The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [327]
“Not since the campaign of Crassus against the Parthians,” in Roosevelt’s later opinion, “has there been so criminally incompetent a General as Shafter.”52 Yet it was hard in the early days of June 1898 not to sympathize with that harassed officer, for President McKinley was proving an exceedingly erratic Commander-in-Chief. Bent, apparently, on acting as his own Secretary of War, he had been sending Shafter contradictory orders ever since the Battle of Manila. Dewey’s overwhelming victory had turned both the President and Secretary Long into war-hawks overnight; their first reaction to the news had been to endorse Roosevelt’s naval/military invasion plan, over the objection of Commanding General Miles, on 2 May.53 General Shafter was ordered to prepare for immediate departure from Tampa (although the Volunteers were still in training), and on 8 May the President had increased the project landing force from ten thousand to seventy thousand. But then McKinley discovered that there was not enough ammunition in the United States to keep such an army firing for one hour in battle, and an urgent cancellation order flew to Tampa.54 Shafter’s force was scaled down to twenty-five thousand by the end of May, and the telegrams from Washington became querulous: “When will you leave? Answer at once.” Shafter wired back that he could not sail before 4 June.55
Roosevelt happened to ride into town that day, the morning after his midnight arrival in camp. One look at the half-empty transport ships swinging idly at anchor in Tampa Bay—nine miles away at the end of a single railroad track—was enough to convince him, if not General Shafter, that the Fifth Corps would not sail for another few days at least. “No words can paint the confusion,” he wrote in his diary on 5 June. “No head; a breakdown of both the railroad and military system of the country.”56
While train after overloaded train jostled for possession of the track, and desperate quartermasters broke open dozens of unmarked cars to see if they contained guns, uniforms, grain, or medicinal brandy, the Rough Riders joined other cavalry regiments at drill on the limitless flats. Richard Harding Davis escorted Edith Roosevelt and a party of foreign attachés to watch some formal exercises on 6 June.57
Half-aware that he was witnessing the last great mounted maneuvers in American military history, Davis regretted that more of his countrymen could not be there to enjoy the spectacle. For over an hour two thousand riders galloped back and forth, sweeping through the spindly trees as waves comb through reeds. A cool onshore breeze seemed at times to drive them on, at others to break them up into eddies and ripples of faster and slower motion. The air rang with cheers and the steely percussion of swords (the Rough Riders, flamboyant as ever, brandishing Cuban machetes instead of regulation sabers), and finally, in response to a barked order, the regiments deployed into shoulder-to-shoulder file abreast. “There will be few such chances again,” Davis wrote, “to see a brigade of cavalry advancing through a forest of palms in a line two miles long.…”58
Later that morning Roosevelt received the shocking news that General Shafter had decided to send no horses to Cuba except those belonging to senior officers.59 What was more, there would be room on the ships for only eight of the twelve Rough Rider troops. If the remaining volunteers wished to charge to glory, they would have to do it on foot.
THE NEXT THIRTY-SIX HOURS were not pleasant for Wood or Roosevelt. They had to decide who would go and who would stay, and had to endure the sight of officers and troopers alike bursting into tears on receiving the bad news. The lucky ones, numbering some 560 men, could hardly bemoan the loss of their horses. “We would