Rough Riders

Rough Riders

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rough Riders, by Theodore
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Title: Rough Riders
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Release Date: July 23, 2004 [EBook #13000]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUGH
RIDERS ***

Produced by Dagny Wilson

THE ROUGH RIDERS
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1899
ON BEHALF OF THE ROUGH RIDERS I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE FIVE REGULAR
REGIMENTS WHICH TOGETHER WITH MINE MADE UP THE
CAVALRY DIVISION AT SANTIAGO

I
RAISING THE REGIMENT
During the year preceding the outbreak of the Spanish War I was
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. While my party was in opposition, I
had preached, with all the fervor and zeal I possessed, our duty to
intervene in Cuba, and to take this opportunity of driving the Spaniard
from the Western World. Now that my party had come to power, I felt
it incumbent on me, by word and deed, to do all I could to secure the
carrying out of the policy in which I so heartily believed; and from the
beginning I had determined that, if a war came, somehow or other, I
was going to the front.
Meanwhile, there was any amount of work at hand in getting ready the
navy, and to this I devoted myself.
Naturally, when one is intensely interested in a certain cause, the
tendency is to associate particularly with those who take the same view.
A large number of my friends felt very differently from the way I felt,
and looked upon the possibility of war with sincere horror. But I found
plenty of sympathizers, especially in the navy, the army, and the Senate
Committee on Foreign Affairs. Commodore Dewey, Captain Evans,
Captain Brownson, Captain Davis--with these and the various other
naval officers on duty at Washington I used to hold long consultations,
during which we went over and over, not only every question of naval
administration, but specifically everything necessary to do in order to
put the navy in trim to strike quick and hard if, as we believed would be
the case, we went to war with Spain. Sending an ample quantity of
ammunition to the Asiatic squadron and providing it with coal; getting
the battle-ships and the armored cruisers on the Atlantic into one
squadron, both to train them in manoeuvring together, and to have them
ready to sail against either the Cuban or the Spanish coasts; gathering
the torpedo-boats into a flotilla for practice; securing ample target
exercise, so conducted as to raise the standard of our marksmanship;
gathering in the small ships from European and South American waters;
settling on the number and kind of craft needed as auxiliary
cruisers--every one of these points was threshed over in conversations
with officers who were present in Washington, or in correspondence
with officers who, like Captain Mahan, were absent.
As for the Senators, of course Senator Lodge and I felt precisely alike;

for to fight in such a cause and with such an enemy was merely to carry
out the doctrines we had both of us preached for many years. Senator
Davis, Senator Proctor, Senator Foraker, Senator Chandler, Senator
Morgan, Senator Frye, and a number of others also took just the right
ground; and I saw a great deal of them, as well as of many members of
the House, particularly those from the West, where the feeling for war
was strongest.
Naval officers came and went, and Senators were only in the city while
the Senate was in session; but there was one friend who was steadily in
Washington. This was an army surgeon, Dr. Leonard Wood. I only met
him after I entered the navy department, but we soon found that we had
kindred tastes and kindred principles. He had served in General Miles's
inconceivably harassing campaigns against the Apaches, where he had
displayed such courage that he won that most coveted of
distinctions--the Medal of Honor; such extraordinary physical strength
and endurance that he grew to be recognized as one of the two or three
white men who could stand fatigue and hardship as well as an Apache;
and such judgment that toward the close of the campaigns he was given,
though a surgeon, the actual command of more than one expedition
against the bands of renegade Indians. Like so many of the gallant
fighters with whom it was later my good fortune to serve, he combined,
in a very high degree, the qualities of entire manliness with entire
uprightness and cleanliness of