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

THE BAREFOOT BRIGADE by Douglas C. Jones

"One of the best Civil War novels I have ever read." -- James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

Martin Hasford, torn between his love of his family and devotion to their welfare on the one hand and a sense of loyalty toward his state on the other, reluctantly enlists in the Confederate army.

It is his hope that his unit will remain in Arkansas and defend it from a Yankee invasion.  But as fate would have it, his regiment is sent to Virginia and, as we saw in Jones' Elkhorn Tavern, a major battle erupts back home in his backyard.  To add insult to injury, Hasford learns that his daughter has married a wounded Yankee officer. 

Meanwhile, his regiment sees action in some of the biggest, most significant, most lethal battles of the war -- Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness.  They are even transferred west of the Appalachians for a period of time where they fight in the battle of Chickamauga.

Antietam: the Civil War's deadliest day

Among Hasford's closest friends in his company are the Fawley brothers -- Zack and Noah -- and a Black Welshman by the name of Liverpool Morgan.  This is their story, too.

In a brief introduction, Jones writes a perfect summation of the book:

This is a story of the common soldiers.  It is not a story of causes or politics or social systems, not of generals and grand strategy, but of simple soldiers and how they were in some ways amazingly different from modern soldiers, and in others amazingly the same.  There were a great many like these who, despite all odds, at least attempted to do whatever was asked of them.

"...this is a sturdy, above-average Civil War fiction -- strong on unromanticized detail and day-to-day grit." -- Kirkus Review

ELKHORN TAVERN (1980) by Douglas C. Jones

"The characters are unforgettable, the atmosphere wonderfully detailed, the action and suspense skillfully maintained." -- Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee 

Beginning with this book, Jones launched what would become a series of novels recounting the lives of the fictional Hasford-Pay families.  The major theme that runs through them is a sense of family loyalty and solidity, especially during times of stress and social change.  And what could be more stressful or cause more social change than the Civil War, especially if a major battle were fought in your very neighborhood?

It is 1862 and Martin Hasford is away from his home and family serving in the Confederate army in Virginia and Tennessee. Left at home in the Ozark hills of northeastern Arkansas is his wife Ora who must protect their few animals and possessions, but more important, their two teen-aged children, Calpurnia and Roman.

Among her many burdens is the necessity of fending off the depredations of roving bands of Jayhawkers and bushwhackers who are roaming freely around the countryside while indiscriminately stealing for their personal gain.

If that isn't enough, the battle of Pea Ridge, also known as the battle of Elkhorn Tavern, erupts on and around the Hasford farm. Even though the family sympathizes with the Confederacy, Ora provides shelter for a young Yankee officer, Alan Eben Pay, who has been seriously wounded. Much to the dismay of Roman, it soon becomes evident that his sister is attracted to Allan and that the feeling is mutual.

It is also a coming-of-age story for young Roman, who, as the story progresses, takes on more and more of the responsibilities of the man of the house.

Modern day view looking from Pea Ridge toward a field where ferocious fighting occurred during the battle of Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern)

A major portion of the battle was fought around Elkhorn Tavern, which served as a hospital during and after the battle.  If you look closely at the roof of the reconstructed building you can see the basis for the name of the tavern

"Douglas Jones brings two gigantic themes in American literature together -- the raw struggle for survival on the American frontier and the grand martial conflict of the American Civil War -- and he successfully weaves them into one seamless story." -- Jack Trammel, Civil War Book Review

QUICK HITS II

The following are some quick looks at a few books dealing with war that I think deserve a 5 out of 5 rating:


WOE TO LIVE ON, Daniel Woodrell, (originally published in 1986)

 

This is early Woodrell and a departure from what would come later.  Woe To Live On is a work of fiction, but is nevertheless an accurate depiction of the dirty little guerrilla conflict fought in Missouri during the Civil War in which nobody won and everybody lost.  The title of the movie based on the book was RIDE WITH THE DEVIL (1999). 

Woodrell, who lives in the Missouri Ozarks, knows the history and the territory. Later he would become best known for stories and novels that he characterized as country noir.


THE YOUNG LIONS, Irwin Shaw, (originally published in 1948)

I had long believed that there were three great American World War II novels that shared the common characteristics of being written by veterans of that conflict and being published during its immediate aftermath.

They are: The Naked and the Dead (1948) by Norman Mailer; The Caine Mutiny (1951) by Herman Wouk; and From Here to Eternity (1951) by James Jones. But I need to add a fourth book that belongs in the same company: The Young Lions (l949) by Irwin Shaw, a book that was originally overshadowed by the others.

I first read The Young Lions about twenty-five years ago. Based on my memory I ranked it below the aforementioned books. However, as a result of my recent re-reading of the book, I see that it was better than I remembered.

With one exception, these novels are enriched by the fact that they are based upon the writers’ personal experiences during the war. The exception is The Naked and the Dead. Mailer did serve in the Pacific, but saw little combat and ended the war as a cook in the Philippines. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does mean that his classic story of a reconnaissance mission on a Pacific island was not based on his personal experience.

One of the ways that I judge my enjoyment of a book (or a movie) is whether or not I am willing to revisit it. Well, I have now read The Young Lions twice and the others three times each. Twenty-five years from now I plan to read Shaw’s book for a third time.


THE BIG WAR, Anton Myrer, (originally published in 1957)

 

 A reviewer for The Saturday Review made the claim that The Big War was "incomparably the finest novel to come out of World War II..." I don't quite agree with that evaluation (after all, I have read it only twice), but I do think it is a classic.  Like the finest novels dealing with that conflict, it was written by a veteran who was able to draw upon his personal experience.

The film adaptation is titled IN LOVE AND WAR (1958).


QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE, George MacDonald Fraser, (originally published in 1994)

 

A memoir written about a young British soldier's experiences in the Burma campaign during World War II. Skillfully written, it reads like a novel. And no wonder. It was written by the author of the hugely popular and critically acclaimed "Flashman" series of historical novels.


 THE FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, Guy Sajer, (originally published in 1965)

 

The author makes the claim that The Forgotten Soldier is an account of his experiences as a teenager in the German army fighting on the Eastern front against Soviet Russia.  Some experts believe that it is an authentic memoir while others dispute that claim and insist that it is a novel. Whether memoir or novel, it is a powerful book.


Once Upon a Distant War: David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett--Young War Correspondents and Their Early Vietnam Battles, William Prochnau (originally published in 1996)

 

The following individuals should read this book: 1) anyone interested in the Vietnam War; 2) anyone interested in journalism; 3) anyone not interested in the Vietnam War; 4) anyone not interested in journalism; 4) everyone.






 

THE SON: A Novel by Phillipp Meyer

Phillipp Meyer’s The Son, a sprawling multigenerational epic set in Texas (which is always a good place to locate epics, especially the sprawling variety), begins with the family patriarch, Col. Eli McCullough. 


COL. ELI MCCULLOUGH
“Most will be familiar with the date of my birth. The Declaration of Independence that bore the Republic of Texas out of Mexican tyranny was ratified March 2, 1836, in a humble shack at the edge of the Brazos. Half the signatories were malarial; the other half had come to Texas to escape a hangman’s noose. I was the first male child of this new republic.”

He grows up to become one tough hombre. He has not only seen it all, he has lived it. In his lifetime, he was a Comanche captive, Texas Ranger, Confederate colonel, cattle baron, and oil tycoon. Obviously, it had to be a long life -- and it was – one hundred years.  How a young helpless boy at the mercy of his Comanche captors eventually became a wealthy tyrant wielding almost absolute power is at the heart of the novel.

PETER MCCULLOUGH
“My birthday. Today, without the help of any whiskey, I have reached the conclusion: I am no one. Looking back over my forty-five years I see nothing worthwhile – what I had mistaken for a soul appears more like a black abyss – I have allowed others to shape me as they pleased. To ask the Colonel I am the worst son he has ever had….”

Ron Charles perfectly characterizes Peter in his review in the Washington Post as "a prairie Hamlet among the Texas Medicis." There is no way that the son can possibly surpass the father when it comes to achievements, or does he even want to. Instead, he is the novel's conscience and its critic. He deplores his father's status as a giant in the land, but most of all he hates how his father has achieved his status and the harsh measures he resorts to in order to maintain it. There is no reward for such views. In fact, most people see him as a weak man -- and that includes his father.

JEANNE ANNE MCCULLOUGH
“If she were a better person she would not leave her family a dime; a few million, maybe, something to pay for college or if they got sick. She had grown up knowing that if a drought went on another year, or the ticks got worse, or the flies, if any single thing went wrong, the family would not eat. Of course, they had oil by then; it was an illusion. But her father had acted as if it was true, and she had believed it, and so it was.

“…even as a child she’d been mostly alone. Her family had owned the town. People made no sense to her. Men, with whom she had everything in common, did not want her around. Women, with whom she had nothing in common, smiled too much, laughed too loud, and mostly reminded her of small dogs, their lives lost in interior decorating and other peoples’ outfits. There had never been a place for a person like her.”

If the Colonel had a soul mate, it was his great-granddaughter, Jeanne Anne. He had no respect and little love for his son, Peter, or his grandson, Charles, who was Jeanne Anne’s father. However, he doted on Jeanne Anne and she, who never knew her grandfather and also had little respect for her father, returned her great-grandfather’s affection.

As far as the Colonel was concerned, Peter was too soft and idealistic and in his own way, so was Charles, who was too tied to cattle and the land. The Colonel understood that down through the ages through war and conquest the land had been won and lost many times and he believed that it was subject to occurring again, that historical progress was a matter of destroying what had come before. Therefore, one should extract what one could from the land while one could. Charles wanted only to be a cattleman, but cattle ranching was a losing proposition. The Colonel’s solution – and Jeanne Anne’s – was to drill, drill for oil.

Spindletop, January 10, 1901; Texas' first big one

Comanche warriors, 1892

Despite his capture as a boy by the Comanches and their initial cruel treatment of him, the colonel learned not only to respect them, but also to view them as family.  They were practically the only people that he held in esteem. 

Certainly not the Texas Rangers, with whom he was forced to serve.
  
“Rangering was not a career so much as a way to die young and get paid nothing for doing it; your chances of surviving a year with a company were about the same as not.  The lucky ones ending up in an unmarked hole.  The rest lost their topknot. By then the days of the ace units … were over.  What was left was an assortment of bankrupt soldiers and adventure seekers, convicts and God’s abandons.”

Early Rangers

He viewed the poor  Mexicans of the area as people whose labor was to be exploited.  But he also believed that the prosperous Mexicans who owned land were to be exploited as well.  He believed that their time had passed and he viewed their property as fair game for the taking -- and he took.  

His opinion of most of the whites in the area wasn't much higher either, with one exception. He had good things to say about the German settlers living around the town of Fredericksburg:

"Before the Germans came, it was thought impossible to make butter in a southern climate.  It was also thought impossible to grow wheat.  A slave economy does that to the human mind, but the Germans, who had not been told otherwise, arrived and began churning first-rate butter and raising heavy crops of the noble cereal, which they sold to their dumbfounded neighbors at a high profit.

“Your German had no allergy to work, which was conspicuous when you looked at his possessions.  If, upon passing some field, you noticed the soil was level and the rows straight, the land belonged to a German.  If the field was full of rocks, if the rows appeared to have been laid by a blind Indian, if it was December and the cotton had not been picked, you knew the land was owned by one of the local whites, who had drifted over from Tennessee and hoped that the bounties of Dame Nature would, by some witchery, yield him up a slave.”

THE AUTHOR
Phillipp Meyer is one of those overnight successes whose success was not overnight.  His first published novel was the critically acclaimed American Rust, but it was his third novel.  The first he didn't attempt to sell and the second he couldn't sell.

Now, The Son has garnered even more praise than his debut, even to the extent of being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  What comes next?  In an interview, he said that he planned his next book to be combined with his first two in what he called "an American trilogy."  He gave no clues regarding the subject matter of the third book.

 

******
REVIEWS:

"The greatest things about The Son are its scope and ambition, not its strictly literary mettle. It’s an enveloping, extremely well-wrought, popular novel with passionate convictions about the people, places and battles that it conjures. That ought to be enough." -- Janet Maslin, New York Times 


"I could no more convey the scope of The Son than I could capture the boundless plains of Texas. With this family that stretches from our war with Mexico to our invasion of Iraq, Meyer has given us an extraordinary orchestration of American history, a testament to the fact that all victors erect their empires on bones bleached by the light of self-righteousness." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

"These are not heroic transplants from the present, disguised in buckskin and loincloths.  They are unrepentant, greedy, often homicidal, lost souls, blindly groping their way through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." -- Will Blythe, New York Times Book Review


"Meyer's tale is vast, volcanic, prodigious in violence, intermittently hard to fathom, not infrequently hard to stomach, and difficult to ignore." -- Boston Globe

"The Son drives home one hard and fascinating truth about American life: None of us belong here.  We just have it on loan until the next civilization comes around." -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"It may not be the Great American Novel, but it certainly is a damn good one." -- Entertainment Weekly

Now for an irritating fly in the soothing ointment of praise:

"On one level, this large-canvas family saga by award-winning novelist Philipp Meyer resembles nothing more than a patchwork of derivative fiction — sort of Edna Ferber meets Thomas Berger meets James Michener, with a dash of Dallas and a touch of The Big Valley thrown in for flavor.

"It’s also a none-too-subtle bashing of Texas history, myths and legends, with a derisive editorial condemnation of all things Texan or Western." -- Clay Reynolds, Dallas Morning News
  
I must add that other reviews that I read in other Texas publications were positive.  In fact, the above is the only negative review that I found anywhere.