the likely theater of naval operations. In seven hours of stately maneuvers off Manila, George Dewey had destroyed Spain’s Asiatic Squadron. Almost every enemy ship was sunk, deserted, or in flames; not one American life had been lost, in contrast to 381 Spanish casualties. The victorious Commodore (who was promptly promoted to Rear-Admiral) modestly ascribed his success to “the ceaseless routine of hard work and preparation” demanded of him by the Navy Department. His government patron lost no time in taking due credit. “You have made a name for the nation, and the Navy, and yourself,” wrote Theodore Roosevelt on 2 May. “And I can’t say how pleased I am to think that I had any share in getting you the opportunity that you have used so well.”
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Assured of leaving the Navy Department in triumph, he telegraphed Brooks Brothers for an “ordinary cavalry lieutenant-colonel’s uniform in blue Cravenette,” and prepared to receive his commission on 6 May. Some instinct to have done with his past, with youth itself now he was nearing forty, caused him to sell off his few remaining cattle and give away his Elkhorn Ranch to Sylvane Ferris. He took out life insurance. He drove his recuperating wife through the blossoming countryside. He wrote a moving farewell to Secretary Long. “I don’t suppose I shall ever again have a chief under whom I shall enjoy serving as I have enjoyed serving under you … I hate to leave you more than I can say.” He acknowledged gifts of maple syrup, poetry, clockwork, and spurs. When he left for San Antonio on 12 May he took the spurs with him.
¹¹²
It remained only to win them.

“A man of unbounded energy and force,” Secretary Long remarked in his diary. “He thinks he is following his highest ideal, whereas, in fact, as without exception every one of his friends advises him, he is acting like a fool. And, yet, how absurd all this will sound if, by some turn of fortune, he should accomplish some great thing and strike a very high mark.”
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“Without waiting for diplomatic niceties … the country whooped to war.”
A troop of black volunteer soldiers en route to Tampa, 1898
. (
Illustration 23.2
)

“T
HE
C
OMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
of the American Army,” reported a Madrid newspaper in the early days of the war, “is one Ted Roosevelt, formerly a New York policeman.” By way of background information, the paper added that Roosevelt had been “born near Haarlem,” but “emigrated to America when young,” and was educated at “Harvard Academy, a commercial school.” He now went about the country accompanied by a bodyguard of toughs, fittingly known as “rough-rioters.”
¹