ROUGH RIDERS: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill by Mark Lee Gardner

REMEMBER THE MAINE!

"The day that Roosevelt can go into battle with [the Rough Riders] will likely be the happiest of his life." -- Chicago Tribune

Mark Gardner writes early in his thoroughly researched and lively account of Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, “This war with Spain was no surprise to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt. For months, he had been doing everything in his power – not always with the direct knowledge or approval of the secretary – to make the navy ready for the great conflict he was certain was coming. And he also let it be known that he had no intention of observing the war from afar. Crazy as it sounded – and more than a few did think Roosevelt was crazy – this lighting-rod bureaucrat intended to go where the bullets were flying. He had been waiting for a war, any war, his entire adult life, and now that it was here, nothing was going to keep him from the battlefield.” 

Gardner adds, “But Roosevelt’s war fever was actually due to America’s fever for war, or at least its long glorification of all things military.”
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In 1898, the USS Maine was dispatched to Cuba to protect American interests and property due to reported riots by Cuban insurrectionists who were in rebellion against their Spanish rulers. On February 15, the ship exploded in the Havana harbor; two hundred and sixty-six sailors were killed.

A court of inquiry called by President William McKinley ruled that the explosion had been caused by an underwater mine, but did not place the blame on the Spaniards. It didn’t matter. The Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers did not hesitate to name the Spaniards as the perpetrators.

McKinley was the last U.S. president to serve during the Civil War. He knew war wasn’t all glory and adventure for he had experienced it firsthand. Reluctant to plunge his nation into another conflict, he hoped to avoid war by negotiating independence for the Cubans. When his efforts failed, Congress declared war on Spain. “Remember the Maine; and to Hell with Spain” became the rallying call for battle.

THE ROUGH RIDERS

Thirty-nine year old Theodore Roosevelt resigned his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and began using personal and political contacts to lobby Russell Alger, the Secretary of War, to allow him to raise a volunteer cavalry regiment. One of the personal contacts he called on was Colonel Leonard Wood, and through their combined efforts they were successful in getting the secretary’s consent.

While Wood was named commander of the regiment, Roosevelt received a commission as lt. colonel and was named second in command. Roosevelt was impressed by the fact that Wood had won a Medal of Honor during the campaign against Geronimo in the American southwest and he fervently desired to win one of his own.

As long as there is a war, Roosevelt wrote his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, “the only thing I want to do is command this regiment and get into all the fighting I can.” 

Since cowboys were regarded as natural born horsemen, the two officers decided to recruit from among their ranks. And it worked. Cowboys from Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona readily volunteered to serve in the regiment. Although it was sometimes called the “cowboy regiment,” it also included “Oklahoma Indians, Ivy League football stars, and champion polo players,” -- and more than one fugitive from justice.

The official name of the unit was the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, but it quickly became known by the press and the public as the “Rough Riders,” or more specifically, “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders,” despite the fact that he was second in command.

But Colonel Wood didn’t mind that his subordinate was getting all the attention. And what could he do about it if he had minded? One newspaper observed “this only goes to show that wherever Roosevelt rides is the head of the parade.” It was not meant as a compliment.

The Rough Riders were “riders” in name only. In fact, due to a shortage of transports needed to ship the horses to the island all the cavalry units were dismounted. The only horses to make it to Cuba were pack animals and the horses belonging to the officers. As a result, the natural born horsemen of the American West fought the war on foot as infantrymen.

And it wasn’t long before Roosevelt did command the regiment. It happened when Colonel Wood was given the command of a brigade and Roosevelt received a promotion to full colonel and command of the Rough Riders.

KETTLE AND SAN JUAN HILLS

"I put myself in the way of things happening, and they happened." – Theodore Roosevelt

The war’s final decisive battles were fought on two hills located in the San Juan Heights: Kettle and San Juan. Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were in the thick of those battles and were instrumental in the victorious outcome. That is not to say that they didn’t have a lot of support from other cavalry units. But as Gardner writes, “It was no surprise that the news reports gave the Rough Riders much of the glory, even though the First and Tenth Cavalries fought equally as hard.”

Col. Roosevelt and Rough Riders pose for camera atop San Juan Hill

The Tenth Cavalry, it should be noted, was one of two cavalry regiments made up of African American troopers. They were the so-called “Buffalo Soldiers” that fought in the Indian wars in the years following the Civil War. 

"There can be no better soldiers in the world, and yet I used to doubt whether the negro could fight with as much dash as the white man." – Rough Rider

MEDAL OF HONOR?

"I don’t ask this as a favor, I ask it as a right….I am entitled to the Medal of Honor, and I want it." – Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

Theodore Roosevelt was courageous and bold to the point of foolhardiness. Throughout the campaign he exposed himself to enemy fire. Since he was often mounted on horseback he represented an inviting target for enemy bullets. But by some miracle he didn’t receive a scratch even though men who were charging into enemy fire near him were killed or wounded.

In his desire to achieve glory he reminds one of another soldier, George Armstrong Custer. They differed, however, in one important respect. Custer was primarily interested in his own welfare, while Roosevelt never failed to look out for the well-being of his men. His men were fiercely loyal to him and he returned that loyalty by looking out for their interests.

"Our general is poor; he is too unwieldy to get to the front. I commanded my regiment, I think I may say, with honor. We lost a quarter of our men." – Theodore Roosevelt, letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

Roosevelt’s commanders recommended him for a Medal of Honor, but to no avail. Gardner speculates that Roosevelt’s comments to the press about the conduct of the war and a critical letter that was published by the Associated Press so infuriated Secretary Alger that he personally blocked the award. And though the war was a logistical nightmare and in some respects a comedy of errors, his public criticisms did constitute insubordination. He was fortunate that a president like Harry Truman was not the commander-in-chief or he might have experienced the same fate as General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.

Roosevelt and the Rough Riders had become the darlings of the press and the public. And Regulars were justified in resenting the situation, for believing that the Rough Riders – and their commander – had received media attention all out of proportion to their actual contribution to the war effort. This also became a factor militating against Roosevelt and his desire to receive a Medal of Honor.

In fact, the tempest in a teapot that their commander had initiated worked against not only him, but also his regiment. When the final names of the war’s Medal of Honor recipients were named – twenty-five in all – not only was Roosevelt not one of them, no member of the Rough Riders was named.

Two Rough Riders did eventually receive a Medal of Honor at a later date. The first was Captain James Robb Church, who had served as assistant surgeon under Roosevelt. The medal was presented to Church in 1906 by his old commander, and now President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. It must have been a bittersweet moment for the president.

In 1996, Congress passed a bill that waived time restrictions for awarding the Medal of Honor. After some debate, Congress voted to award Theodore Roosevelt the medal. On January 16, 2001 President Bill Clinton presented the medal to Roosevelt’s great-grandson, Tweed Roosevelt. Thus, Theodore Roosevelt became the second Rough Rider, and the only president, to win a Medal of Honor.

As Roosevelt would have said: “Bully! Dee-lighted!”

The Colonel

The Author

DOWN THE SANTA FE TRAIL AND INTO MEXICO: The Diary of Susan Magoffin

“My journal tells a story tonight different from what it has ever done before.” – Susan Shelby Magoffin

In November 1845, Susan Shelby, age 18, married Samuel Magoffin, age 45. Eight months after their marriage they embarked on a journey down the Santa Fe Trail that would conclude fifteen months later in Chihuahua, Mexico. On her journey she kept a journal which began with the above quote.

Susan had been born into a wealthy and influential family on a Kentucky plantation. In fact, her grandfather had been the first governor of the state. Her husband was a prosperous trader who had accumulated a sizeable fortune while engaging in the Santa Fe trade.

To protect against marauding bands of Indians, especially the feared Comanche, the traders traveled in large caravans, and the Magoffin entourage made up a large part of this particular caravan.

Susan described it this way:

“We now numbered, ourselves only, quite a force. Fourteen big waggons, with six yoke [oxen] each, one baggage waggon with two yoke, one Dearborn with two mules (this concern carries my maid), our own carriage with two more mules and two men on mules driving the loose stock, consisting of nine and a half yoke of oxen, our riding horses two, and three mules….we number twenty men, three are our tent servants (Mexicans). Jane, my attendant [maid], two horses, nine mules, some two hundred oxen, and last, though not least our dog Ring.” 

A carriage, servants, an attendant? Well, that isn’t the whole picture. One of the servants was a cook. The other tent servants’ jobs included staking out a large tent at the end of each day in which the Magoffins would spend their evenings. Luxuries inside the tent included a bed and mattress, table and chairs, even a carpet to spread on the floor.

Pretty cushy, eh? But have you ever traveled through Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, across the Rio Grande, and deep into Chihuahua, Mexico? Riding in a carriage pulled by a team of mules? I have made that trip – at least as far as the Rio Grande – not in a carriage pulled by mules but in a vehicle equipped with a heater and an air conditioner. I ate my meals in restaurants and spent my evenings in a motel. I made it to the Rio Grande in three days.

My point is that despite servants and all the accouterments Susan possessed, her journey was no cakewalk. And instead of three days, it lasted fifteen months.

Susan Shelby Magoffin

Adding to the drama of the venture was the fact that war had broken out between the United States and Mexico. In fact, the Magoffin caravan traveled west in the wake of the invading American army.

One day after her nineteenth birthday she suffered a miscarriage at Bent’s Fort in southeastern Colorado. From that point on her health forced the Magoffins to spend lengthy stays along the way in order to allow her to recover from various ailments.

Despite the travails of the trail and her illnesses, Susan’s natural curiosity led her to faithfully write in her journal almost every day, in which she described everything: hardships, land and climate, flora and fauna, and people, including the Indians and Mexicans that she encountered.

In addition to her writing about her miscarriage at Bent’s Fort, she had this to say about her stay there:

“There is no place on Earth I believe where man lives and gambling in some form or other is not carried on. Here in the Fort, and who could have supposed such a thing, they have a regularly established billiard room! They have a regular race track. And I hear the cackling of chickens at such a rate some times I shall not be surprised to hear of a cock-pit.”

Her journal ends abruptly due to the fact that she contracted yellow fever in Matamoras, a time in which she gave birth to a son who did not survive.

The Magoffins returned to Kentucky in 1848 and later moved near St. Louis where Samuel purchased a large estate. Susan gave birth to two daughters, but her health further deteriorated and she died in 1855 at age twenty-eight. She is buried in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.

Historians of the western movement will be forever indebted to this bold and adventurous young woman and her colorful journal, originally published in 1926, that provides them with a first person account of life on the Santa Fe Trail.

In commemoration of her journey, a seven-foot high bronze statue of Susan Magoffin holding her journal was unveiled in El Paso, Texas in 2012.  At her side is Ring, her faithful dog.  

TO HELL ON A FAST HORSE: BILLY THE KID, PAT GARRETT, AND THE EPIC CHASE TO JUSTICE IN THE OLD WEST by Mark Lee Gardner

Let’s begin with a movie question. What historical individual has been the subject of more films than any other individual?

Yep, that would be Henry McCarty aka Henry Antrim aka “Kid” Antrim aka Billy Bonney aka “The Kid” aka “Billy the Kid.” Beginning in 1911, more than fifty films have been produced with him as a character – and nearly always as the principal character. It is difficult to pinpoint the best of the lot, but the bottom of the barrel is Billy the Kid vs. Dracula(1966), brought to you that same year by the same folks who made Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. Do I need to say that that they were both fictional? But all the movies dealing with these two most famous of all Western outlaws were fictional to some degree or the other.

There was even a B-Western series in the ‘40s, first starring Bob Steele and later Buster Crabbe, in which Billy was the hero. In these films he was a wanted outlaw, but he had been falsely accused, you see, and roamed the frontier doing good deeds, winning over people, and attempting to clear his name. Since he had no visible means of support, I’m not sure how he and his sidekick (they were required in B-Westerns, you know) survived financially, but they did.

There were four stage productions, one written by Gore Vidal, featuring the Kid and one TV series, The Tall Man, starring Barry Sullivan as Pat Garrett and Clu Gulagher as Billy. The series further advanced the myth that the two were best pals. They weren’t.

People as diverse as Woody Guthrie and Billy Joel have written and sung songs about the young outlaw, who died at age twenty-one. Unlike most outlaws, however, he did not die with his boots on; he had removed them shortly before being shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

Billy

And books? There have been as many books – maybe more – about Billy than there have been movies. Some are no more than purveyors of the myth without regard for the truth; some are works of historical fiction; and a few have been serious works of history and biography.

Mark Lee Gardner’s To Hell on a Fast Horse falls into the last category. The subtitle, The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West, informs us that it is a dual biography, which to my knowledge no writer has heretofore attempted.

However, I do take issue with the subtitle, at least the “Untold Story” part of it. Personally, I don’t think that I learned anything about Billy from reading the book, if so it would have to be a minor detail or two. What I did learn, however, and it was certainly “Untold” as far as I was concerned, is what Pat Garrett’s life was like after he shot and killed Billy at Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1881. 

I knew that he continued his career as a respected lawman for a number of years and that he died ignominiously on a lonely road near Las Cruces, New Mexico. He was shot from behind while urinating on the side of the road. There has been much speculation about what happened, but the mystery of his murder has never been officially solved.

Pat

What I didn’t know is that he was a rotten businessman, who made many poor decisions. Although he was a successful lawman, the job didn’t pay much – and he had a wife and eight children to support. So he dabbled in ranching and other business sidelines without much, if any, success. His efforts were hampered by his penchant for breeding race horses – slow ones, apparently – and placing bets on horses at race tracks – slow ones, apparently.

Gardner’s book is a thorough look at both men’s lives. If you don’t know the details about Billy’s life – and would like to – or if you aren’t familiar with Garrett’s post-Billy years – and would like to be – this is the book for you. Unlike many who write about Western lawmen and outlaws, Gardner has no ax to grind. He doesn’t take sides. His book is a quest for the truth and is probably as close to it as we will ever come. 

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“The double-helix relationship between Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett is one of the abiding fascinations of the West. No one has come closer than Mark Lee Gardner to capturing their twin destinies, and their inevitable final collision. Gardner’s research is so richly detailed, you can almost smell the gun smoke and the sweat of the saddles.” – Hampton Sides, author of Blood and Thunder

Mark

JUSTICE: STORIES by Larry Watson

Do you know how many books have the word justice in their titles? I’ll tell you: a bunch.

Okay, I’ll narrow that a bit. I did a search on Goodreads and it generated 100 pages with 20 entries to each page. Do you know how many that is? I’ll tell you: a bunch.

Even so, I venture to say that Larry Watson’s book, Justice, is nevertheless unique among that bunch. 

It is a prequel to his best known novel, Montana 1948. But what makes it unique is that it is not a novel. It is a selection of short stories with each told from the point of view of one of the main characters in Montana 1948 – with two exceptions.

One exception is the narrator of the earlier novel who is looking back to the summer of 1948 and so we already know his back story (assuming one has read the novel first). The other exception is the most enigmatic character in the novel. Oh, he appears in nearly all the short stories in Justice, but none is told from his point of view.

I found that odd – but intriguing. So I went looking for an explanation; and I found one. In an interview Watson said that he could never find his way into the character’s mind and that was the reason for the omission.

You often hear writers say that characters sometimes take on a life of their own and thus the writer is forced to follow along. But here is a complex character who not only remains an enigma to the reader, but also to his creator.

I recommend both of these books, for Watson is a talented writer. However, even though each can be enjoyed as a standalone, I think that reading both adds to the enjoyment of reading each.

MONTANA 1948 by Larry Watson

From the summer of my twelfth year I carry a series of images more vivid and lasting than any others of my boyhood and indelible beyond all attempts the years make to erase or fade them ….

A young Sioux woman lies on a bed in our house. She is feverish, delirious, and coughing so hard I am afraid she will die.

My father kneels on the kitchen floor, begging my mother to help him. It’s a summer night and the room is brightly lit. Insects cluster around the light fixtures, and the pleading quality in my father’s voice reminds me of those insects – high-pitched, insistent, frantic. It is a sound I have never heard coming from him.

My mother stands in our kitchen on a hot, windy day. The windows are open, and Mother’s lace curtains blow into the room. Mother holds my father’s Ithaca twelve-gauge shotgun, and since she is a small, slender woman, she has trouble finding the balance point of its heavy length. Nevertheless, she has watched my father and other men often enough to know where the shells go, and she loads them until the gun will hold no more. Loading the gun is the difficult part. Once the shells are in, any fool can figure out how to fire it. Which she intends to do.

There are others – the sound of breaking glass, the odor of rotting vegetables …. I offer these images in the order in which they occurred, yet the events that produced these sights and sounds are so rapid and tumbled together that any chronological sequence seems wrong.

The above is not a spoiler since it is the first thing written on the first page of Larry Watson’s novel, one that has been characterized as a literary page-turner. Those are fairly rare, perhaps almost as rare as literary Westerns. Well, how about a literary page-turner set in the West? Now, that is virgin territory. But as the title tells us, this is not a historical Western. So, readers that do not enjoy Westerns need not shy away from it.

I read this soon after it was published in 1993. It is true that one can’t judge a book by its title or its cover, and I didn’t do that. No, I judged it by both its title and its cover (an oil painting of the Yellowstone valley). Only when I began reading did I discover that it was a coming of age story. For me, that was an added bonus.

At some point I read it a second time and then recently I gave it a third reading. Now, I do read quite a lot of books twice, but it really has to resonate with me if I turn to it a third time.

The narrator is middle-aged David Hayden looking back to the summer of 1948 when he was twelve years old. It was a summer of lost innocence. It was a summer in which he learned that truth is not always what we believe and that power can be abused, but those are not the hardest lessons he learned. Because of a scandal, a murder, and a suicide, he also learned that doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it is especially hard when the choice lies between family loyalty on one hand and justice on the other. 

The book expertly evokes a time and a place in prose that has been variously described as ‘understated,’ ‘precise,’ ‘clear,’ ‘crisp,’ and/or ‘restrained.’ I would accept those, but would add elegant.

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“Part family memoir, part psychological drama, part historical adventure tale, part elegy to a place and a lost way of life ….”
-- David Huddle, 1993 National Fiction Prize Judge

Larry Watson