The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  71. Davis, Campaigns, 167; RR.68; un. clip, TR.Scr.

  72. Mor.844.

  73. RR.70. Capt. Capron’s body was buried separately. See N.Y.T., June 27, 1898, for another account of the hilltop funeral.

  74. Mor.845, 846; RR.67. See Ranson, “British Observers,” for details of the landing operation.

  75. Copy entitled “Progressive Principles” in TRB. See also slightly different version in TR.Auto.257–8.

  76. Mor.845. TR carried one sack of the beans back to camp himself, over eight miles of jungle road. EKR to Emily Carow, Aug. 8, 1896 (Derby mss.).

  77. Qu. Wes.79.

  78. Mor.845; Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 93; Davis, Campaigns, 176; Azo.99–101.

  79. Ranson, British Observers.

  80. Davis, Campaigns, 183; Freidel, Splendid Little War, 122; Azo.102. The following descriptions of the battlefield of San Juan are based on prose sources as quoted, plus sketches, maps, and photographs, in, e.g., Lor.312–15; Freidel, Splendid Little War, passim, and Spanish-American war picture book collection in TRC.

  81. See Davis, Campaigns, 174 for copy of Shafter’s map. It was, in the opinion of one foreign attaché, so “laughably inadequate” that the Battle of San Juan was fought almost blind. Ranson, “British Observers,” qu. Arthur Lee.

  82. Azo.104; Davis, Campaigns, 183; Freidel, Splendid Little War, 120; Hag.LW.I.173.

  83. Pri.193.

  84. Azo.104–5; Freidel, Splendid Little War, 122 ff; Hag.LW.I.173–4.

  85. Davis, Campaigns, 188; Hag.LW.I. 172–3; TR.Auto.245.

  86. Davis, Campaigns, 190; Azo.107.

  87. Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 96–7.

  88. RR.74. The promotions were of course unofficial, and the titles “Acting” until the confirmation and notification from Washington; but wartime conditions made such formalities irrelevant.

  89. TR to Hermann Hagedorn, Harvard Club, Aug. 14, 1917: “San Juan was the great day of my life. I rose over those regular army officers like a balloon.”

  90. RR.72; Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 98; McIntosh, Cuba, 120; Davis, Campaigns, 193; Azo.107; Freidel, War, 144 ill.; RR.75.

  91. Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 98.

  92. Description by Howard Chandler Christy, war artist, qu. Brown, Correspondents’ War, 338. (TR on June 30, 1898: author assumes he was wearing the same clothes, having slept in them overnight.)

  93. RR.74; Azo.110-11, 147.

  94. Ib., 110; RR.75. The commander of Lawton’s battery was Captain Allyn Capron, father and namesake of the victim of Las Guásimas. RR.76.

  95. Azo.115; Davis, Campaigns, 200 ff.; Hag.LW.I.174.

  96. Azo.116. TR to EKR, July 30, 1898.

  97. Davis, Campaigns, 217. The reporter describes TR and Gen. Hawkins, leader of Kent’s division, as the most conspicuous figures on the battlefield. But whereas the white-haired general “was so noble a sight that you felt inclined to pray for his safety,” the blue-scarfed colonel, “mounted high on horseback, and charging the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone, made you feel that you would like to cheer.” (Ib.) See also Marshall, Story, 187.

  98. Azo.117–8; Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 103.

  99. RR.77; Azo. 118.

  100. Davis, Campaigns, 189, 208; RR.81; Azo.120–1; RR.77; Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 103–4.

  101. RR.77; Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 33; Freidel, War, 157 ill.

  102. Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 104, 78; Davis, Campaigns, 204–12.

  103. RR.79.

  104. RR.78 TR qu. Azo.126.

  105. RR.79–80; Davis, Campaigns, 207; Azo.127; Freidel, War, 157.

  106. Davis, Campaigns, 204; Mor.853. Lt. Royal Prentice, “Rough Riders,” 34, remembers the fusillade as “a solid sheet of bullets and shells … it appeared that nothing could live to get over the top.”

  107. RR. 80; Marshall, Story, 203.

  108. Azo.135; RR.81.

  109. RR.81.

  110. See, e.g., RR.84, and TR.Auto. 245: “Memory plays funny tricks in such a fight [as San Juan], where things happen quickly, and all kinds of mental images succeed one another in a detached kind of way, while the work goes on.…”

  111. TR.Wks.XII.306.

  112. The following collage is based on RR.82 ff.; TR.Auto.247 ff.; Mor.847, 856–7. See also the eyewitness accounts reprinted by TR in TR.Auto., Appendix B to Ch. VII. There is some confusion as to whether TR killed his man on the first hill (Kettle), or the second (San Juan). The overwhelming weight of evidence is that he did so on Kettle. See Mor.853, TR to HCL: “Did I tell you that I killed a Spaniard with my own hand when I led the storm of the first redoubt?” TR to EKR, July 3, 1898 (TRB transcript) confirms. But TR prints a letter by Maj. M. J. Jenkins in TR.Auto.274, saying that the kill was on San Juan, and TR himself in RR.89 includes it in his account of the second charge. Close analysis of his language, however, indicates that he was indulging in a sort of flashback to the first. Maj. Jenkins must simply have been mistaken, and TR careless in printing his testimony.

  113. “Jack-rabbit” quote: R. H. Ferguson to EKR (using TR’s own words), July 5, 1898. See also n. 119 below. RR.86.

  114. Ib.; Davis, Campaigns, 218; RR.86.

  115. RR.87. The Rough Riders’ crossfire was extremely deadly: see below.

  116. RR.88; Hall, The Fun and Fighting of the Rough Riders (NY, 1899) 34.

  117. RR.90; TR.Auto.248; ib., Appendix B to Ch. VII. Memo of John H. Parker to Stanley Allen, The Register, Feb. 14, 1938 (TRB); See also Mor.856–7, and Davis, Campaigns, 220 ff.

  118. RR.89.

  119. R. H. Ferguson to EKR, July 5, 1898. TR’s exultation, however excessive, must be considered in the light of undeniable atrocities by the other side during the Battle of San Juan. See Davis, Campaigns, 208, on the sharpshooters who methodically pumped bullets into the surgeons, Red Cross personnel, litter-bearers, and even the wounded themselves at Bloody Ford Hospital; also Mor.858. As for the sheer hatred of the enemy which battle instinctively inspires, see Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 101, on his reaction to the fusillade at Kettle Hill: “Now we were hating mad—anger began to wriggle through our minds—and on down through our arms and hands.” But TR’s killing triumph lasted well beyond the date of final victory. Isaac Hunt, his old Assembly colleague, heard him talk about “doubling up” the Spanish soldier in later years, and “it made cold chills run down my back. He told it about like … I would talk about shooting a squirrel.” HUN.90. See also Wag.250.

  120. Azo.144; RR. 101, 100. During four and a half months of official existence, the Rough Riders attained a 37% casualty rate, highest of any regiment in the war (1 out of every 3 dead, wounded, or diseased).

  Note: TR’s heroism on San Juan Heights has been called into question by some historians, but an eloquent contemporary tribute to it, written by Admiral French E. Chadwick, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the battle, is available in Maguire, Doris D., French Ensor Chadwick: Selected Letters and Papers (Washington, D.C., 1981), 462–63.

  121. R. H. Ferguson to EKR, July 5, 1898.

  122. Within a week, Gen. Wheeler had agreed to send a formal Medal of Honor recommendation to Washington. Mor.850.

  123. Mor.853; TR.Auto.250; Prentice, “Rough Riders,” 46; R. H. Ferguson to EKR, July 5, 1898; Hall, Fun and Fighting, 218.

  124. R. H. Ferguson to EKR, July 5, 1898.

  125. RR.110 ff.; Freidel, War, 120 ff. and 185; Azo.140; Mor.846. Azo. 151–2 quotes Shafter’s letter to Secretary Alger, threatening withdrawal.

  126. Freidel, War, 191.

  127. Ib., 179; Shafter qu. Azo.155.

  128. Ib., 156; Hall, Fun and Fighting, 218.

  129. Azo.157–8.

  130. Ib., 160.

  131. Although TR did not formally accept his full colonelcy until July 31 (Herald, Sep. 25, 1898), his commission had already been issued on July 11 and sent to him in Cuba. (Ib.)

  132. Mor.853; TR.War.Di. July 3; Mor.851. TR’s only known ailment in Cuba was a bout of dysen
tery. EKR to Emily Carow, Aug. 14, 1898 (Derby mss.).

  133. RR.135.

  134. See Mor.858–9; ib., 855; RR.133, 136. McClure’s, Nov. 1898, qu. an anonymous Rough Rider.

  135. Mor.851. The lieutenant appears in the photograph at the beginning of this chapter, standing immediately behind TR’s right shoulder.

  136. Greenaway qu. J. J. Leary in TRB mss.

  137. Mor.861; ib., 860.

  138. See Che.18–19.

  139. RR.138, 142.

  140. The authors of the document, TR included, were carefully vague about how it came into the hands of the Associated Press correspondent. Leonard Wood claimed that he handed the round-robin to Gen. Shafter, who affected a lack of interest in it. The document was ostentatiously left lying on the table between them, whereupon the A.P. man seized it and transmitted it to the U.S. by cable. TR wrote that he also handed his supplementary letter to Shafter, who waved it away in the same fashion. “I, however, insisted on handing it to him, whereupon he shoved it toward the correspondent … who took hold of it, and I released my hold.” TR.Auto.252; ib., fn.; Hag.LW.I.201; Wes.240; Mil.352.

  141. Full text of both documents: Mor.864–66. See also TR’s letter to HCL on the subject, which is full of genuine passion. Mor. 862–3.

  142. Mil.352; Morg.394. Cosmas, An Army, 294, 305 blames McK for the delay.

  143. Mor.859. Secretary Alger also made public his sarcastic reply to TR’s letter: “I suggest that, unless you want to spoil the effects and glory of your victory, you make no invidious comparisons. The Rough Riders are no better than the other volunteers. They had an advantage in their arms, for which they ought to be grateful.” Mor.860 fn. Alger later apologized to TR. See TR.Auto. Ch. VII, Appendix A, “A Manly Letter.”

  144. Clips, n.d., in TRB clips file. For sample sympathetic comment on TR, see Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1898.

  145. RR. 145. It of course seemed, to the general public, that TR’s round-robin was responsible for the pull-out order. Actually Alger had issued the order on Aug. 3, the day before all the newspaper publicity. TR was not averse to the accidental glory thus gained. See Freidel, War, 296; Cosmas, An Army, 258.

  146. Freidel, War, 298; Hag.LW.I.183; war picture book collection, TRC.

  147. Mor.852.

  148. Mor.861, 862. John D. Long, who had deplored TR’s decision to resign as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in his Journal, Apr. 25, 1898 (Ch. 23), turned back to that entry many years later and wrote a superscription; “P.S. Roosevelt was right and we his friends were all wrong. His going into the army led through to the Presidency.”

  Historical Note: In 2000, President Clinton, responding to heavy pressure from the Roosevelt family and the Theodore Roosevelt Association, posthumously granted TR his Medal of Honor. TR’s own mature feeling about the medal was expressed in 1907, when he declined honorary membership in the United States Medal of Honor Club: “I was recommended for it by my superior officers in the Santiago campaign, but I was not awarded it; and frankly, looking back at it now, I feel that the board which declined to award it took exactly the right position.” Mor.5.865.

  26: THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN AMERICA

  1. New York Times and Evening Post, Aug. 16, 1898.

  2. New York Herald, Aug. 16, 1898.

  3. Ib.

  4. Ib.; also above-quoted sources.

  5. Marshall, Edward, The Story of the Rough Riders (NY, 1899) 240.

  6. Her., Aug. 16, 1898; N.Y.T., Eve. Post, same date.

  7. Her., Aug. 16, 1898. According to Lovell H. Jerome, one of TR’s gubernatorial backers, he was cautioned not to say anything about politics even before he disembarked. Int. FRE.

  8. N.Y.T., Aug. 16, 1898.

  9. Eve. Post, Aug. 16, 1898; Marshall, Story, 240; Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 16; Her., same date.

  10. World, Aug. 28: “Travelling men of all shades and classes declare him more talked about than any man in the country.”

  11. The peace protocol was signed on Aug. 12, 1898. For gubernatorial rumors, see, e.g., Her., Aug. 17.

  12. The last phrase is taken almost verbatim from Marshall, Story, 240.

  13. N.Y.T., and Eve. Post, Aug. 16, 1898.

  14. Che.7. With this first citation the author wishes to express his debt to the definitive—and only—study of Governor Theodore Roosevelt. Without Chessman’s indispensable work (itself a condensation of a lengthy dissertation, preserved in TRC) the following three chapters of the present biography could not have been written in their present form. For some afterthoughts by Chessman on the structure and conclusions of his book, see the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. I.1, Winter-Spring 1975.

  15. Che.18–19; ib., 20; HUN.55.

  16. Che.18.

  17. Ib., 11–12, 16.

  18. Ib., 16–17.

  19. See TR.Auto.279; also Che.7–24 for an extended treatment of Platt’s meeting with Quigg. Her., Aug. 17, 1898; Quigg to TR, Mar. 19, 1913, qu. Mor.1475.

  20. Che.26.

  21. Howe, M. A. de Wolfe, John Jay Chapman and His Letters (Houghton Mifflin, 1937) 1–8; Cha.248–9; Che.26.

  22. See Edel, Leon, ed., American Essays of Henry James (NY, 1956) 240–1.

  23. Howe, Chapman, 469.

  24. Cha.248; Chapman to Mrs. Chapman, Sep. 14, 1898, qu. Mor.1475.

  25. Che.32; Howe, Chapman, 142–3; Che.27; Mor.1474–5.

  26. Chapman qu. Che.29.

  27. Quigg came either in response to TR’s telegram of Aug. 17, 1898, or as a result of his own previous suggestion, which the telegram confirmed. Whatever the case, TR “particularly wanted” to talk over matters with Platt’s lieutenant.

  28. TR.Auto.280–1.

  29. Ib.; Che.29–30.

  30. Her., Aug. 17, 1898; Hag.RF.58; Che.26. TR had received an advance discharge from quarantine on Aug. 17.

  31. Her., Aug. 17, 18.

  32. N.Y.T., Aug. 20, 1898.

  33. See juxtaposition of Rooseveltian and Republican news in, e.g., N.Y.T., Aug. 21, 1898. Che.34; Her., Aug. 21.

  34. Ib.; Hag.RF.58–9.

  35. EKR’s emotions are inferred from a letter to Emily Carow, c. Aug. 25, 1898, excerpted in TRB mss. Her., Aug. 21; Hagedorn memo, TRB.

  36. See Her., Aug. 22, 1898; World, Aug. 24.

  37. See Mor.852.

  38. Robert Bridges in Eve. Post, Jan. 1919 (n.d.), TRB.

  39. Mor.1475. Che.27 fn. points out that both Mor. and Howe, Chapman, are wrong in describing this as the first TR/Chapman meeting. See New York Tribune, Aug. 19, 1898, for confirmation. How.465; Che.33.

  40. Howe, Chapman, 142.

  41. See, e.g., World, Aug. 28, 1898; Her., Aug. 22, 23, 24; World, Aug. 24.

  42. There is a photostat of this envelope in TRB.

  43. World, Sun, Aug. 27, 1898; Her., Oct. 6.

  44. Ib., Aug. 25, 1898.

  45. HUN.55.

  46. Che.35; Eve. Post, Sep. 1, 1898.

  47. Howe, Chapman, 143; Mor.1476; Chapman qu. ib.

  48. Un. clip (Her.?), Sep. 5, 1898, TRB.

  49. Her., Sep. 10, 1898; Eve. Post, same date; Che.38.

  50. See Mor.874 fn; N.Y.T., Sep. 26, 1898; Mor.875.

  51. Jones, Virgil Carrington, Roosevelt’s Rough Riders (Doubleday, 1971) 276. The following account is based on Her., Sep. 14, Marshall, Story, 247–51, and random clip files in TRB.

  52. Marshall, Story, 247–251.

  53. Ib., Her., Sep. 14, 1898.

  54. Ib.

  55. TR’s entire speech is reprinted in RR. 157–8 fn.

  56. Her., Sep. 14, 1898; TRB clips.

  57. Private Bill Bell, un. clip, c. Nov. 1, 1898, TRB.

  58. World, June 26, 1898.

  59. Characterizations from RR. passim.

  60. Her., Sep. 14, 1898; Rii.200.

  61. N.Y.T., Sep. 18, 1898; Che.42.

  62. See, e.g., Her., N.Y.T., Sep. 16, 1898. Eve. Post, Sep. 17.

  63. See, e.g., Her., Sep. 14, 1898. N.Y.T., Sep. 16.

  64. Eve. Post, Sep. 18,
1898; Her., same date. Quigg was also present. During this conversation with the press, TR evoked for the first time an image he would one day make famous: “I feel like a bull moose.” Williams, Talcott, in Century Memorial to TR, 73.

  65. N.Y.T., Sep. 20, 1898; Mor.876.

  66. Howe, Chapman, 469.

  67. Mor.877.

  68. Che.45.

  69. For a different interpretation, see Mor.1476–1478.

  70. Howe, Chapman, 143; Chapman, qu. ib., 139–141.

  71. Cha.248, Chapman qu. Howe, Chapman, 143. Further sidelights into the early relationship of TR and Chapman are available in the Chapman Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard (letters to Mrs. Chapman, Aug. 1898 ff.). TR, significantly, did not mention his negotiations with the Independents in his Autobiography, except to say there was “a lunatic fringe” in the party that attempted to “force” him upon Platt, and campaigned against him afterwards. (TR.Auto.282.)

  72. Her., Sep. 24, 1898; see Sun, same date, for full statement of facts. Chessman, G. Wallace, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Personal Tax Difficulty,” New York History, 34.54–63 explores this complicated matter in great detail. See also Pri.203–4, and n. 75 below.

  73. The date of TR’s Washington affidavit was Mar. 21, 1898. Sun, Sep. 26.

  74. Che.46.

  75. On Aug. 24, 1897. Mor.878. The facts of TR’s tax embarrassment are briefly these: From 1880 to 1894 inclusive he voted and paid taxes on personal and real property in Oyster Bay, except during his three terms as a New York City Assemblyman, 1882–84. After being made Police Commissioner in 1895 he rented Bamie Roosevelt’s house at 689 Madison Avenue, and declared it his legal residence. While thenceforth voting and paying taxes in New York City, he maintained Sagamore Hill as a country home, and for two years paid extra taxes in Oyster Bay, although there was no need for him to do so. In 1897, however, his personalty assessment in Oyster Bay was increased from $2,000 to $12,000, causing the first of his two affidavits in order to avoid that “perfectly absurd” liability. He was then, of course, already living in bachelor digs in Washington as Assistant Secretary. Not until October 1, 1897, did his lease on Bamie’s Manhattan house expire; and the following month, when his family at last joined him in Washington, he moved into the house opposite the German Embassy. It then became a question of deciding whether to declare yet another legal residence, or revert to his old status in Oyster Bay. There was not time between Oct. 1 and the November elections for him to qualify as a voter in Oyster Bay, and TR was so preoccupied with Navy matters during the next critical months that he seems to have forgotten about the whole residence question. Only in January 1898, when he was notified that he had been assessed a hefty $50,000 as an absentee resident of New York City, did he hastily issue his second affidavit, declaring himself a resident of Washington. All this was done on the advice of family advisers, notably Douglas Robinson, John E., and James Roosevelt. However the understanding was, when he left for Cuba, that steps would be taken to restore him permanently to the rolls of Oyster Bay—even if that meant paying taxes in two places at once. But the person responsible for this step, his uncle James, died before undertaking it, and TR again forgot about his residence problems in the excitement of the war. Here matters rested until Tammany Hall delivered the “bomb” affidavit of March 21 to Governor Black’s supporters. Sun, Sep. 26, 1898; TR to Root, Platt, and Nicholas M. Butler, Mor.878–9; Che.46–7.