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CHAPTER 7

THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY

I suppose the United States will always be unready for war, and
in consequence will always be exposed to great expense, and to the
possibility of the gravest calamity, when the Nation goes to war. This
is no new thing. Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from
experience.

There would have been no war in 1812 if, in the previous decade,
America, instead of announcing that "peace was her passion," instead of
acting on the theory that unpreparedness averts war, had been willing to
go to the expense of providing a fleet of a score of ships of the line.
However, in that case, doubtless the very men who in the actual
event deplored the loss of life and waste of capital which their own
supineness had brought about would have loudly inveighed against the
"excessive and improper cost of armaments"; so it all came to about the
same thing in the end.

There is no more thoroughgoing international Mrs. Gummidge, and no
more utterly useless and often utterly mischievous citizen, than the
peace-at-any-price, universal-arbitration type of being, who is always
complaining either about war or else about the cost of the armaments
which act as the insurance against war. There is every reason why
we should try to limit the cost of armaments, as these tend to grow
excessive, but there is also every reason to remember that in the
present stage of civilization a proper armament is the surest guarantee
of peace--and is the only guarantee that war, if it does come, will not
mean irreparable and overwhelming disaster.

In the spring of 1897 President McKinley appointed me Assistant
Secretary of the Navy. I owed the appointment chiefly to the efforts of
Senator H. C. Lodge of Massachusetts, who doubtless was actuated mainly
by his long and close friendship for me, but also--I like to believe--by
his keen interest in the navy. The first book I had ever published,
fifteen years previously, was "The History of the Naval War of 1812";
and I have always taken the interest in the navy which every good
American ought to take. At the time I wrote the book, in the early
eighties, the navy had reached its nadir, and we were then utterly
incompetent to fight Spain or any other power that had a navy at all.
Shortly afterwards we began timidly and hesitatingly to build up
a fleet. It is amusing to recall the roundabout steps we took to
accomplish our purpose. In the reaction after the colossal struggle of
the Civil War our strongest and most capable men had thrown their whole
energy into business, into money-making, into the development, and above
all the exploitation and exhaustion at the most rapid rate possible, of
our natural resources--mines, forests, soil, and rivers. These men were
not weak men, but they permitted themselves to grow shortsighted
and selfish; and while many of them down at the bottom possessed the
fundamental virtues, including the fighting virtues, others were purely
of the glorified huckster or glorified pawnbroker type--which when
developed to the exclusion of everything else makes about as poor a
national type as the world has seen. This unadulterated huckster or
pawnbroker type is rarely keenly sympathetic in matters of social and
industrial justice, and is usually physically timid and likes to cover
an unworthy fear of the most just war under high-sounding names.

It was reinforced by the large mollycoddle vote--the people who are soft
physically and morally, or who have a twist in them which makes them
acidly cantankerous and unpleasant as long as they can be so with
safety to their bodies. In addition there are the good people with no
imagination and no foresight, who think war will not come, but that if
it does come armies and navies can be improvised--a very large element,
typified by a Senator I knew personally who, in a public speech, in
answer to a question as to what we would do if America were suddenly
assailed by a first-class military power, answered that "we would build
a battle-ship in every creek." Then, among the wise and high-minded
people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly
for peace, there are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a
movement and always discrediting it--the men who form the lunatic fringe
in all reform movements.

All these elements taken together made a body of public opinion so
important during the decades immediately succeeding the Civil War as to
put a stop to any serious effort to keep the Nation in a condition of
reasonable military preparedness. The representatives of this opinion
then voted just as they now do when they vote against battle-ships or
against fortifying the Panama Canal. It would have been bad enough if
we had been content to be weak, and, in view of our weakness, not to
bluster. But we were not content with such a policy. We wished to enjoy
the incompatible luxuries of an unbridled tongue and an unready hand.
There was a very large element which was ignorant of our military
weakness, or, naturally enough, unable to understand it; and another
large element which liked to please its own vanity by listening to
offensive talk about foreign nations. Accordingly, too many of our
politicians, especially in Congress, found that the cheap and easy thing
to do was to please the foolish peace people by keeping us weak, and to
please the foolish violent people by passing denunciatory resolutions
about international matters--resolutions which would have been
improper even if we had been strong. Their idea was to please both the
mollycoddle vote and the vote of the international tail-twisters by
upholding, with pretended ardor and mean intelligence, a National policy
of peace with insult.

I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at
the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor
violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to
when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all
men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do
all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order
to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only
alternative to dishonor. I describe the folly of which so many of our
people were formerly guilty, in order that we may in our own day be on
our guard against similar folly.

We did not at the time of which I write take our foreign duties
seriously, and as we combined bluster in speech with refusal to make
any preparation whatsoever for action, we were not taken seriously in
return. Gradually a slight change for the better occurred, the writings
of Captain Mahan playing no small part therein. We built some modern
cruisers to start with; the people who felt that battle-ships were
wicked compromising with their misguided consciences by saying that the
cruisers could be used "to protect our commerce"--which they could not
be, unless they had battle-ships to back them. Then we attempted to
build more powerful fighting vessels, and as there was a section of
the public which regarded battle-ships as possessing a name immorally
suggestive of violence, we compromised by calling the new ships armored
cruisers, and making them combine with exquisite nicety all the defects
and none of the virtues of both types. Then we got to the point of
building battle-ships. But there still remained a public opinion, as old
as the time of Jefferson, which thought that in the event of war all
our problem ought to be one of coast defense, that we should do
nothing except repel attack; an attitude about as sensible as that of a
prize-fighter who expected to win by merely parrying instead of hitting.
To meet the susceptibilities of this large class of well-meaning people,
we provided for the battle-ships under the name of "coast defense
battle-ships"; meaning thereby that we did not make them quite as
seaworthy as they ought to have been, or with quite as much coal
capacity as they ought to have had. Then we decided to build real
battle-ships. But there still remained a lingering remnant of public
opinion that clung to the coast defense theory, and we met this
in beautiful fashion by providing for "sea-going coast defense
battle-ships"--the fact that the name was a contradiction in terms being
of very small consequence compared to the fact that we did thereby get
real battle-ships.

Our men had to be trained to handle the ships singly and in fleet
formation, and they had to be trained to use the new weapons of
precision with which the ships were armed. Not a few of the older
officers, kept in the service under our foolish rule of pure seniority
promotion, were not competent for the task; but a proportion of the
older officers were excellent, and this was true of almost all the
younger officers. They were naturally first-class men, trained in the
admirable naval school at Annapolis. They were overjoyed that at last
they were given proper instruments to work with, and they speedily grew
to handle these ships individually in the best fashion. They were fast
learning to handle them in squadron and fleet formation; but when the
war with Spain broke out, they had as yet hardly grasped the principles
of modern scientific naval gunnery.

Soon after I began work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy I became
convinced that the war would come. The revolt in Cuba had dragged its
weary length until conditions in the island had become so dreadful as to
be a standing disgrace to us for permitting them to exist. There is much
that I sincerely admire about the Spanish character; and there are few
men for whom I have felt greater respect than for certain gentlemen of
Spain whom I have known. But Spain attempted to govern her colonies on
archaic principles which rendered her control of them incompatible with
the advance of humanity and intolerable to the conscience of mankind.
In 1898 the so-called war in Cuba had dragged along for years with
unspeakable horror, degradation, and misery. It was not "war" at all,
but murderous oppression. Cuba was devastated.

During those years, while we continued at "peace," several hundred times
as many lives were lost, lives of men, women, and children, as were lost
during the three months' "war" which put an end to this slaughter and
opened a career of peaceful progress to the Cubans. Yet there were
misguided professional philanthropists who cared so much more for names
than for facts that they preferred a "peace" of continuous murder to
a "war" which stopped the murder and brought real peace. Spain's
humiliation was certain, anyhow; indeed, it was more certain without
war than with it, for she could not permanently keep the island, and she
minded yielding to the Cubans more than yielding to us. Our own direct
interests were great, because of the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and
especially because of Cuba's relation to the projected Isthmian Canal.
But even greater were our interests from the standpoint of humanity.
Cuba was at our very doors. It was a dreadful thing for us to sit
supinely and watch her death agony. It was our duty, even more from
the standpoint of National honor than from the standpoint of National
interest, to stop the devastation and destruction. Because of these
considerations I favored war; and to-day, when in retrospect it is
easier to see things clearly, there are few humane and honorable men who
do not believe that the war was both just and necessary.

The big financiers and the men generally who were susceptible to touch
on the money nerve, and who cared nothing for National honor if it
conflicted even temporarily with business prosperity, were against
the war. The more fatuous type of philanthropist agreed with them. The
newspapers controlled by, or run in the interests of, these two classes
deprecated war, and did everything in their power to prevent any
preparation for war. As a whole the people in Congress were at that time
(and are now) a shortsighted set as regards international matters. There
were a few men, Senators Cushman K. Davis,[*] for instance, and John
Morgan, who did look ahead; and Senator H. C. Lodge, who throughout his
quarter of a century of service in the Senate and House has ever stood
foremost among those who uphold with farsighted fearlessness and strict
justice to others our national honor and interest; but most of the
Congressmen were content to follow the worst of all possible courses,
that is, to pass resolutions which made war more likely, and yet to
decline to take measures which would enable us to meet the war if it did
come.

     [*] In a letter written me just before I became Assistant
     Secretary, Senator Davis unburdened his mind about one of
     the foolish "peace" proposals of that period; his letter
     running in part: "I left the Senate Chamber about three
     o'clock this afternoon when there was going on a deal of
     mowing and chattering over the treaty by which the United
     States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign
          functions--for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . .
          The
     aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor
     retrogression. They represent merely a local and temporary
     sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this
     when he wrote that fine and noble 'Maud.' I often read it,
     for to do so does me good." After quoting one of Poe's
     stories the letter continues: "The world will come out all
     right. Let him who believes in the decline of the military
     spirit observe the boys of a common school during the recess
     or the noon hour. Of course when American patriotism speaks
     out from its rank and file and demands action or expression,
     and when, thereupon, the 'business man,' so called, places
     his hand on his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman
     were about to disturb the game, and protests until American
     patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to
     do--why, you and I get mad, and I swear. I hope you will be
     with us here after March 4. We can then pass judgment
     together on the things we don't like, and together indulge
     in hopes that I believe are prophetic."

However, in the Navy Department we were able to do a good deal, thanks
to the energy and ability of some of the bureau chiefs, and to the
general good tone of the service. I soon found my natural friends and
allies in such men as Evans, Taylor, Sampson, Wainwright, Brownson,
Schroeder, Bradford, Cowles, Cameron, Winslow, O'Neil, and others like
them. I used all the power there was in my office to aid these men in
getting the material ready. I also tried to gather from every source
information as to who the best men were to occupy the fighting
positions.

Sound naval opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of Dewey to command
one squadron. I was already watching him, for I had been struck by an
incident in his past career. It was at a time when there was threat of
trouble with Chile. Dewey was off the Argentine, and was told to get
ready to move to the other coast of South America. If the move became
necessary, he would have to have coal, and yet if he did not make the
move, the coal would not be needed. In such a case a man afraid of
responsibility always acts rigidly by the regulations and communicates
with the Department at home to get authority for everything he does;
and therefore he usually accomplishes nothing whatever, but is able to
satisfy all individuals with red-tape minds by triumphantly pointing out
his compliance with the regulations. In a crisis, the man worth his
salt is the man who meets the needs of the situation in whatever way
is necessary. Dewey purchased the coal and was ready to move at once if
need arose. The affair blew over; the need to move did not occur; and
for some time there seemed to be a chance that Dewey would get into
trouble over having purchased the coal, for our people are like
almost all other peoples in requiring responsible officers under such
conditions to decide at their own personal peril, no matter which course
they follow. However, the people higher up ultimately stood by Dewey.

The incident made me feel that here was a man who could be relied upon
to prepare in advance, and to act promptly, fearlessly, and on his own
responsibility when the emergency arose. Accordingly I did my best to
get him put in command of the Asiatic fleet, the fleet where it was most
essential to have a man who would act without referring things back
to the home authorities. An officer senior to him, of the respectable
commonplace type, was being pushed by certain politicians who I knew had
influence with the Navy Department and with the President. I would have
preferred to see Dewey get the appointment without appealing to any
politician at all. But while this was my preference, the essential thing
was to get him the appointment. For a naval officer to bring pressure to
get himself a soft and easy place is unpardonable; but a large leniency
should be observed toward the man who uses influence only to get himself
a place in the picture near the flashing of the guns. There was a
Senator, Proctor of Vermont, who I knew was close to McKinley, and who
was very ardent for the war, and desirous to have it fought in the
most efficient fashion. I suggested to Dewey that he should enlist the
services of Senator Proctor, which was accordingly done. In a fortunate
hour for the Nation, Dewey was given command of the Asiatic squadron.

When the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor, war became inevitable.
A number of the peace-at-any-price men of course promptly assumed the
position that she had blown herself up; but investigation showed that
the explosion was from outside. And, in any event, it would have been
impossible to prevent war. The enlisted men of the navy, who often grew
bored to the point of desertion in peace, became keyed up to a high
pitch of efficiency, and crowds of fine young fellows, from the interior
as well as from the seacoast, thronged to enlist. The navy officers
showed alert ability and unwearied industry in getting things ready.
There was one deficiency, however, which there was no time to remedy,
and of the very existence of which, strange to say, most of our best men
were ignorant. Our navy had no idea how low our standard of marksmanship
was. We had not realized that the modern battle-ship had become such
a complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training in
marksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside guns
themselves. Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this
was our naval attache at Paris, Lieutenant Sims. He wrote letter after
letter pointing out how frightfully backward we were in marksmanship.
I was much impressed by his letters; but Wainwright was about the only
other man who was. And as Sims proved to be mistaken in his belief that
the French had taught the Spaniards how to shoot, and as the Spaniards
proved to be much worse even than we were, in the service generally Sims
was treated as an alarmist. But although I at first partly acquiesced in
this view, I grew uneasy when I studied the small proportion of hits to
shots made by our vessels in battle. When I was President I took up the
matter, and speedily became convinced that we needed to revolutionize
our whole training in marksmanship. Sims was given the lead in
organizing and introducing the new system; and to him more than to any
other one man was due the astonishing progress made by our fleet in this
respect, a progress which made the fleet, gun for gun, at least three
times as effective, in point of fighting efficiency, in 1908, as it was
in 1902. The shots that hit are the shots that count!

Like the people, the Government was for a long time unwilling to prepare
for war, because so many honest but misguided men believed that the
preparation itself tended to bring on the war. I did not in the least
share this feeling, and whenever I was left as Acting Secretary I did
everything in my power to put us in readiness. I knew that in the event
of war Dewey could be slipped like a wolf-hound from a leash; I was sure
that if he were given half a chance he would strike instantly and with
telling effect; and I made up my mind that all I could do to give him
that half-chance should be done. I was in the closest touch with Senator
Lodge throughout this period, and either consulted him about or notified
him of all the moves I was taking. By the end of February I felt it was
vital to send Dewey (as well as each of our other commanders who
were not in home waters) instructions that would enable him to be in
readiness for immediate action. On the afternoon of Saturday, February
25, when I was Acting Secretary, Lodge called on me just as I was
preparing the order, which (as it was addressed to a man of the right
stamp) was of much importance to the subsequent operations. Admiral
Dewey speaks of the incident as follows, in his autobiography:

"The first real step [as regards active naval preparations] was taken
on February 25, when telegraphic instructions were sent to the Asiatic,
European, and South Atlantic squadrons to rendezvous at certain
convenient points where, should war break out, they would be most
available.

"The message to the Asiatic squadron bore the signature of that
Assistant Secretary who had seized the opportunity while Acting
Secretary to hasten preparations for a conflict which was inevitable. As
Mr. Roosevelt reasoned, precautions for readiness would cost little in
time of peace, and yet would be invaluable in case of war. His cablegram
was as follows:

"'Washington, February 25, '98.

"'_Dewey, Hong Kong_:

"'Order the squadron, except the Monocacy, to Hong Kong. Keep full of
coal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be to
see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then
offensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia until further
orders.

"'ROOSEVELT.'

"(The reference to keeping the Olympia until further orders was due to
the fact that I had been notified that she would soon be recalled to the
United States.)"

All that was needed with Dewey was to give him the chance to get ready,
and then to strike, without being hampered by orders from those not on
the ground. Success in war depends very largely upon choosing a man fit
to exercise such powers, and then giving him the powers.

It would be instructive to remember, if only we were willing to do so,
the fairly comic panic which swept in waves over our seacoast, first
when it became evident that war was about to be declared, and then when
it was declared. The public waked up to the sufficiently obvious fact
that the Government was in its usual state--perennial unreadiness for
war. Thereupon the people of the seaboard district passed at one bound
from unreasoning confidence that war never could come to unreasoning
fear as to what might happen now that it had come. That acute
philosopher Mr. Dooley proclaimed that in the Spanish War we were in a
dream, but that the Spaniards were in a trance. This just about summed
up the facts. Our people had for decades scoffed at the thought of
making ready for possible war. Now, when it was too late, they not
only backed every measure, wise and unwise, that offered a chance of
supplying a need that ought to have been met before, but they also fell
into a condition of panic apprehension as to what the foe might do.

For years we had been saying, just as any number of our people now say,
that no nation would venture to attack us. Then when we did go to war
with an exceedingly feeble nation, we, for the time being, rushed to the
other extreme of feeling, and attributed to this feeble nation plans of
offensive warfare which it never dreamed of making, and which, if
made, it would have been wholly unable to execute. Some of my readers
doubtless remember the sinister intentions and unlimited potentialities
for destruction with which the fertile imagination of the yellow press
endowed the armored cruiser Viscaya when she appeared in American waters
just before war was declared. The state of nervousness along much of
the seacoast was funny in view of the lack of foundation for it; but
it offered food for serious thought as to what would happen if we ever
became engaged with a serious foe.

The Governor of one State actually announced that he would not permit
the National Guard of that State to leave its borders, the idea being to
retain it against a possible Spanish invasion. So many of the business
men of the city of Boston took their securities inland to Worcester that
the safe deposit companies of Worcester proved unable to take care of
them. In my own neighborhood on Long Island clauses were gravely put
into leases to the effect that if the property were destroyed by the
Spaniards the lease should lapse. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy I
had every conceivable impossible request made to me. Members of Congress
who had actively opposed building any navy came clamorously around to
ask each for a ship for some special purpose of protection connected
with his district. It seems incredible, but it is true, that not only
these Congressmen but the Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade of
different coast cities all lost their heads for the time being, and
raised a deafening clamor and brought every species of pressure to bear
on the Administration to get it to adopt the one most fatal course--that
is, to distribute the navy, ship by ship, at all kinds of points and in
all kinds of ports with the idea of protecting everything everywhere,
and thereby rendering it absolutely certain that even the Spanish fleet,
poor though it was, would be able to pick up our own navy ship by ship
in detail. One Congressman besought me for a ship to protect Jekyll
Island, off the coast of Georgia, an island which derived its
sole consequence because it contained the winter homes of certain
millionaires. A lady whose husband occupied a very influential position,
and who was normally a most admirable and sensible woman, came to insist
that a ship should be anchored off a huge seaside hotel because she had
a house in the neighborhood.

There were many such instances. One stood out above the others. A
certain seaboard State contained in its Congressional delegation one of
the most influential men in the Senate, and one of the most influential
men in the lower house. These two men had been worse than lukewarm about
building up the navy, and had scoffed at the idea of there ever being
any danger from any foreign power. With the advent of war the feelings
of their constituents, and therefore their own feelings, suffered an
immediate change, and they demanded that a ship be anchored in the
harbor of their city as a protection. Getting no comfort from me, they
went "higher up," and became a kind of permanent committee in attendance
upon the President. They were very influential men in the Houses, with
whom it was important for the Administration to keep on good terms; and,
moreover, they possessed a pertinacity as great as the widow who won her
case from the unjust judge. Finally the President gave in and notified
me to see that a ship was sent to the city in question. I was bound
that, as long as a ship had to be sent, it should not be a ship worth
anything. Accordingly a Civil War Monitor, with one smooth-bore gun,
managed by a crew of about twenty-one naval militia, was sent to the
city in question, under convoy of a tug. It was a hazardous trip for the
unfortunate naval militiamen, but it was safely accomplished; and joy
and peace descended upon the Senator and the Congressman, and upon the
President whom they had jointly harassed. Incidentally, the fact that
the protecting war-vessel would not have been a formidable foe to
any antagonists of much more modern construction than the galleys of
Alcibiades seemed to disturb nobody.

This was one side of the picture. The other side was that the crisis at
once brought to the front any amount of latent fighting strength. There
were plenty of Congressmen who showed cool-headed wisdom and resolution.
The plain people, the men and women back of the persons who lost their
heads, set seriously to work to see that we did whatever was necessary,
and made the job a thorough one. The young men swarmed to enlist. In
time of peace it had been difficult to fill the scanty regular army and
navy, and there were innumerable desertions; now the ships and regiments
were over-enlisted, and so many deserters returned in order to fight
that it became difficult to decide what to do with them. England, and
to a less degree Japan, were friendly. The great powers of Continental
Europe were all unfriendly. They jeered at our ships and men, and with
fatuous partisanship insisted that the Spaniards would prove too much
for our "mercenaries" because we were a commercial people of low ideals
who could not fight, while the men whom we attempted to hire for that
purpose were certain to run on the day of battle.

Among my friends was the then Army Surgeon Leonard Wood. He was a
surgeon. Not having an income, he had to earn his own living. He had
gone through the Harvard Medical School, and had then joined the army
in the Southwest as a contract doctor. He had every physical, moral,
and mental quality which fitted him for a soldier's life and for
the exercise of command. In the inconceivably wearing and harassing
campaigns against the Apaches he had served nominally as a surgeon,
really in command of troops, on more than one expedition. He was as
anxious as I was that if there were war we should both have our part in
it. I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in
a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not
why I did not take part in it. Moreover, I had very deeply felt that it
was our duty to free Cuba, and I had publicly expressed this feeling;
and when a man takes such a position, he ought to be willing to make his
words good by his deeds unless there is some very strong reason to the
contrary. He should pay with his body.

As soon as war was upon us, Wood and I began to try for a chance to
go to the front. Congress had authorized the raising of three National
Volunteer Cavalry regiments, wholly apart from the State contingents.
Secretary Alger of the War Department was fond of me personally, and
Wood was his family doctor. Alger had been a gallant soldier in the
Civil War, and was almost the only member of the Administration who felt
all along that we would have to go to war with Spain over Cuba. He liked
my attitude in the matter, and because of his remembrance of his
own experiences he sympathized with my desire to go to the front.
Accordingly he offered me the command of one of the regiments. I told
him that after six weeks' service in the field I would feel competent to
handle the regiment, but that I would not know how to equip it or how
to get it into the first action; but that Wood was entirely competent
at once to take command, and that if he would make Wood colonel I would
accept the lieutenant-colonelcy. General Alger thought this an act of
foolish self-abnegation on my part--instead of its being, what it
was, the wisest act I could have performed. He told me to accept the
colonelcy, and that he would make Wood lieutenant-colonel, and that Wood
would do the work anyway; but I answered that I did not wish to rise on
any man's shoulders; that I hoped to be given every chance that my deeds
and abilities warranted; but that I did not wish what I did not earn,
and that above all I did not wish to hold any position where any one
else did the work. He laughed at me a little and said I was foolish, but
I do not think he really minded, and he promised to do as I wished. True
to his word, he secured the appointment of Wood as colonel and of myself
as lieutenant-colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. This
was soon nicknamed, both by the public and by the rest of the army,
the Rough Riders, doubtless because the bulk of the men were from the
Southwestern ranch country and were skilled in the wild horsemanship of
the great plains.

Wood instantly began the work of raising the regiment. He first
assembled several old non-commissioned officers of experience, put them
in office, and gave them blanks for requisitions for the full equipment
of a cavalry regiment. He selected San Antonio as the gathering-place,
as it was in a good horse country, near the Gulf from some port on which
we would have to embark, and near an old arsenal and an old army
post from which we got a good deal of stuff--some of it practically
condemned, but which we found serviceable at a pinch, and much better
than nothing. He organized a horse board in Texas, and began purchasing
all horses that were not too big and were sound. A day or two after he
was commissioned he wrote out in the office of the Secretary of War,
under his authority, telegrams to the Governors of Arizona, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, and Indian Territory, in substance as follows:

The President desires to raise --- volunteers in your Territory to form
part of a regiment of mounted riflemen to be commanded by Leonard Wood,
Colonel; Theodore Roosevelt, Lieutenant-Colonel. He desires that the men
selected should be young, sound, good shots and good riders, and that
you expedite by all means in your power the enrollment of these men.

(Signed) R. A. ALGER, Secretary of War.

As soon as he had attended to a few more odds and ends he left
Washington, and the day after his arrival in San Antonio the troops
began to arrive.

For several weeks before I joined the regiment, to which Wood went ahead
of me, I continued as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, trying to
get some coherence of plan between the War Department and the Navy
Department; and also being used by Wood to finish getting the equipment
for the regiment. As regards finding out what the plans of the War
Department were, the task was simple. They had no plans. Even during the
final months before the outbreak of hostilities very little was done in
the way of efficient preparation. On one occasion, when every one knew
that the declaration of war was sure to come in a few days, I went on
military business to the office of one of the highest line generals of
the army, a man who at that moment ought to have been working eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four on the vital problems ahead of him. What he
was actually doing was trying on a new type of smart-looking uniform
on certain enlisted men; and he called me in to ask my advice as to the
position of the pockets in the blouse, with a view to making it look
attractive. An aide of this general--funnily enough a good fighting man
in actual service--when I consulted him as to what my uniform for the
campaign should be, laid special stress upon my purchasing a pair of
black top boots for full dress, explaining that they were very effective
on hotel piazzas and in parlors. I did not intend to be in any hotel
if it could possibly be avoided; and as things turned out, I had no
full-dress uniform, nothing but my service uniform, during my brief
experience in the army.

I suppose that war always does bring out what is highest and lowest in
human nature. The contractors who furnish poor materials to the army or
the navy in time of war stand on a level of infamy only one degree above
that of the participants in the white slave traffic themselves. But
there is conduct far short of this which yet seems inexplicable to any
man who has in him any spirit of disinterested patriotism combined
with any power of imagination. Respectable men, who I suppose lack the
imagination thoroughly to realize what they are doing, try to make money
out of the Nation's necessities in war at the very time that other men
are making every sacrifice, financial and personal, for the cause. In
the closing weeks of my service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy we
were collecting ships for auxiliary purposes. Some men, at cost to their
own purses, helped us freely and with efficiency; others treated the
affair as an ordinary business transaction; and yet others endeavored,
at some given crisis when our need was great, to sell us inferior
vessels at exorbitant prices, and used every pressure, through Senators
and Congressmen, to accomplish their ends. In one or two cases they did
accomplish them too, until we got a really first-class board established
to superintend such purchases. A more curious experience was in
connection with the point chosen for the starting of the expedition
against Cuba. I had not supposed that any human being could consider
this matter save from the standpoint of military need. But one morning
a very wealthy and influential man, a respectable and upright man
according to his own lights, called on me to protest against our choice
of Tampa, and to put in a plea for a certain other port, on the ground
that his railroad was entitled to its share of the profit for hauling
the army and equipment! I happened to know that at this time this
very man had kinsfolk with the army, who served gallantly, and the
circumstances of his coming to me were such as to show that he was not
acting secretly, and had no idea that there was anything out of the way
in his proposal. I think the facts were merely that he had been trained
to regard business as the sole object in life, and that he lacked the
imagination to enable him to understand the real nature of the request
that he was making; and, moreover, he had good reason to believe that
one of his business competitors had been unduly favored.

The War Department was in far worse shape than the Navy Department. The
young officers turned out from West Point are precisely as good as the
young officers turned out from Annapolis, and this always has been true.
But at that time (something has been done to remedy the worst conditions
since), and ever since the close of the Civil War, the conditions were
such that after a few years the army officer stagnated so far as his
profession was concerned. When the Spanish War broke out the navy really
was largely on a war footing, as any navy which is even respectably
cared for in time of peace must be. The admirals, captains, and
lieutenants were continually practicing their profession in almost
precisely the way that it has to be practiced in time of war. Except
actually shooting at a foe, most of the men on board ship went through
in time of peace practically all that they would have to go through in
time of war. The heads of bureaus in the Navy Department were for the
most part men who had seen sea service, who expected to return to sea
service, and who were preparing for needs which they themselves knew by
experience. Moreover, the civilian head of the navy had to provide for
keeping the ships in a state of reasonable efficiency, and Congress
could not hopelessly misbehave itself about the navy without the fact at
once becoming evident.

All this was changed so far as the army was concerned. Not only was it
possible to decrease the efficiency of the army without being called
to account for it, but the only way in which the Secretary of War could
gain credit for himself or the Administration was by economy, and the
easiest way to economize was in connection with something that would not
be felt unless war should arise. The people took no interest whatever in
the army; demagogues clamored against it, and, inadequate though it
was in size, insisted that it should be still further reduced. Popular
orators always appealed to the volunteers; the regulars had no votes and
there was no point in politicians thinking of them. The chief activity
shown by Congressmen about the army was in getting special army posts
built in places where there was no need for them. Even the work of the
army in its campaigns against the Indians was of such a character that
it was generally performed by small bodies of fifty or a hundred
men. Until a man ceased being a lieutenant he usually had plenty of
professional work to attend to and was employed in the field, and, in
short, had the same kind of practice that his brother in the navy had,
and he did his work as well. But once past this stage he had almost
no opportunity to perform any work corresponding to his rank, and but
little opportunity to do any military work whatsoever. The very best
men, men like Lawton, Young, Chaffee, Hawkins, and Sumner, to mention
only men under or beside whom I served, remained good soldiers, soldiers
of the best stamp, in spite of the disheartening conditions. But it
was not to be expected that the average man could continue to grow
when every influence was against him. Accordingly, when the Spanish War
suddenly burst upon us, a number of inert elderly captains and field
officers were, much against their own wishes, suddenly pitchforked into
the command of regiments, brigades, and even divisions and army corps.
Often these men failed painfully. This was not their fault; it was the
fault of the Nation, that is, the fault of all of us, of you, my reader,
and of myself, and of those like us, because we had permitted conditions
to be such as to render these men unfit for command. Take a stout
captain of an out-of-the-way two-company post, where nothing in the
world ever occurred even resembling military action, and where the only
military problem that really convulsed the post to its foundations was
the quarrel between the captain and the quartermaster as to how high a
mule's tail ought to be shaved (I am speaking of an actual incident).
What could be expected of such a man, even though thirty-five years
before he had been a gallant second lieutenant in the Civil War, if,
after this intervening do-nothing period, he was suddenly put in command
of raw troops in a midsummer campaign in the tropics?

The bureau chiefs were for the most part elderly incompetents, whose
idea was to do their routine duties in such way as to escape the
censure of routine bureaucratic superiors and to avoid a Congressional
investigation. They had not the slightest conception of preparing
the army for war. It was impossible that they could have any such
conception. The people and the Congress did not wish the army prepared
for war; and those editors and philanthropists and peace advocates who
felt vaguely that if the army were incompetent their principles were
safe, always inveighed against any proposal to make it efficient, on the
ground that this showed a natural bloodthirstiness in the proposer. When
such were the conditions, it was absolutely impossible that either the
War Department or the army could do well in the event of war. Secretary
Alger happened to be Secretary when war broke out, and all the
responsibility for the shortcomings of the Department were visited
upon his devoted head. He was made the scapegoat for our National
shortcomings. The fault was not his; the fault and responsibility
lay with us, the people, who for thirty-three years had permitted our
representatives in Congress and in National executive office to bear
themselves so that it was absolutely impossible to avoid the great bulk
of all the trouble that occurred, and of all the shortcomings of which
our people complained, during the Spanish War. The chief immediate cause
was the conditions of red-tape bureaucracy which existed in the War
Department at Washington, which had prevented any good organization
or the preparation of any good plan of operation for using our men and
supplies. The recurrence of these conditions, even though in somewhat
less aggravated form, in any future emergency is as certain as sunrise
unless we bring about the principle of a four years' detail in the staff
corps--a principle which Congress has now for years stubbornly refused
to grant.

There are nations who only need to have peaceful ideals inculcated, and
to whom militarism is a curse and a misfortune. There are other nations,
like our own, so happily situated that the thought of war is never
present to their minds. They are wholly free from any tendency
improperly to exalt or to practice militarism. These nations should
never forget that there must be military ideals no less than peaceful
ideals. The exaltation of Nogi's career, set forth so strikingly in
Stanley Washburn's little volume on the great Japanese warrior, contains
much that is especially needed for us of America, prone as we are to
regard the exigencies of a purely commercial and industrial civilization
as excusing us from the need of admiring and practicing the heroic and
warlike virtues.

Our people are not military. We need normally only a small standing
army; but there should be behind it a reserve of instructed men big
enough to fill it up to full war strength, which is over twice the peace
strength. Moreover, the young men of the country should realize that it
is the duty of every one of them to prepare himself so that in time of
need he may speedily become an efficient soldier--a duty now generally
forgotten, but which should be recognized as one of the vitally
essential parts of every man's training.

In endeavoring to get the "Rough Riders" equipped I met with some
experiences which were both odd and instructive. There were not enough
arms and other necessaries to go round, and there was keen rivalry among
the intelligent and zealous commanders of the volunteer organizations as
to who should get first choice. Wood's experience was what enabled us to
equip ourselves in short order. There was another cavalry organization
whose commander was at the War Department about this time, and we had
been eyeing him with much alertness as a rival. One day I asked him
what his plans were about arming and drilling his troops, who were of
precisely the type of our own men. He answered that he expected "to give
each of the boys two revolvers and a lariat, and then just turn them
loose." I reported the conversation to Wood, with the remark that we
might feel ourselves safe from rivalry in that quarter; and safe we
were.

In trying to get the equipment I met with checks and rebuffs, and in
return was the cause of worry and concern to various bureau chiefs
who were unquestionably estimable men in their private and domestic
relations, and who doubtless had been good officers thirty years
before, but who were as unfit for modern war as if they were so many
smooth-bores. One fine old fellow did his best to persuade us to take
black powder rifles, explaining with paternal indulgence that no one yet
really knew just what smokeless powder might do, and that there was a
good deal to be said in favor of having smoke to conceal us from the
enemy. I saw this pleasing theory actually worked out in practice later
on, for the National Guard regiments with us at Santiago had black
powder muskets, and the regular artillery black powder guns, and they
really might almost as well have replaced these weapons by crossbows
and mangonels. We succeeded, thanks to Wood, in getting the same cavalry
carbines that were used by the regulars. We were determined to do this,
not only because the weapons were good, but because this would in all
probability mean that we were brigaded with the regular cavalry, which
it was certain would be sent immediately to the front for the fighting.

There was one worthy bureau chief who was continually refusing
applications of mine as irregular. In each case I would appeal to
Secretary Alger--who helped me in every way--and get an order from him
countenancing the irregularity. For instance, I found out that as we
were nearer the July date than the January date for the issuance of
clothing, and as it had long been customary to issue the winter clothing
in July, so as to give ample leisure for getting it to all the various
posts, it was therefore solemnly proposed to issue this same winter
clothing to us who were about to start for a summer campaign in the
tropics. This would seem incredible to those who have never dealt with
an inert officialdom, a red-tape bureaucracy, but such is the fact. I
rectified this and got an order for khaki clothing. We were then told we
would have to advertise thirty days for horses. This meant that we would
have missed the Santiago expedition. So I made another successful appeal
to the Secretary. Other difficulties came up about wagons, and various
articles, and in each case the same result followed. On the last
occasion, when I came up in triumph with the needed order, the worried
office head, who bore me no animosity, but who did feel that fate had
been very unkind, threw himself back in his chair and exclaimed with a
sigh: "Oh, dear! I had this office running in such good shape--and then
along came the war and upset everything!" His feeling was that war was
an illegitimate interruption to the work of the War Department.

There were of course department heads and bureau chiefs and assistants
who, in spite of the worthlessness of the system, and of the paralyzing
conditions that had prevailed, remained first-class men. An example
of these was Commissary-General Weston. His energy, activity,
administrative efficiency, and common sense were supplemented by an
eager desire to help everybody do the best that could be done. Both in
Washington and again down at Santiago we owed him very much. When I was
President, it was my good fortune to repay him in part our debt,
which means the debt of the people of the country, by making him a
major-general.

The regiment assembled at San Antonio. When I reached there, the men,
rifles, and horses, which were the essentials, were coming in fast, and
the saddles, blankets, and the like were also accumulating. Thanks to
Wood's exertions, when we reached Tampa we were rather better equipped
than most of the regular regiments. We adhered strictly to field
equipment, allowing no luxuries or anything else unnecessary, and so
we were able to move off the field when ordered, with our own
transportation, leaving nothing behind.

I suppose every man tends to brag about his regiment; but it does seem
to me that there never was a regiment better worth bragging about
than ours. Wood was an exceptional commander, of great power, with a
remarkable gift for organization. The rank and file were as fine natural
fighting men as ever carried a rifle or rode a horse in any country or
any age. We had a number of first-class young fellows from the East,
most of them from colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; but
the great majority of the men were Southwesterners, from the then
territories of Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Arizona, and New Mexico. They
were accustomed to the use of firearms, accustomed to taking care of
themselves in the open; they were intelligent and self-reliant; they
possessed hardihood and endurance and physical prowess; and, above all,
they had the fighting edge, the cool and resolute fighting temper. They
went into the war with full knowledge, having deliberately counted the
cost. In the great majority of cases each man was chiefly anxious to
find out what he should do to make the regiment a success. They bought,
first and last, about 800 copies of the cavalry drill regulations and
studied them industriously. Such men were practically soldiers to
start with, in all the essentials. It is small wonder that with them as
material to work upon the regiment was raised, armed, equipped, drilled,
sent on trains to Tampa, embarked, disembarked, and put through two
victorious offensive--not defensive--fights in which a third of the
officers and one-fifth of the men were killed or wounded, all within
sixty days. It is a good record, and it speaks well for the men of the
regiment; and it speaks well for Wood.[*]

     [*] To counterbalance the newspapers which ignorantly and
     indiscriminately praised all the volunteers there were
     others whose blame was of the same intelligent quality. The
     New York _Evening Post_, on June 18, gave expression to the
     following gloomy foreboding: "Competent observers have
     remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than
     the sending to Cuba of the First United States Volunteer
     Cavalry, known as the 'rough riders.' Organized but four
     weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and
     only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to
     the front before they have learned the first elements of
     soldiering and discipline, or have even become acquainted
     with their officers. In addition to all this, like the
     regular cavalry, they have been sent with only their
     carbines and revolvers to meet an enemy armed with long-range
          rifles. There have been few cases of such military
     cruelty in our military annals." A week or so after this not
     wholly happy prophecy was promulgated, the "cruelty" was
     consummated, first at Las Guasimas and then in the San Juan
     fighting.

Wood was so busy getting the regiment ready that when I reached San
Antonio he turned most of the drilling of it over to me. This was a
piece of great good fortune for me, and I drilled the men industriously,
mounted and unmounted. I had plenty to learn, and the men and the
officers even more; but we went at our work with the heartiest good
will. We speedily made it evident that there was no room and no mercy
for any man who shirked any duty, and we accomplished good results.
The fact is that the essentials of drill and work for a cavalry or an
infantry regiment are easy to learn, which of course is not true for the
artillery or the engineers or for the navy. The reason why it takes
so long to turn the average civilized man into a good infantryman
or cavalryman is because it takes a long while to teach the average
untrained man how to shoot, to ride, to march, to take care of himself
in the open, to be alert, resourceful, cool, daring, and resolute, to
obey quickly, as well as to be willing, and to fit himself, to act on
his own responsibility. If he already possesses these qualities, there
is very little difficulty in making him a soldier; all the drill that is
necessary to enable him to march and to fight is of a simple character.
Parade ground and barrack square maneuvers are of no earthly consequence
in real war. When men can readily change from line to column, and column
to line, can form front in any direction, and assemble and scatter, and
can do these things with speed and precision, they have a fairly good
grasp of the essentials. When our regiment reached Tampa it could
already be handled creditably at fast gaits, and both in mass and
extended formations, mounted and dismounted.

I had served three years in the New York National Guard, finally
becoming a captain. This experience was invaluable to me. It enabled me
at once to train the men in the simple drill without which they would
have been a mob; for although the drill requirements are simple,
they are also absolutely indispensable. But if I had believed that my
experience in the National Guard had taught me all that there was to
teach about a soldier's career, it would have been better for me not to
have been in it at all. There were in the regiment a number of men who
had served in the National Guard, and a number of others who had served
in the Regular Army. Some of these latter had served in the field in
the West under campaign conditions, and were accustomed to long marches,
privation, risk, and unexpected emergencies. These men were of the
utmost benefit to the regiment. They already knew their profession, and
could teach and help the others. But if the man had merely served in
a National Guard regiment, or in the Regular Army at some post in a
civilized country where he learned nothing except what could be picked
up on the parade ground, in the barracks, and in practice marches of a
few miles along good roads, then it depended purely upon his own good
sense whether he had been helped or hurt by the experience. If he
realized that he had learned only five per cent of his profession, that
there remained ninety-five per cent to accomplish before he would be a
good soldier, why, he had profited immensely.

To start with five per cent handicap was a very great advantage; and if
the man was really a good man, he could not be overtaken. But if the
man thought that he had learned all about the profession of a soldier
because he had been in the National Guard or in the Regular Army under
the conditions I have described, then he was actually of less use than
if he had never had any military experience at all. Such a man was
apt to think that nicety of alignment, precision in wheeling, and
correctness in the manual of arms were the ends of training and the
guarantees of good soldiership, and that from guard mounting to sentry
duty everything in war was to be done in accordance with what he had
learned in peace. As a matter of fact, most of what he had learned was
never used at all, and some of it had to be unlearned. The one thing,
for instance, that a sentry ought never to do in an actual campaign is
to walk up and down a line where he will be conspicuous. His business
is to lie down somewhere off a ridge crest where he can see any one
approaching, but where a man approaching cannot see him. As for the
ceremonies, during the really hard part of a campaign only the barest
essentials are kept.

Almost all of the junior regular officers, and many of the senior
regular officers, were fine men. But, through no fault of their own, had
been forced to lead lives that fairly paralyzed their efficiency when
the strain of modern war came on them. The routine elderly regular
officer who knew nothing whatever of modern war was in most respects
nearly as worthless as a raw recruit. The positions and commands
prescribed in the text-books were made into fetishes by some of these
men, and treated as if they were the ends, instead of the not always
important means by which the ends were to be achieved. In the Cuban
fighting, for instance, it would have been folly for me to have taken my
place in the rear of the regiment, the canonical text-book position. My
business was to be where I could keep most command over the regiment,
and, in a rough-and-tumble, scrambling fight in thick jungle, this had
to depend upon the course of events, and usually meant that I had to be
at the front. I saw in that fighting more than one elderly regimental
commander who unwittingly rendered the only service he could render to
his regiment by taking up his proper position several hundred yards in
the rear when the fighting began; for then the regiment disappeared in
the jungle, and for its good fortune the commanding officer never saw it
again until long after the fight was over.

After one Cuban fight a lieutenant-colonel of the regulars, in command
of a regiment, who had met with just such an experience and had rejoined
us at the front several hours after the close of the fighting, asked me
what my men were doing when the fight began. I answered that they were
following in trace in column of twos, and that the instant the shooting
began I deployed them as skirmishers on both sides of the trail. He
answered triumphantly, "You can't deploy men as skirmishers from column
formation"; to which I responded, "Well, I did, and, what is more, if
any captain had made any difficulty about it, I would have sent him
to the rear." My critic was quite correct from the parade ground
standpoint. The prescribed orders at that time were to deploy the column
first into a line of squads at correct intervals, and then to give an
order which, if my memory serves correctly, ran: "As skirmishers, by the
right and left flanks, at six yards, take intervals, march." The order I
really gave ran more like this: "Scatter out to the right there, quick,
you! scatter to the left! look alive, look alive!" And they looked
alive, and they scattered, and each took advantage of cover, and forward
went the line.

Now I do not wish what I have said to be misunderstood. If ever we have
a great war, the bulk of our soldiers will not be men who have had any
opportunity to train soul and mind and body so as to meet the iron needs
of an actual campaign. Long continued and faithful drill will alone put
these men in shape to begin to do their duty, and failure to recognize
this on the part of the average man will mean laziness and folly and
not the possession of efficiency. Moreover, if men have been trained
to believe, for instance, that they can "arbitrate questions of
vital interest and national honor," if they have been brought up with
flabbiness of moral fiber as well as flabbiness of physique, then there
will be need of long and laborious and faithful work to give the needed
tone to mind and body. But if the men have in them the right stuff, it
is not so very difficult.

At San Antonio we entrained for Tampa. In various sociological books
by authors of Continental Europe, there are jeremiads as to the way
in which service in the great European armies, with their minute and
machine-like efficiency and regularity, tends to dwarf the capacity
for individual initiative among the officers and men. There is no such
danger for any officer or man of a volunteer organization in America
when our country, with playful light-heartedness, has pranced into war
without making any preparation for it. I know no larger or finer field
for the display of an advanced individualism than that which opened
before us as we went from San Antonio to Tampa, camped there, and
embarked on a transport for Cuba. Nobody ever had any definite
information to give us, and whatever information we unearthed on our
own account was usually wrong. Each of us had to show an alert and
not overscrupulous self-reliance in order to obtain food for his men,
provender for his horses, or transportation of any kind for any object.
One lesson early impressed on me was that if I wanted anything to eat it
was wise to carry it with me; and if any new war should arise, I would
earnestly advise the men of every volunteer organization always to
proceed upon the belief that their supplies will not turn up, and to
take every opportunity of getting food for themselves.

Tampa was a scene of the wildest confusion. There were miles of tracks
loaded with cars of the contents of which nobody seemed to have any
definite knowledge. General Miles, who was supposed to have supervision
over everything, and General Shafter, who had charge of the expedition,
were both there. But, thanks to the fact that nobody had had any
experience in handling even such a small force as ours--about 17,000
men--there was no semblance of order. Wood and I were bound that we
should not be left behind when the expedition started. When we were
finally informed that it was to leave next morning, we were ordered to
go to a certain track to meet a train. We went to the track, but the
train never came. Then we were sent to another track to meet another
train. Again it never came. However, we found a coal train, of which we
took possession, and the conductor, partly under duress and partly in a
spirit of friendly helpfulness, took us down to the quay.

All kinds of other organizations, infantry and cavalry, regular and
volunteer, were arriving at the quay and wandering around it, and there
was no place where we could get any specific information as to what
transport we were to have. Finally Wood was told to "get any ship you
can get which is not already assigned." He borrowed without leave a
small motor boat, and commandeered the transport Yucatan. When asked by
the captain what his authority was, he reported that he was acting "by
orders of General Shafter," and directed the ship to be brought to
the dock. He had already sent me word to be ready, as soon as the ship
touched the pier, to put the regiment aboard her. I found that she had
already been assigned to a regular regiment, and to another volunteer
regiment, and as it was evident that not more than half of the men
assigned to her could possibly get on, I was determined that we
should not be among the men left off. The volunteer regiment offered
a comparatively easy problem. I simply marched my men past them to the
allotted place and held the gangway. With the regulars I had to be a
little more diplomatic, because their commander, a lieutenant-colonel,
was my superior in rank, and also doubtless knew his rights. He sent
word to me to make way, to draw my regiment off to one side, and let his
take possession of the gangway. I could see the transport coming in,
and could dimly make out Wood's figure thereon. Accordingly I played for
time. I sent respectful requests through his officers to the commander
of the regulars, entered into parleys, and made protestations, until the
transport got near enough so that by yelling at the top of my voice I
was able to get into a--highly constructive--communication with Wood.
What he was saying I had no idea, but he was evidently speaking, and
on my own responsibility I translated it into directions to hold the
gangway, and so informed the regulars that I was under the orders of
my superior and of a ranking officer, and--to my great regret, etc.,
etc.--could not give way as they desired. As soon as the transport was
fast we put our men aboard at the double. Half of the regular regiment
got on, and the other half and the other volunteer regiment went
somewhere else.

We were kept several days on the transport, which was jammed with men,
so that it was hard to move about on the deck. Then the fleet got
under way, and we steamed slowly down to Santiago. Here we disembarked,
higgledy-piggledy, just as we had embarked. Different parts of different
outfits were jumbled together, and it was no light labor afterwards to
assemble the various batteries. For instance, one transport had guns,
and another the locks for the guns; the two not getting together for
several days after one of them had been landed. Soldiers went here,
provisions there; and who got ashore first largely depended upon
individual activity. Fortunately for us, my former naval aide, when I
had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Lieutenant-Commander Sharp, a
first-class fellow, was there in command of a little ship to which I had
succeeded in getting him appointed before I left the Navy Department. He
gave us a black pilot, who took our transport right in shore, the others
following like a flock of sheep; and we disembarked with our rifles,
ammunition belts, and not much else. In theory it was out of our turn,
but if we had not disembarked then, Heaven only knows when our turn
would have come, and we did not intend to be out of the fighting if we
could help it. I carried some food in my pockets, and a light waterproof
coat, which was my sole camp equipment for the next two or three days.
Twenty-four hours after getting ashore we marched from Daiquiri, where
we had landed, to Siboney, also on the coast, reaching it during a
terrific downpour of rain. When this was over, we built a fire, dried
our clothes, and ate whatever we had brought with us.

We were brigaded with the First and Tenth Regular Cavalry, under
Brigadier-General Sam Young. He was a fine type of the American regular.
Like General Chaffee, another of the same type, he had entered the army
in the Civil War as a private. Later, when I was President, it was my
good fortune to make each of them in succession Lieutenant-General of
the army of the United States. When General Young retired and General
Chaffee was to take his place, the former sent to the latter his three
stars to wear on his first official presentation, with a note that they
were from "Private Young to Private Chaffee." The two fine old fellows
had served in the ranks, one in the cavalry, one in the infantry, in
their golden youth, in the days of the great war nearly half a century
before; each had grown gray in a lifetime of honorable service under the
flag, and each closed his active career in command of the army. General
Young was one of the few men who had given and taken wounds with the
saber. He was an old friend of mine, and when in Washington before
starting for the front he told me that if we got in his brigade he would
put us into the fighting all right. He kept his word.

General Young had actively superintended getting his two regular
regiments, or at least a squadron of each, off the transports, and late
that night he sent us word that he had received permission to move at
dawn and strike the Spanish advance position. He directed us to move
along a ridge trail with our two squadrons (one squadron having been
left at Tampa), while with the two squadrons of regulars, one of the
First and one of the Tenth, under his personal supervision, he marched
up the valley trail. Accordingly Wood took us along the hill trail early
next morning, till we struck the Spaniards, and began our fight just as
the regulars began the fight in the valley trail.

It was a mountainous country covered with thick jungle, a most confusing
country, and I had an awful time trying to get into the fight and trying
to do what was right when in it; and all the while I was thinking that
I was the only man who did not know what I was about, and that all the
others did--whereas, as I found out later, pretty much everybody else
was as much in the dark as I was. There was no surprise; we struck the
Spaniards exactly where we had expected; then Wood halted us and put
us into the fight deliberately and in order. He ordered us to deploy
alternately by troops to the right and left of the trail, giving our
senior major, Brodie, a West Pointer and as good a soldier as ever wore
a uniform, the left wing, while I took the right wing. I was told if
possible to connect with the regulars who were on the right. In theory
this was excellent, but as the jungle was very dense the first troop
that deployed to the right vanished forthwith, and I never saw it again
until the fight was over--having a frightful feeling meanwhile that I
might be court-martialed for losing it. The next troop deployed to the
left under Brodie. Then the third came along, and I started to deploy it
to the right as before.

By the time the first platoon had gotten into the jungle I realized that
it likewise would disappear unless I kept hold of it. I managed to
keep possession of the last platoon. One learns fast in a fight, and I
marched this platoon and my next two troops in column through the jungle
without any attempt to deploy until we got on the firing line. This
sounds simple. But it was not. I did not know when I had gotten on the
firing line! I could hear a good deal of firing, some over to my right
at a good distance, and the rest to the left and ahead. I pushed on,
expecting to strike the enemy somewhere between.

Soon we came to the brink of a deep valley. There was a good deal of
cracking of rifles way off in front of us, but as they used smokeless
powder we had no idea as to exactly where they were, or who they were
shooting at. Then it dawned on us that we were the target. The bullets
began to come overhead, making a sound like the ripping of a silk dress,
with sometimes a kind of pop; a few of my men fell, and I deployed the
rest, making them lie down and get behind trees. Richard Harding Davis
was with us, and as we scanned the landscape with our glasses it was
he who first pointed out to us some Spaniards in a trench some
three-quarters of a mile off. It was difficult to make them out. There
were not many of them. However, we finally did make them out, and
we could see their conical hats, for the trench was a poor one. We
advanced, firing at them, and drove them off.

What to do then I had not an idea. The country in front fell away into
a very difficult jungle-filled valley. There was nothing but jungle all
around, and if I advanced I was afraid I might get out of touch with
everybody and not be going in the right direction. Moreover, as far as
I could see, there was now nobody in front who was shooting at us,
although some of the men on my left insisted that our own men had fired
into us--an allegation which I soon found was almost always made in such
a fight, and which in this case was not true. At this moment some of the
regulars appeared across the ravine on our right. The first thing they
did was to fire a volley at us, but one of our first sergeants went up a
tree and waved a guidon at them and they stopped. Firing was still going
on to our left, however, and I was never more puzzled to know what to
do. I did not wish to take my men out of their position without orders,
for fear that I might thereby be leaving a gap if there was a Spanish
force which meditated an offensive return. On the other hand, it did
not seem to me that I had been doing enough fighting to justify my
existence, and there was obviously fighting going on to the left. I
remember that I kept thinking of the refrain of the fox-hunting song,
"Here's to every friend who struggled to the end"; in the hunting field
I had always acted on this theory, and, no matter how discouraging
appearances might be, had never stopped trying to get in at the death
until the hunt was actually over; and now that there was work, and not
play, on hand, I intended to struggle as hard as I knew how not to
be left out of any fighting into which I could, with any possible
propriety, get.

So I left my men where they were and started off at a trot toward where
the firing was, with a couple of orderlies to send back for the men in
case that proved advisable. Like most tyros, I was wearing my sword,
which in thick jungle now and then got between my legs--from that day on
it always went corded in the baggage. I struck the trail, and began to
pass occasional dead men. Pretty soon I reached Wood and found, much to
my pleasure, that I had done the right thing, for as I came up word was
brought to him that Brodie had been shot, and he at once sent me to take
charge of the left wing. It was more open country here, and at least I
was able to get a glimpse of my own men and exercise some control over
them. There was much firing going on, but for the life of me I could not
see any Spaniards, and neither could any one else. Finally we made up
our minds that they were shooting at us from a set of red-tiled ranch
buildings a good way in front, and these I assaulted, finally charging
them. Before we came anywhere near, the Spaniards, who, as it proved,
really were inside and around them, abandoned them, leaving a few dead
men.

By the time I had taken possession of these buildings all firing had
ceased everywhere. I had not the faintest idea what had happened:
whether the fight was over; or whether this was merely a lull in the
fight; or where the Spaniards were; or whether we might be attacked
again; or whether we ought ourselves to attack somebody somewhere else.
I got my men in order and sent out small parties to explore the ground
in front, who returned without finding any foe. (By this time, as a
matter of fact, the Spaniards were in full retreat.) Meanwhile I was
extending my line so as to get into touch with our people on the right.
Word was brought to me that Wood had been shot--which fortunately proved
not to be true--and as, if this were so, it meant that I must take
charge of the regiment, I moved over personally to inquire. Soon I
learned that he was all right, that the Spaniards had retreated along
the main road, and that Colonel Wood and two or three other officers
were a short distance away. Before I reached them I encountered a
captain of the Ninth Cavalry, very glum because his troopers had not
been up in time to take part in the fight, and he congratulated me--with
visible effort!--upon my share in our first victory. I thanked him
cordially, not confiding in him that till that moment I myself knew
exceeding little about the victory; and proceeded to where Generals
Wheeler, Lawton, and Chaffee, who had just come up, in company with
Wood, were seated on a bank. They expressed appreciation of the way that
I had handled my troops, first on the right wing and then on the left!
As I was quite prepared to find I had committed some awful sin, I did my
best to accept this in a nonchalant manner, and not to look as relieved
as I felt. As throughout the morning I had preserved a specious aspect
of wisdom, and had commanded first one and then the other wing, the
fight was really a capital thing for me, for practically all the men
had served under my actual command, and thenceforth felt an enthusiastic
belief that I would lead them aright.

It was a week after this skirmish before the army made the advance on
Santiago. Just before this occurred General Young was stricken down with
fever. General Wheeler, who had commanded the Cavalry Division, was put
in general charge of the left wing of the army, which fought before the
city itself. Brigadier-General Sam Sumner, an excellent officer, who had
the second cavalry brigade, took command of the cavalry division, and
Wood took command of our brigade, while, to my intense delight, I got
my regiment. I therefore had command of the regiment before the stiffest
fighting occurred. Later, when Wood was put in command in Santiago, I
became the brigade commander.

Late in the evening we camped at El Poso. There were two regular
officers, the brigade commander's aides, Lieutenants A. L. Mills and W.
E. Shipp, who were camped by our regiment. Each of my men had food in
his haversack, but I had none, and I would have gone supperless to bed
if Mills and Shipp had not given me out of their scanty stores a big
sandwich, which I shared with my orderly, who also had nothing. Next
morning my body servant Marshall, an ex-soldier of the Ninth (Colored)
Cavalry, a fine and faithful fellow, had turned up and I was able in my
turn to ask Mills and Shipp, who had eaten all their food the preceding
evening, to take breakfast with me. A few hours later gallant Shipp was
dead, and Mills, an exceptionally able officer, had been shot through
the head from side to side, just back of the eyes; yet he lived,
although one eye was blinded, and before I left the Presidency I gave
him his commission as Brigadier-General.

Early in the morning our artillery began firing from the hill-crest
immediately in front of where our men were camped. Several of the
regiment were killed and wounded by the shrapnel of the return fire of
the Spaniards. One of the shrapnel bullets fell on my wrist and raised
a bump as big as a hickory nut, but did not even break the skin. Then
we were marched down from the hill on a muddy road through thick jungle
towards Santiago. The heat was great, and we strolled into the fight
with no definite idea on the part of any one as to what we were to do
or what would happen. There was no plan that our left wing was to make
a serious fight that day; and as there were no plans, it was naturally
exceedingly hard to get orders, and each of us had to act largely on his
own responsibility.

Lawton's infantry division attacked the little village of El Caney, some
miles to the right. Kent's infantry division and Sumner's dismounted
cavalry division were supposed to detain the Spanish army in Santiago
until Lawton had captured El Caney. Spanish towns and villages, however,
with their massive buildings, are natural fortifications, as the French
found in the Peninsular War, and as both the French and our people found
in Mexico. The Spanish troops in El Caney fought very bravely, as did
the Spanish troops in front of us, and it was late in the afternoon
before Lawton accomplished his task.

Meanwhile we of the left wing had by degrees become involved in a fight
which toward the end became not even a colonel's fight, but a squad
leader's fight. The cavalry division was put at the head of the line.
We were told to march forward, cross a little river in front, and then,
turning to the right, march up alongside the stream until we connected
with Lawton. Incidentally, this movement would not have brought us
into touch with Lawton in any event. But we speedily had to abandon any
thought of carrying it out. The maneuver brought us within fair range
of the Spanish intrenchments along the line of hills which we called the
San Juan Hills, because on one of them was the San Juan blockhouse. On
that day my regiment had the lead of the second brigade, and we marched
down the trail following in trace behind the first brigade. Apparently
the Spaniards could not make up their minds what to do as the three
regular regiments of the first brigade crossed and defiled along the
other bank of the stream, but when our regiment was crossing they began
to fire at us.

Under this flank fire it soon became impossible to continue the march.
The first brigade halted, deployed, and finally began to fire back. Then
our brigade was halted. From time to time some of our men would fall,
and I sent repeated word to the rear to try to get authority to attack
the hills in front. Finally General Sumner, who was fighting the
division in fine shape, sent word to advance. The word was brought to
me by Mills, who said that my orders were to support the regulars in
the assault on the hills, and that my objective would be the red-tiled
ranch-house in front, on a hill which we afterwards christened Kettle
Hill. I mention Mills saying this because it was exactly the kind of
definite order the giving of which does so much to insure success in a
fight, as it prevents all obscurity as to what is to be done. The order
to attack did not reach the first brigade until after we ourselves
reached it, so that at first there was doubt on the part of their
officers whether they were at liberty to join in the advance.

I had not enjoyed the Guasimas fight at all, because I had been so
uncertain as to what I ought to do. But the San Juan fight was entirely
different. The Spaniards had a hard position to attack, it is true,
but we could see them, and I knew exactly how to proceed. I kept on
horseback, merely because I found it difficult to convey orders along
the line, as the men were lying down; and it is always hard to get men
to start when they cannot see whether their comrades are also going.
So I rode up and down the lines, keeping them straightened out, and
gradually worked through line after line until I found myself at
the head of the regiment. By the time I had reached the lines of the
regulars of the first brigade I had come to the conclusion that it was
silly to stay in the valley firing at the hills, because that was really
where we were most exposed, and that the thing to do was to try to
rush the intrenchments. Where I struck the regulars there was no one
of superior rank to mine, and after asking why they did not charge, and
being answered that they had no orders, I said I would give the order.
There was naturally a little reluctance shown by the elderly officer in
command to accept my order, so I said, "Then let my men through, sir,"
and I marched through, followed by my grinning men. The younger officers
and the enlisted men of the regulars jumped up and joined us. I waved
my hat, and we went up the hill with a rush. Having taken it, we looked
across at the Spaniards in the trenches under the San Juan blockhouse to
our left, which Hawkins's brigade was assaulting. I ordered our men to
open fire on the Spaniards in the trenches.

Memory plays funny tricks in such a fight, where things happen quickly,
and all kinds of mental images succeed one another in a detached kind
of way, while the work goes on. As I gave the order in question there
slipped through my mind Mahan's account of Nelson's orders that each
ship as it sailed forward, if it saw another ship engaged with an
enemy's ship, should rake the latter as it passed. When Hawkins's
soldiers captured the blockhouse, I, very much elated, ordered a charge
on my own hook to a line of hills still farther on. Hardly anybody heard
this order, however; only four men started with me, three of whom were
shot. I gave one of them, who was only wounded, my canteen of water, and
ran back, much irritated that I had not been followed--which was quite
unjustifiable, because I found that nobody had heard my orders. General
Sumner had come up by this time, and I asked his permission to lead the
charge. He ordered me to do so, and this time away we went, and stormed
the Spanish intrenchments. There was some close fighting, and we took
a few prisoners. We also captured the Spanish provisions, and ate them
that night with great relish. One of the items was salted flying-fish,
by the way. There were also bottles of wine, and jugs of fiery spirit,
and as soon as possible I had these broken, although not before one
or two of my men had taken too much liquor. Lieutenant Howze, of the
regulars, an aide of General Sumner's, brought me an order to halt where
I was; he could not make up his mind to return until he had spent an
hour or two with us under fire. The Spaniards attempted a counter-attack
in the middle of the afternoon, but were driven back without effort, our
men laughing and cheering as they rose to fire; because hitherto they
had been assaulting breastworks, or lying still under artillery fire,
and they were glad to get a chance to shoot at the Spaniards in the
open. We lay on our arms that night and as we were drenched with sweat,
and had no blankets save a few we took from the dead Spaniards, we found
even the tropic night chilly before morning came.

During the afternoon's fighting, while I was the highest officer at our
immediate part of the front, Captains Boughton and Morton of the regular
cavalry, two as fine officers as any man could wish to have beside him
in battle, came along the firing line to tell me that they had heard
a rumor that we might fall back, and that they wished to record their
emphatic protest against any such course. I did not believe there was
any truth in the rumor, for the Spaniards were utterly incapable of any
effective counter-attack. However, late in the evening, after the fight,
General Wheeler visited us at the front, and he told me to keep myself
in readiness, as at any moment it might be decided to fall back. Jack
Greenway was beside me when General Wheeler was speaking. I answered,
"Well, General, I really don't know whether we would obey an order to
fall back. We can take that city by a rush, and if we have to move
out of here at all I should be inclined to make the rush in the right
direction." Greenway nodded an eager assent. The old General, after a
moment's pause, expressed his hearty agreement, and said that he would
see that there was no falling back. He had been very sick for a couple
of days, but, sick as he was, he managed to get into the fight. He was a
gamecock if ever there was one, but he was in very bad physical shape
on the day of the fight. If there had been any one in high command to
supervise and press the attack that afternoon, we would have gone
right into Santiago. In my part of the line the advance was halted only
because we received orders not to move forward, but to stay on the crest
of the captured hill and hold it.

We are always told that three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage is the most
desirable kind. Well, my men and the regulars of the cavalry had just
that brand of courage. At about three o'clock on the morning after the
first fight, shooting began in our front and there was an alarm of a
Spanish advance. I was never more pleased than to see the way in which
the hungry, tired, shabby men all jumped up and ran forward to the
hill-crest, so as to be ready for the attack; which, however, did not
come. As soon as the sun rose the Spaniards again opened upon us with
artillery. A shell burst between Dave Goodrich and myself, blacking us
with powder, and killing and wounding several of the men immediately
behind us.

Next day the fight turned into a siege; there were some stirring
incidents; but for the most part it was trench work. A fortnight later
Santiago surrendered. Wood won his brigadier-generalship by the capital
way in which he handled his brigade in the fight, and in the following
siege. He was put in command of the captured city; and in a few days I
succeeded to the command of the brigade.

The health of the troops was not good, and speedily became very bad.
There was some dysentery, and a little yellow fever; but most of
the trouble was from a severe form of malarial fever. The Washington
authorities had behaved better than those in actual command of the
expedition at one crisis. Immediately after the first day's fighting
around Santiago the latter had hinted by cable to Washington that they
might like to withdraw, and Washington had emphatically vetoed the
proposal. I record this all the more gladly because there were not
too many gleams of good sense shown in the home management of the war;
although I wish to repeat that the real blame for this rested primarily
with us ourselves, the people of the United States, who had for years
pursued in military matters a policy that rendered it certain that there
would be ineptitude and failure in high places if ever a crisis came.
After the siege the people in Washington showed no knowledge whatever
of the conditions around Santiago, and proposed to keep the army there.
This would have meant that at least three-fourths of the men would
either have died or have been permanently invalided, as a virulent form
of malaria was widespread, and there was a steady growth of dysentery
and other complaints. No object of any kind was to be gained by keeping
the army in or near the captured city. General Shafter tried his best to
get the Washington authorities to order the army home. As he failed to
accomplish anything, he called a council of the division and brigade
commanders and the chief medical officers to consult over the situation.

Although I had command of a brigade, I was only a colonel, and so I
did not intend to attend, but the General informed me that I was
particularly wanted, and accordingly I went. At the council General
Shafter asked the medical authorities as to conditions, and they united
in informing him that they were very bad, and were certain to grow
much worse; and that in order to avoid frightful ravages from disease,
chiefly due to malaria, the army should be sent back at once to some
part of the northern United States. The General then explained that he
could not get the War Department to understand the situation; that he
could not get the attention of the public; and that he felt that there
should be some authoritative publication which would make the War
Department take action before it was too late to avert the ruin of the
army. All who were in the room expressed their agreement.

Then the reason for my being present came out. It was explained to me
by General Shafter, and by others, that as I was a volunteer officer
and intended immediately to return to civil life, I could afford to take
risks which the regular army men could not afford to take and ought
not to be expected to take, and that therefore I ought to make the
publication in question; because to incur the hostility of the War
Department would not make any difference to me, whereas it would be
destructive to the men in the regular army, or to those who hoped to
get into the regular army. I thought this true, and said I would write
a letter or make a statement which could then be published.
Brigadier-General Ames, who was in the same position that I was, also
announced that he would make a statement.

When I left the meeting it was understood that I was to make my
statement as an interview in the press; but Wood, who was by that time
Brigadier-General commanding the city of Santiago, gave me a quiet hint
to put my statement in the form of a letter to General Shafter, and this
I accordingly did. When I had written my letter, the correspondent
of the Associated Press, who had been informed by others of what had
occurred, accompanied me to General Shafter. I presented the letter to
General Shafter, who waved it away and said: "I don't want to take it;
do whatever you wish with it." I, however, insisted on handing it to
him, whereupon he shoved it toward the correspondent of the Associated
Press, who took hold of it, and I released my hold. General Ames made
a statement direct to the correspondent, and also sent a cable to the
Assistant Secretary of the Navy at Washington, a copy of which he
gave to the correspondent. By this time the other division and brigade
commanders who were present felt that they had better take action
themselves. They united in a round robin to General Shafter, which
General Wood dictated, and which was signed by Generals Kent, Gates,
Chaffee, Sumner, Ludlow, Ames, and Wood, and by myself. General Wood
handed this to General Shafter, and it was made public by General
Shafter precisely as mine was made public.[*] Later I was much amused
when General Shafter stated that he could not imagine how my letter and
the round robin got out! When I saw this statement, I appreciated how
wise Wood had been in hinting to me not to act on the suggestion of the
General that I should make a statement to the newspapers, but to put
my statement in the form of a letter to him as my superior officer, a
letter which I delivered to him. Both the letter and the round robin
were written at General Shafter's wish, and at the unanimous suggestion
of all the commanding and medical officers of the Fifth Army Corps, and
both were published by General Shafter.

     [*] General Wood writes me: "The representative of the
     Associated Press was very anxious to get a copy of this
     despatch or see it, and I told him it was impossible for him
     to have it or see it. I then went in to General Shafter and
     stated the case to him, handing him the despatch, saying,
     'The matter is now in your hands.' He, General Shafter, then
     said, 'I don't care whether this gentleman has it or not,'
     and I left then. When I went back the General told me he had
     given the Press representative a copy of the despatch, and
     that he had gone to the office with it."

In a regiment the prime need is to have fighting men; the prime virtue
is to be able and eager to fight with the utmost effectiveness. I have
never believed that this was incompatible with other virtues. On the
contrary, while there are of course exceptions, I believe that on the
average the best fighting men are also the best citizens. I do not
believe that a finer set of natural soldiers than the men of my regiment
could have been found anywhere, and they were first-class citizens in
civil life also. One fact may perhaps be worthy of note. Whenever we
were in camp and so fixed that we could have regular meals, we used to
have a general officers' mess, over which I of course presided. During
our entire service there was never a foul or indecent word uttered at
the officers' mess--I mean this literally; and there was very little
swearing--although now and then in the fighting, if there was a moment
when swearing seemed to be the best method of reaching the heart of the
matter, it was resorted to.

The men I cared for most in the regiment were the men who did the best
work; and therefore my liking for them was obliged to take the shape of
exposing them to the most fatigue and hardship, of demanding from them
the greatest service, and of making them incur the greatest risk. Once
I kept Greenway and Goodrich at work for forty-eight hours, without
sleeping, and with very little food, fighting and digging trenches. I
freely sent the men for whom I cared most, to where death might smite
them; and death often smote them--as it did the two best officers in my
regiment, Allyn Capron and Bucky O'Neil. My men would not have respected
me had I acted otherwise. Their creed was my creed. The life even of the
most useful man, of the best citizen, is not to be hoarded if there be
need to spend it. I felt, and feel, this about others; and of course
also about myself. This is one reason why I have always felt impatient
contempt for the effort to abolish the death penalty on account of
sympathy with criminals. I am willing to listen to arguments in favor of
abolishing the death penalty so far as they are based purely on grounds
of public expediency, although these arguments have never convinced me.
But inasmuch as, without hesitation, in the performance of duty, I have
again and again sent good and gallant and upright men to die, it seems
to me the height of a folly both mischievous and mawkish to contend
that criminals who have deserved death should nevertheless be allowed
to shirk it. No brave and good man can properly shirk death; and no
criminal who has earned death should be allowed to shirk it.

One of the best men with our regiment was the British military attache,
Captain Arthur Lee, an old friend. The other military attaches were
herded together at headquarters and saw little. Captain Lee, who had
known me in Washington, escaped and stayed with the regiment. We grew to
feel that he was one of us, and made him an honorary member. There were
two other honorary members. One was Richard Harding Davis, who was with
us continually and who performed valuable service on the fighting line.
The other was a regular officer, Lieutenant Parker, who had a battery
of gatlings. We were with this battery throughout the San Juan fighting,
and we grew to have the strongest admiration for Parker as a soldier and
the strongest liking for him as a man. During our brief campaign we were
closely and intimately thrown with various regular officers of the type
of Mills, Howze, and Parker. We felt not merely fondness for them as
officers and gentlemen, but pride in them as Americans. It is a
fine thing to feel that we have in the army and in the navy modest,
efficient, gallant gentlemen of this type, doing such disinterested work
for the honor of the flag and of the Nation. No American can overpay the
debt of gratitude we all of us owe to the officers and enlisted men of
the army and of the navy.

Of course with a regiment of our type there was much to learn both among
the officers and the men. There were all kinds of funny incidents. One
of my men, an ex-cow-puncher and former round-up cook, a very good
shot and rider, got into trouble on the way down on the transport.
He understood entirely that he had to obey the officers of his own
regiment, but, like so many volunteers, or at least like so many
volunteers of my regiment, he did not understand that this obligation
extended to officers of other regiments. One of the regular officers on
the transport ordered him to do something which he declined to do. When
the officer told him to consider himself under arrest, he responded
by offering to fight him for a trifling consideration. He was brought
before a court martial which sentenced him to a year's imprisonment at
hard labor with dishonorable discharge, and the major-general commanding
the division approved the sentence.

We were on the transport. There was no hard labor to do; and the prison
consisted of another cow-puncher who kept guard over him with his
carbine, evidently divided in his feelings as to whether he would like
most to shoot him or to let him go. When we landed, somebody told the
prisoner that I intended to punish him by keeping him with the baggage.
He at once came to me in great agitation, saying: "Colonel, they say
you're going to leave me with the baggage when the fight is on. Colonel,
if you do that, I will never show my face in Arizona again. Colonel, if
you will let me go to the front, I promise I will obey any one you say;
any one you say, Colonel," with the evident feeling that, after this
concession, I could not, as a gentleman, refuse his request. Accordingly
I answered: "Shields, there is no one in this regiment more entitled to
be shot than you are, and you shall go to the front." His gratitude was
great, and he kept repeating, "I'll never forget this, Colonel, never."
Nor did he. When we got very hard up, he would now and then manage to
get hold of some flour and sugar, and would cook a doughnut and bring it
round to me, and watch me with a delighted smile as I ate it. He behaved
extremely well in both fights, and after the second one I had him
formally before me and remitted his sentence--something which of course
I had not the slightest power to do, although at the time it seemed
natural and proper to me.

When we came to be mustered out, the regular officer who was doing the
mustering, after all the men had been discharged, finally asked me where
the prisoner was. I said, "What prisoner?" He said, "The prisoner,
the man who was sentenced to a year's imprisonment with hard labor
and dishonorable discharge." I said, "Oh! I pardoned him"; to which he
responded, "I beg your pardon; you did what?" This made me grasp the
fact that I had exceeded authority, and I could only answer, "Well, I
did pardon him, anyhow, and he has gone with the rest"; whereupon the
mustering-out officer sank back in his chair and remarked, "He was
sentenced by a court martial, and the sentence was approved by the
major-general commanding the division. You were a lieutenant-colonel,
and you pardoned him. Well, it was nervy, that's all I'll say."

The simple fact was that under the circumstances it was necessary for me
to enforce discipline and control the regiment, and therefore to reward
and punish individuals in whatever way the exigencies demanded. I often
explained to the men what the reasons for an order were, the first time
it was issued, if there was any trouble on their part in understanding
what they were required to do. They were very intelligent and very eager
to do their duty, and I hardly ever had any difficulty the second time
with them. If, however, there was the slightest willful shirking of duty
or insubordination, I punished instantly and mercilessly, and the whole
regiment cordially backed me up. To have punished men for faults and
shortcomings which they had no opportunity to know were such would have
been as unwise as to have permitted any of the occasional bad characters
to exercise the slightest license. It was a regiment which was sensitive
about its dignity and was very keenly alive to justice and to courtesy,
but which cordially approved absence of mollycoddling, insistence upon
the performance of duty, and summary punishment of wrong-doing.

In the final fighting at San Juan, when we captured one of the trenches,
Jack Greenway had seized a Spaniard, and shortly afterwards I found Jack
leading his captive round with a string. I told him to turn him over to
a man who had two or three other captives, so that they should all be
taken to the rear. It was the only time I ever saw Jack look aggrieved.
"Why, Colonel, can't I keep him for myself?" he asked, plaintively. I
think he had an idea that as a trophy of his bow and spear the Spaniard
would make a fine body servant.

One reason that we never had the slightest trouble in the regiment was
because, when we got down to hard pan, officers and men shared exactly
alike. It is all right to have differences in food and the like in times
of peace and plenty, when everybody is comfortable. But in really hard
times officers and men must share alike if the best work is to be done.
As long as I had nothing but two hardtacks, which was the allowance to
each man on the morning after the San Juan fight, no one could complain;
but if I had had any private little luxuries the men would very
naturally have realized keenly their own shortages.

Soon after the Guasimas fight we were put on short commons; and as I
knew that a good deal of food had been landed and was on the beach at
Siboney, I marched thirty or forty of the men down to see if I could not
get some and bring it up. I finally found a commissary officer, and he
asked me what I wanted, and I answered, anything he had. So he told me
to look about for myself. I found a number of sacks of beans, I think
about eleven hundred pounds, on the beach; and told the officer that
I wanted eleven hundred pounds of beans. He produced a book of
regulations, and showed me the appropriate section and subdivision which
announced that beans were issued only for the officers' mess. This did
me no good, and I told him so. He said he was sorry, and I answered that
he was not as sorry as I was. I then "studied on it," as Br'r Rabbit
would say, and came back with a request for eleven hundred pounds of
beans for the officers' mess. He said, "Why, Colonel, your officers
can't eat eleven hundred pounds of beans," to which I responded, "You
don't know what appetites my officers have." He then said he would send
the requisition to Washington. I told him I was quite willing, so long
as he gave me the beans. He was a good fellow, so we finally effected a
working compromise--he got the requisition and I got the beans, although
he warned me that the price would probably be deducted from my salary.

Under some regulation or other only the regular supply trains were
allowed to act, and we were supposed not to have any horses or mules in
the regiment itself. This was very pretty in theory; but, as a matter of
fact, the supply trains were not numerous enough. My men had a natural
genius for acquiring horseflesh in odd ways, and I continually found
that they had staked out in the brush various captured Spanish cavalry
horses and Cuban ponies and abandoned commissary mules. Putting these
together, I would organize a small pack train and work it industriously
for a day or two, until they learned about it at headquarters and
confiscated it. Then I would have to wait for a week or so until my
men had accumulated some more ponies, horses, and mules, the regiment
meanwhile living in plenty on what we had got before the train was
confiscated.

All of our men were good at accumulating horses, but within our own
ranks I think we were inclined to award the palm to our chaplain. There
was not a better man in the regiment than the chaplain, and there could
not have been a better chaplain for our men. He took care of the sick
and the wounded, he never spared himself, and he did every duty. In
addition, he had a natural aptitude for acquiring mules, which made some
admirer, when the regiment was disbanded, propose that we should have a
special medal struck for him, with, on the obverse, "A Mule passant and
Chaplain regardant." After the surrender of Santiago, a Philadelphia
clergyman whom I knew came down to General Wheeler's headquarters,
and after visiting him announced that he intended to call on the Rough
Riders, because he knew their colonel. One of General Wheeler's aides,
Lieutenant Steele, who liked us both individually and as a regiment,
and who appreciated some of our ways, asked the clergyman, after he
had announced that he knew Colonel Roosevelt, "But do you know Colonel
Roosevelt's regiment?" "No," said the clergyman. "Very well, then, let
me give you a piece of advice. When you go down to see the Colonel,
don't let your horse out of your sight; and if the chaplain is there,
don't get off the horse!"

We came back to Montauk Point and soon after were disbanded. We had been
in the service only a little over four months. There are no four months
of my life to which I look back with more pride and satisfaction. I
believe most earnestly and sincerely in peace, but as things are yet in
this world the nation that cannot fight, the people that have lost the
fighting edge, that have lost the virile virtues, occupy a position as
dangerous as it is ignoble. The future greatness of America in no small
degree depends upon the possession by the average American citizen of
the qualities which my men showed when they served under me at Santiago.

Moreover, there is one thing in connection with this war which it is
well that our people should remember, our people who genuinely love the
peace of righteousness, the peace of justice--and I would be ashamed to
be other than a lover of the peace of righteousness and of justice. The
true preachers of peace, who strive earnestly to bring nearer the
day when peace shall obtain among all peoples, and who really do help
forward the cause, are men who never hesitate to choose righteous war
when it is the only alternative to unrighteous peace. These are the men
who, like Dr. Lyman Abbott, have backed every genuine movement for peace
in this country, and who nevertheless recognized our clear duty to war
for the freedom of Cuba.

But there are other men who put peace ahead of righteousness, and who
care so little for facts that they treat fantastic declarations
for immediate universal arbitration as being valuable, instead of
detrimental, to the cause they profess to champion, and who seek to make
the United States impotent for international good under the pretense of
making us impotent for international evil. All the men of this kind, and
all of the organizations they have controlled, since we began our career
as a nation, all put together, have not accomplished one hundredth part
as much for both peace and righteousness, have not done one hundredth
part as much either for ourselves or for other peoples, as was
accomplished by the people of the United States when they fought the war
with Spain and with resolute good faith and common sense worked out the
solution of the problems which sprang from the war.

Our army and navy, and above all our people, learned some lessons from
the Spanish War, and applied them to our own uses. During the following
decade the improvement in our navy and army was very great; not in
material only, but also in personnel, and, above all, in the ability to
handle our forces in good-sized units. By 1908, when our battle fleet
steamed round the world, the navy had become in every respect as fit
a fighting instrument as any other navy in the world, fleet for fleet.
Even in size there was but one nation, England, which was completely
out of our class; and in view of our relations with England and all the
English-speaking peoples, this was of no consequence. Of our army,
of course, as much could not be said. Nevertheless the improvement in
efficiency was marked. Our artillery was still very inferior in training
and practice to the artillery arm of any one of the great Powers such
as Germany, France, or Japan--a condition which we only then began
to remedy. But the workmanlike speed and efficiency with which the
expedition of some 6000 troops of all arms was mobilized and transported
to Cuba during the revolution of 1908 showed that, as regards our
cavalry and infantry, we had at least reached the point where we could
assemble and handle in first-rate fashion expeditionary forces. This is
mighty little to boast of, for a Nation of our wealth and population;
it is not pleasant to compare it with the extraordinary feats of
contemporary Japan and the Balkan peoples; but, such as it is, it
represents a long stride in advance over conditions as they were in
1898.

APPENDIX A

A MANLY LETTER

There was a sequel to the "round robin" incident which caused a little
stir at the moment; Secretary Alger had asked me to write him freely
from time to time. Accordingly, after the surrender of Santiago, I wrote
him begging that the cavalry division might be put into the Porto Rican
fighting, preparatory to what we supposed would be the big campaign
against Havana in the fall. In the letter I extolled the merits of the
Rough Riders and of the Regulars, announcing with much complacency that
each of our regiments was worth "three of the National Guard regiments,
armed with their archaic black powder rifles."[*] Secretary Alger
believed, mistakenly, that I had made public the round robin, and
was naturally irritated, and I suddenly received from him a published
telegram, not alluding to the round robin incident, but quoting my
reference to the comparative merits of the cavalry regiments and the
National Guard regiments and rebuking me for it. The publication of the
extract from my letter was not calculated to help me secure the votes of
the National Guard if I ever became a candidate for office. However, I
did not mind the matter much, for I had at the time no idea of being
a candidate for anything--while in the campaign I ate and drank and
thought and dreamed regiment and nothing but regiment, until I got the
brigade, and then I devoted all my thoughts to handling the brigade.
Anyhow, there was nothing I could do about the matter.

     [*] I quote this sentence from memory; it is substantially
     correct.

When our transport reached Montauk Point, an army officer came aboard
and before doing anything else handed me a sealed letter from the
Secretary of War which ran as follows:--

WAR DEPARTMENT,

WASHINGTON,

August 10, 1898.

DEAR COL. ROOSEVELT:

You have been a most gallant officer and in the battle before Santiago
showed superb soldierly qualities. I would rather add to, than detract
from, the honors you have so fairly won, and I wish you all good things.
In a moment of aggravation under great stress of feeling, first because
I thought you spoke in a disparaging manner of the volunteers (probably
without intent, but because of your great enthusiasm for your own men)
and second that I believed your published letter would embarrass the
Department I sent you a telegram which with an extract from a private
letter of yours I gave to the press. I would gladly recall both if I
could, but unable to do that I write you this letter which I hope you
will receive in the same friendly spirit in which I send it. Come and
see me at a very early day. No one will welcome you more heartily than
I.

Yours very truly, (Signed) R. A. ALGER.

I thought this a manly letter, and paid no more heed to the incident;
and when I was President, and General Alger was Senator from Michigan,
he was my stanch friend and on most matters my supporter.

APPENDIX B

THE SAN JUAN FIGHT

The San Juan fight took its name from the San Juan Hill or hills--I do
not know whether the name properly belonged to a line of hills or to
only one hill.

To compare small things with large things, this was precisely as the
Battle of Gettysburg took its name from the village of Gettysburg, where
only a small part of the fighting was done; and the battle of Waterloo
from the village of Waterloo, where none of the fighting was done.
When it became the political interest of certain people to endeavor to
minimize my part in the Santiago fighting (which was merely like that of
various other squadron, battalion and regimental commanders) some of my
opponents laid great stress on the alleged fact that the cavalry did not
charge up San Juan Hill. We certainly charged some hills; but I did not
ask their names before charging them. To say that the Rough Riders and
the cavalry division, and among other people myself, were not in the
San Juan fight is precisely like saying that the men who made Pickett's
Charge, or the men who fought at Little Round Top and Culps Hill, were
not at Gettysburg; or that Picton and the Scotch Greys and the French
and English guards were not at Waterloo. The present Vice-President of
the United States in the campaign last year was reported in the press
as repeatedly saying that I was not in the San Juan fight. The documents
following herewith have been printed for many years, and were accessible
to him had he cared to know or to tell the truth.

These documents speak for themselves. The first is the official report
issued by the War Department. From this it will be seen that there
were in the Santiago fighting thirty infantry and cavalry regiments
represented. Six of these were volunteer, of which one was the Rough
Riders. The other twenty-four were regular regiments. The percentage of
loss of our regiment was about seven times as great as that of the
other five volunteer regiments. Of the twenty-four regular regiments,
twenty-two suffered a smaller percentage of loss than we suffered.
Two, the Sixth United States Infantry and the Thirteenth United States
Infantry, suffered a slightly greater percentage of loss--twenty-six per
cent and twenty-three per cent as against twenty-two per cent.

NOMINATIONS BY THE PRESIDENT

To be Colonel by Brevet

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cavalry, for
gallantry in battle, Las Guasima, Cuba, June 24, 1898.

To be Brigadier-General by Brevet

Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cavalry, for
gallantry in battle, Santiago de Cuba, July 1, 1898. (Nominated for
brevet colonel, to rank from June 24, 1898.)

FORT SAN JUAN, CUBA, July 17, 1898.

THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C. (Through
military channels)

SIR: I have the honor to invite attention to the following list of
officers and enlisted men who specially distinguished themselves in the
action at Las Guasimas, Cuba, June 24, 1898.

These officers and men have been recommended for favorable consideration
by their immediate commanding officers in their respective reports, and
I would respectfully urge that favorable action be taken.

OFFICERS

. . . . .

In First United States Volunteer Cavalry--Colonel Leonard Wood,
Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt.

Respectfully, JOSEPH WHEELER, Major-General United States Volunteers,
Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS SECOND CAVALRY BRIGADE, CAMP NEAR SANTIAGO DE CUBA, CUBA,
June 29, 1898.

THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL CAVALRY DIVISION.

SIR: By direction of the major-general commanding the Cavalry Division,
I have the honor to submit the following report of the engagement of
a part of this brigade with the enemy at Guasimas, Cuba, on June 24th,
accompanied by detailed reports from the regimental and other commanders
engaged, and a list of the killed and wounded:

. . . . .

I cannot speak too highly of the efficient manner in which Colonel Wood
handled his regiment, and of his magnificent behavior on the field. The
conduct of Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, as reported to me by my
two aides, deserves my highest commendation. Both Colonel Wood and
Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt disdained to take advantage of shelter or
cover from the enemy's fire while any of their men remained exposed to
it--an error of judgment, but happily on the heroic side.

. . . . .

Very respectfully, S. B. M. YOUNG, Brigadier General United States
Volunteers, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS FIRST DIVISION SECOND ARMY CORPS CAMP MACKENZIE, GA.,
December 30, 1898.

ADJUTANT-GENERAL, Washington, D. C.

SIR: I have the honor to recommend Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, late Colonel
First United States Volunteer Cavalry, for a medal of honor, as a reward
for conspicuous gallantry at the battle of San Juan, Cuba, on July 1,
1898.

Colonel Roosevelt by his example and fearlessness inspired his men, and
both at Kettle Hill and the ridge known as San Juan he led his command
in person. I was an eye-witness of Colonel Roosevelt's action.

As Colonel Roosevelt has left the service, a Brevet Commission is of no
particular value in his case.

Very respectfully, SAMUEL S. SUMNER, Major-General United States
Volunteers.

WEST POINT, N. Y., December 17, 1898.

MY DEAR COLONEL: I saw you lead the line up the first hill--you were
certainly the first officer to reach the top--and through your efforts,
and your personally jumping to the front, a line more or less thin, but
strong enough to take it, was led by you to the San Juan or first hill.
In this your life was placed in extreme jeopardy, as you may recall,
and as it proved by the number of dead left in that vicinity. Captain
Stevens, then of the Ninth Cavalry, now of the Second Cavalry, was
with you, and I am sure he recalls your gallant conduct. After the line
started on the advance from the first hill, I did not see you until our
line was halted, under a most galling fire, at the extreme front, where
you afterwards entrenched. I spoke to you there and gave instructions
from General Sumner that the position was to be held and that there
would be no further advance till further orders. You were the senior
officer there, took charge of the line, scolded me for having my horse
so high upon the ridge; at the same time you were exposing yourself most
conspicuously, while adjusting the line, for the example was necessary,
as was proved when several colored soldiers--about eight or ten,
Twenty-fourth Infantry, I think--started at a run to the rear to assist
a wounded colored soldier, and you drew your revolver and put a short
and effective stop to such apparent stampede--it quieted them. That
position was hot, and now I marvel at your escaping there. . . . Very
sincerely yours, ROBERT L. HOWZE.

WEST POINT, N. Y., December 17, 1898.

I hereby certify that on July 1, 1898, Colonel (then Lieutenant-Colonel)
Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cavalry, distinguished himself
through the action, and on two occasions during the battle when I was an
eye-witness, his conduct was most conspicuous and clearly distinguished
above other men, as follows:

1. At the base of San Juan, or first hill, there was a strong wire
fence, or entanglement, at which the line hesitated under a galling
fire, and where the losses were severe. Colonel Roosevelt jumped through
the fence and by his enthusiasm, his example and courage succeeded in
leading to the crest of the hill a line sufficiently strong to capture
it. In this charge the Cavalry Brigade suffered its greatest loss,
and the Colonel's life was placed in extreme jeopardy, owing to the
conspicuous position he took in leading the line, and being the first
to reach the crest of that hill, while under heavy fire of the enemy at
close range.

2. At the extreme advanced position occupied by our lines, Colonel
Roosevelt found himself the senior, and under his instructions from
General Sumner to hold that position. He displayed the greatest bravery
and placed his life in extreme jeopardy by unavoidable exposure to
severe fire while adjusting and strengthening the line, placing the men
in positions which afforded best protection, etc., etc. His conduct
and example steadied the men, and on one occasion by severe but not
unnecessary measures prevented a small detachment from stampeding to the
rear. He displayed the most conspicuous gallantry, courage and coolness,
in performing extraordinarily hazardous duty.

ROBERT L. HOWZE, Captain A. A. G., U. S. V. (First Lieutenant Sixth
United States Cavalry.)

TO THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C.

HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT, N. Y., April 5,
1899.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL W. H. CARTER, Assistant Adjutant-General United
States Army, Washington, D. C.

SIR: In compliance with the request, contained in your letter of April
30th, of the Board convened to consider the awarding of brevets, medals
of honor, etc., for the Santiago Campaign, that I state any facts,
within my knowledge as Adjutant-General of the Brigade in which
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt served, to aid the Board in determining, in
connection with Colonel Roosevelt's application for a medal of honor,
whether his conduct at Santiago was such as to distinguish him above
others, I have the honor to submit the following:

My duties on July 1, 1898, brought me in constant observation of and
contact with Colonel Roosevelt from early morning until shortly before
the climax of the assault of the Cavalry Division on the San Juan
Hill--the so-called Kettle Hill. During this time, while under the
enemy's artillery fire at El Poso, and while on the march from El Poso
by the San Juan ford to the point from which his regiment moved to the
assault--about two miles, the greater part under fire--Colonel Roosevelt
was conspicuous above any others I observed in his regiment in the
zealous performance of duty, in total disregard of his personal danger
and in his eagerness to meet the enemy. At El Poso, when the enemy
opened on that place with artillery fire, a shrapnel bullet grazed and
bruised one of Colonel Roosevelt's wrists. The incident did not lessen
his hazardous exposure, but he continued so exposed until he had placed
his command under cover. In moving to the assault of San Juan Hill,
Colonel Roosevelt was most conspicuously brave, gallant and indifferent
to his own safety. He, in the open, led his regiment; no officer
could have set a more striking example to his men or displayed greater
intrepidity.

Very respectfully, Your obedient servant, A. L. MILLS, Colonel United
States Army, Superintendent.

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA, SANTIAGO DE CUBA, December
30, 1898.

TO THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C.

SIR: I have the honor to make the following statement relative to
the conduct of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, late First United States
Volunteer Cavalry, during the assault upon San Juan Hill, July 1, 1898.

I have already recommended this officer for a medal of honor, which I
understand has been denied him, upon the ground that my previous letter
was too indefinite. I based my recommendation upon the fact that Colonel
Roosevelt, accompanied only by four or five men, led a very desperate
and extremely gallant charge on San Juan Hill, thereby setting a
splendid example to the troops and encouraging them to pass over the
open country intervening between their position and the trenches of the
enemy. In leading this charge, he started off first, as he supposed,
with quite a following of men, but soon discovered that he was alone. He
then returned and gathered up a few men and led them to the charge, as
above stated. The charge in itself was an extremely gallant one, and the
example set a most inspiring one to the troops in that part of the line,
and while it is perfectly true that everybody finally went up the hill
in good style, yet there is no doubt that the magnificent example set by
Colonel Roosevelt had a very encouraging effect and had great weight in
bringing up the troops behind him. During the assault, Colonel Roosevelt
was the first to reach the trenches in his part of the line and killed
one of the enemy with his own hand.

I earnestly recommend that the medal be conferred upon Colonel
Roosevelt, for I believe that he in every way deserves it, and that
his services on the day in question were of great value and of a most
distinguished character.

Very respectfully, LEONARD WOOD, Major-General, United States
Volunteers. Commanding Department of Santiago de Cuba.

HUNTSVILLE, ALA., January 4, 1899.

THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C.

SIR: I have the honor to recommend that a "Congressional Medal of Honor"
be given to Theodore Roosevelt (late Colonel First Volunteer Cavalry),
for distinguished conduct and conspicuous bravery in command of his
regiment in the charge on San Juan Hill, Cuba, July 1, 1898.

In compliance with G. O. 135, A. G. O. 1898, I enclose my certificate
showing my personal knowledge of Colonel Roosevelt's conduct.

Very respectfully, C. J. STEVENS, Captain Second Cavalry.

I hereby certify that on July 1, 1898, at the battle of San Juan, Cuba,
I witnessed Colonel (then Lieutenant-Colonel) Roosevelt, First Volunteer
Cavalry, United States of America, mounted, leading his regiment in
the charge on San Juan. By his gallantry and strong personality he
contributed most materially to the success of the charge of the Cavalry
Division up San Juan Hill.

Colonel Roosevelt was among the first to reach the crest of the hill,
and his dashing example, his absolute fearlessness and gallant leading
rendered his conduct conspicuous and clearl distinguished above other
men.

C. J. STEVENS, Captain Second Cavalry. (Late First Lieutenant Ninth
Cavalry.)

YOUNG'S ISLAND, S. C., December 28, 1898.

TO THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY. Washington, D. C.

SIR: Believing that information relating to superior conduct on the part
of any of the higher officers who participated in the Spanish-American
War (and which information may not have been given) would be appreciated
by the Department over which you preside, I have the honor to call your
attention to the part borne by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, of the late
First United States Volunteer Cavalry, in the battle of July 1st last.
I do this not only because I think you ought to know, but because his
regiment as a whole were very proud of his splendid actions that day
and believe they call for that most coveted distinction of the American
officer, the Medal of Honor. Held in support, he brought his regiment,
at exactly the right time, not only up to the line of regulars, but went
through them and headed, on horseback, the charge on Kettle Hill; this
being done on his own initiative, the regulars as well as his own men
following. He then headed the charge on the next hill, both regulars and
the First United States Volunteer Cavalry following. He was so near
the intrenchments on the second hill, that he shot and killed with a
revolver one of the enemy before they broke completely. He then led the
cavalry on the chain of hills overlooking Santiago, where he remained in
charge of all the cavalry that was at the extreme front for the rest of
that day and night. His unhesitating gallantry in taking the initiative
against intrenchments lined by men armed with rapid fire guns certainly
won him the highest consideration and admiration of all who witnessed
his conduct throughout that day.

What I here write I can bear witness to from personally having seen.

Very respectfully, M. J. JENKINS, Major Late First United States
Cavalry.

PRESCOTT, A. T., December 25, 1898.

I was Colonel Roosevelt's orderly at the battle of San Juan Hill, and
from that time on until our return to Montauk Point. I was with him all
through the fighting, and believe I was the only man who was always with
him, though during part of the time Lieutenants Ferguson and Greenwald
were also close to him. He led our regiment forward on horseback until
he came to the men of the Ninth Cavalry lying down. He led us through
these and they got up and joined us. He gave the order to charge on
Kettle Hill, and led us on horseback up the hill, both Rough Riders and
the Ninth Cavalry. He was the first on the hill, I being very nearly
alongside of him. Some Spanish riflemen were coming out of the
intrenchments and he killed one with his revolver. He took the men on
to the crest of the hill and bade them begin firing on the blockhouse on
the hill to our left, the one the infantry were attacking. When he
took it, he gave the order to charge, and led the troops on Kettle Hill
forward against the blockhouse on our front. He then had charge of all
the cavalry on the hills overlooking Santiago, where we afterwards dug
our trenches. He had command that afternoon and night, and for the rest
of the time commanded our regiment at this point.

Yours very truly, H. P. BARDSHAR.

CAMBRIDGE, MD., March 27, 1902.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, President of the United States. Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: At your request, I send you the following extracts from my
diary, and from notes taken on the day of the assault on San Juan. I
kept in my pocket a small pad on which incidents were noted daily from
the landing until the surrender. On the day of the fight notes were
taken just before Grimes fired his first gun, just after the third reply
from the enemy--when we were massed in the road about seventy paces
from Grimes' guns, and when I was beginning to get scared and to think
I would be killed--at the halt just before you advanced, and under the
shelter of the hills in the evening. Each time that notes were taken,
the page was put in an envelope addressed to my wife. At the first
chance they were mailed to her, and on my arrival in the United States
the story of the fight, taken from these notes, was entered in the diary
I keep in a book. I make this lengthy explanation that you may see that
everything put down was fresh in my memory.

I quote from my diary: "The tension on the men was great. Suddenly a
line of men appeared coming from our right. They were advancing through
the long grass, deployed as skirmishers and were under fire. At
their head, or rather in front of them and leading them, rode Colonel
Roosevelt. He was very conspicuous, mounted as he was. The men were the
'Rough Riders,' so-called. I heard some one calling to them not to fire
into us, and seeing Colonel Carrol, reported to him, and was told to go
out and meet them, and caution them as to our position, we being between
them and the enemy. I did so, speaking to Colonel Roosevelt. I also
told him we were under orders not to advance, and asked him if he had
received any orders. He replied that he was going to charge the Spanish
trenches. I told this to Colonel Carrol, and to Captain Dimmick, our
squadron commander. A few moments after the word passed down that our
left (Captain Taylor) was about to charge. Captain McBlain called out,
'we must go in with those troops; we must support Taylor.' I called this
to Captain Dimmick, and he gave the order to assault."

"The cheer was taken up and taken up again, on the left, and in the
distance it rolled on and on. And so we started. Colonel Roosevelt, of
the Rough Riders, started the whole movement on the left, which was the
first advance of the assault."

The following is taken from my notes and was hastily jotted down on the
field: "The Rough Riders came in line--Colonel Roosevelt said he would
assault--Taylor joined them with his troop--McBlain called to Dimmick,
'let us go, we must go to support them.' Dimmick said all right--and so,
with no orders, we went in."

I find many of my notes are illegible from perspiration. My authority
for saying Taylor went in with you, "joined with his troop" was the word
passed to me and repeated to Captain Dimmick that Taylor was about to
charge with you. I could not see his troop. I have not put it in my
diary, but in another place I have noted that Colonel Carrol, who was
acting as brigade commander, told me to ask you if you had any orders.

I have the honor to be, Very respectfully, Your obedient servant,
HENRY ANSON BARBER, Captain Twenty-Eighth Infantry, (formerly of Ninth
Cavalry.)

HEADQUARTERS PACIFIC DIVISION, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., May 11, 1905.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: As some discussion has arisen in the public prints
regarding the battle of San Juan, Cuba, July 1, 1898, and your personal
movements during that day have been the subject of comment, it may not
be amiss in me to state some facts coming under my personal observation
as Commanding General of the Cavalry Division of which your regiment
formed a part. It will, perhaps, be advisable to show first how I came
to be in command, in order that my statement may have due weight as an
authoritative statement of facts: I was placed in command of the
Cavalry Division on the afternoon of June 30th by General Shafter; the
assignment was made owing to the severe illness of General Wheeler, who
was the permanent commander of said Division. Brigadier General Young,
who commanded the Second Cavalry Brigade, of which your regiment--the
First Volunteer Cavalry--formed a part, was also very ill, and I found
it necessary to relieve him from command and place Colonel Wood, of
the Rough Riders, in command of the Brigade; this change placed you in
command of your regiment.

The Division moved from its camp on the evening of June 30th, and
bivouacked at and about El Poso. I saw you personally in the vicinity
of El Poso, about 8 A.M., July 1st. I saw you again on the road leading
from El Poso to the San Juan River; you were at the head of your
regiment, which was leading the Second Brigade, and immediately behind
the rear regiment of the First Brigade. My orders were to turn to the
right at San Juan River and take up a line along that stream and try and
connect with General Lawton, who was to engage the enemy at El Caney. On
reaching the river we came under the fire of the Spanish forces posted
on San Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill. The First Brigade was faced to the
front in line as soon as it had cleared the road, and the Second Brigade
was ordered to pass in rear of the first and face to the front when
clear of the First Brigade. This movement was very difficult, owing to
the heavy undergrowth, and the regiments became more or less tangled up,
but eventually the formation was accomplished, and the Division stood
in an irregular line along the San Juan River, the Second Brigade on
the right. We were subjected to a heavy fire from the forces on San
Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill; our position was untenable, and it became
necessary to assault the enemy or fall back. Kettle Hill was immediately
in front of the Cavalry, and it was determined to assault that hill. The
First Brigade was ordered forward, and the Second Brigade was ordered
to support the attack; personally, I accompanied a portion of the Tenth
Cavalry, Second Brigade, and the Rough Riders were to the right. This
brought your regiment to the right of the house which was at the summit
of the hill. Shortly after I reached the crest of the hill you came
to me, accompanied, I think, by Captain C. J. Stevens, of the Ninth
Cavalry. We were then in a position to see the line of intrenchments
along San Juan Ridge, and could see Kent's Infantry Division engaged on
our left, and Hawkins' assault against Fort San Juan. You asked me for
permission to move forward and assault San Juan Ridge. I gave you the
order in person to move forward, and I saw you move forward and assault
San Juan Ridge with your regiment and portions of the First and Tenth
Cavalry belonging to your Brigade. I held a portion of the Second
Brigade as a reserve on Kettle Hill, not knowing what force the enemy
might have in reserve behind the ridge. The First Brigade also moved
forward and assaulted the ridge to the right of Fort San Juan. There
was a small lake between Kettle Hill and San Juan Ridge, and in moving
forward your command passed to the right of this lake. This brought
you opposite a house on San Juan Ridge--not Fort San Juan proper, but a
frame house surrounded by an earthwork. The enemy lost a number of men
at this point, whose bodies lay in the trenches. Later in the day I rode
along the line, and, as I recall it, a portion of the Tenth Cavalry was
immediately about this house, and your regiment occupied an irregular
semi-circular position along the ridge and immediately to the right of
the house. You had pickets out to your front; and several hundred yards
to your front the Spaniards had a heavy outpost occupying a house, with
rifle pits surrounding it. Later in the day, and during the following
day, the various regiments forming the Division were rearranged and
brought into tactical formation, the First Brigade on the left and
immediately to the right of Fort San Juan, and the Second Brigade on the
right of the First.

This was the position occupied by the Cavalry Division until the final
surrender of the Spanish forces, on July 17, 1898.

In conclusion allow me to say, that I saw you, personally, at about 8
A.M., at El Poso; later, on the road to San Juan River; later, on the
summit of Kettle Hill, immediately after its capture by the Cavalry
Division. I saw you move forward with your command to assault San Juan
Ridge, and I saw you on San Juan Ridge, where we visited your line
together, and you explained to me the disposition of your command.

I am, sir, with much respect, Your obedient servant, SAMUEL S. SUMNER,
Major-General United States Army.