The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (134 page)

“I really believe firmly now they can’t kill him,” wrote Ferguson.
¹²⁴

S
O BEGAN THE SIEGE
of Santiago. It was not accomplished without considerable further bloodshed, for the Spanish were found to have retreated only half a mile, albeit downhill, and their retaliatory shells did much damage during the next few days. The city proper was stiffly fortified, with five thousand troops and a seemingly inexhaustible stock of heavy ammunition. Meanwhile the thin blue and khaki line cresting San Juan Heights grew thinner as wounds, malarial fever, and dysentery reduced more and more men to shivering incapacity, and often death. It took less than forty-eight hours for Roosevelt to become desperate should Shafter decide to withdraw for lack of personnel and supplies. Siboney was still clogged with unlisted crates, and each day’s rain made it more difficult to haul wagons along the Camino Real. “Tell the President for Heaven’s sake to send us every regiment and above all every battery possible,” he scribbled to Henry Cabot Lodge. “We are within measurable distance of a terrible military disaster.”
¹²⁵

On the same day Shafter, blustering out of sheer panic, sent a warning to General José Toral, of the city garrison:

Toral’s response was to admit a further 3,600 Spanish troops who had somehow managed to elude a watch force of
insurrectos
to the north of the city. That afternoon, while the U.S. Army sweated and sickened in its muddy trenches along the Heights, hostilities suddenly broke out in Santiago Harbor. Admiral Cervera’s imprisoned ironclads attempted to rush Admiral Sampson’s blockade, with
suicidal results. By
10:00 P.M
. Shafter was able to inform Washington, “The Spanish fleet … is reported practically destroyed.” He promptly demanded surrender of the city. Toral replied that a truce might be possible.
¹²⁷

There followed a week of uneasy cease-fire as delicate negotiations went on, designed to ensure the capitulation of Santiago at no harm to Spanish honor. On 4 July, bands along the Heights tried to enliven matters with a selection of patriotic tunes (the Rough Riders ensemble contributing “Fair Harvard”), but the music had no charms for men sitting in mud, and it soon died away on the still morning air.
¹²⁸

General Toral’s dignity was saved by an ingenious compromise worked out on 15 July. The Santiago garrison would surrender in two days if His Excellency, the Commander in Chief of the American forces, would kindly bombard the city (shooting at a safe height above the houses), until all Spanish soldiers had handed in their arms. They might thus be truthfully said to have capitulated under fire.
¹²⁹
That night the air shook convincingly all over Santiago, and on Sunday, 17 July, the Stars and Stripes was hauled up the palace flagpole, just as church bells rang in the hour of noon.
¹³⁰
It was time for Spain to begin her withdrawal from Cuba, after four centuries of imperial dominion in the New World. But first, lunch, wine, and
siesta
.

O
N
M
ONDAY, 18
J
ULY
, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt—the title was official now
¹³¹
—marched with the Cavalry Division over San Juan Hill to a camping ground on the foothills west of El Caney. The move away from the stinking, mosquito-filled trenches was deemed essential because of yellow fever. Already more than half the Rough Riders were, in Roosevelt’s words, “dead or disabled by wounds and sickness.” But the mosquitoes inland were just as poisonous as those nearer the coast, and his sick list lengthened.
¹³²

Although mildly diverted by the “curious” fact that “the colored troops seemed to suffer as heavily as the white,”
¹³³
he did not leave the problem to medics or the commissariat. His men must eat and build up their strength for another possible campaign in Puerto
Rico. Accordingly he sent a pack-train into Santiago with instructions to buy, at his expense, whatever “simple delicacies” they could find to supplement the nauseating rations in camp. One Rough Rider claimed that Roosevelt spent $5,000 in personal funds during the next few weeks—an exaggeration no doubt, but it at least indicates the extent of his generosity and concern.
¹³⁴

As for himself, he remained healthy and strong as ever—so much so that he proposed to swim in the Caribbean one day with Lieutenant Jack Greenway.
¹³⁵
The two officers had been invited to Morro Castle by General Fitzhugh Lee, and Roosevelt’s attention was drawn to the wreck of the
Merrimac
, some three hundred yards out to sea. It would be fun, he said, pulling off his clothes, to go out and inspect her.

What a colonel suggested, a lieutenant was bound to obey, and Greenway reluctantly agreed to accompany Roosevelt into the water.

O
N 20
J
ULY
, Roosevelt found himself in command of the whole 2nd Brigade. This elevation was due to medical attrition in the higher ranks, rather than his heroism at San Juan, but it was flattering nevertheless. So, too, was the growing flood of letters and telegrams from New York, urging him to consider running for the governorship in the fall. He replied politely that he would not think of quitting his present position—“even for so great an office”—at least “not while the war is on.”
¹³⁷
With preparations for a peace treaty already well under way, the implication of acceptance was obvious, and plots were laid by various Republican groups to entrap him the moment he stepped ashore in the United States.
¹³⁸

A
T THIS POINT
Roosevelt’s old genius for political publicity reasserted itself. On or about the last day of July, General Shafter called a conference of all division and brigade commanders to discuss the health situation. All agreed that it was critical, and that the War Department’s apparent unwillingness to evacuate the Army was inexcusable. Somebody must write a formal letter stating that in the unanimous opinion of the Fifth Corps staff, a further stay in Cuba would be to the “absolute and objectless ruin” of the fighting forces.
¹³⁹

Having reached this agreement, the Regular officers hesitated. None wished to sacrifice his career by offending Secretary Alger or
President McKinley. As the conference’s junior officer and a Volunteer, Roosevelt was nudged, or more probably leaped, into the breach. The result was a “round-robin” letter, drafted by himself, and signed by all present, dated 3 August 1898, and handed to the Associated Press.
¹⁴⁰

The document, accompanied by a long and even stronger letter of complaint signed by Roosevelt alone, was published next morning. As predicted, Secretary Alger was enraged. So, too, was the President, whose first inkling of the round-robin came when he opened his morning papers.
¹⁴²
There were muttered threats in the War Department of court-martialing Roosevelt. Alger vengefully published an earlier letter from Roosevelt to himself, bragging that “the Rough Riders … are as good as any regulars, and three times as good as any State troops.”
¹⁴³

This was a telling blow to any aspiring Governor of New York State. An instant storm of criticism blew up in the press. The
Journal
accused Roosevelt of “irresistible self-assertion and egotism,” ill-suited to his “really admirable services in the field.” The
Philadelphia Press
remarked that in view of “intense indignation” among the militia, it was unlikely that the New York Republican party could now nominate Theodore Roosevelt for Governor. But many newspapers found equal fault with Secretary Alger, and charged him
with treachery in publishing a private letter. The Colonel could surely be excused his overweening pride in his regiment, commented the
Baltimore American;
after all, “he led these men in one of the noblest fights of the century.”
¹⁴⁴