The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [321]
On Saturday the President issued a call for 125,000 volunteers to swell the ranks of the 28,000-man Regular Army. Included in this general summons was an extraordinary provision for three regiments “to be composed exclusively of frontiersmen possessing special qualifications as horsemen and marksmen.”101 Secretary Alger would not have to look far for someone to be colonel of the first regiment, since the nation’s most prominent frontiersman, horseman, and marksman was already pounding on his desk at the War Department. That same day, he offered the command to Theodore Roosevelt.102
As long ago as 1886 Roosevelt had talked of leading a troop of “harum-scarum roughriders” into battle, without much conviction that such a dream would ever come true. Now, miraculously, it had; fate seemed to be adapting itself to his own peculiar abilities. Here at last was supreme opportunity for personal and military glory. Yet with supreme self-control Roosevelt turned the offer down. He told the Secretary that while he had been a captain in the New York National Guard, he lacked experience in hard military organization. He was sure he could “learn to command the regiment in a month,” but that very month might make the difference between fighting at the front or languishing behind and missing the war. He would be happy to serve as lieutenant colonel if the colonelcy went to Leonard Wood.103
After some deliberation, Alger accepted this arrangement.104
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Sunday, 24 April, Secretary Long dispatched the order that Dewey had been expecting since Roosevelt’s “Keep full of coal” cable of two months before. Within forty-eight hours of receipt the Commodore put out of Hong Kong and vanished into the vastness of the China Sea.105
WAR PROPER WAS DECLARED by Spain the same day. Icily formal to the last, the United States replied on 25 April with a declaration backdated to 23 April.106 But by now Roosevelt was too busy to be bothered with diplomatic trivialities. As chairman of the new Naval War Board, he was responsible for putting into execution the war plan which he had argued before President McKinley the previous September.107 As second-in-command of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, he had to assist Leonard Wood in recruiting and equipping the new regiment.
Although neither man had yet received his commission, the announcement of their appointments was made on 25 April, and by 27 April sacks of applications were thumping in from all parts of the country.108 The majority of these applications (which eventually numbered twenty-three thousand, enough for an entire division) were addressed to Roosevelt. He, Secretary Alger, the President, and Congress might imagine Wood to be the true commander of the regiment, but the American public was not fooled. Already Western newspapers were hailing the formation of “Teddy’s Terrors,” and every day brought a fresh crop of suggested names, all with the same alliterative connotation: “Teddy’s Texas Tarantulas,” “Teddy’s Gilded Gang,” “Teddy’s Cowboy Contingent,” “Teddy’s Riotous Rounders” (and then, gradually, as the Lieutenant Colonel let it be known he did not like the nickname), “Roosevelt’s Rough ’Uns,” and “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.” The last name stuck, and was soon common usage. “Colonel Wood,” commented the New York Press, “is lost sight of entirely in the effulgence of Teethadore.”109
Wood, fortunately, was an offstage personality who did not mind operating in the shadow that surrounds the spotlight. Roosevelt could grin and posture