Theodore Roosevelt’s bold and bountiful reputation as an American icon had its genesis with the Rough Riders in the short, bloody but significant Spanish American War to free the Cubans from the tyranny of Spain. This week in 1898 launched TR into history.
He was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, but following the explosion of the Battleship Maine in Cuba’s Santiago Harbor, he resigned to recruit a group of volunteers for the First United States Volunteer Cavalry.
Thirty-eight-year old newly appointed Lt. Colonel Roosevelt served under Col. Leonard Wood. Twenty-three thousand American men, from aristocratic Eastern Ivy League graduates to flinty Western cowboys, applied for the regiment.
An adoring press gave the regiment many creative names before settling on the alliterative “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.”
It was on this dated in 1898, that Lt. Colonel Roosevelt and his men charged a heavily fortified rampart in the San Juan Hills. The battle changed his life.
“We will have this war for the freedom of Cuba. The blood of women and children who have perished by the hundred thousand in hideous misery, lies at our door! The instant I received the order I sprang on my horse and my crowded hour began – the heaviest loss suffered by any regiment in the cavalry division. I suppose every man tends to brag about his regiment, but it seems to me that there never was a regiment better worth bragging about than ours. I am proud without measure because it is a typical American regiment. The foundation of the regiment was the cowpuncher. The men of the West, horsemen, riders and herders of the cattle, have been the backbone of the regiment, which demonstrates that Uncle Sam has another reserve of fighting men to call upon if necessity arises.” America discovered a new hero on that portal to the 20th century. Biographer Edmond Morris observed; Theodore Roosevelt emerged from the battlefield “The most famous man in the world.”
Dakota Datebook: Remembering Theodore Roosevelt is written and performed by Steve Stark. Funding provided by the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation.
