The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [336]
Unable to pursue them for an impenetrable wall of vines, Roosevelt ordered his men back to the main trail, where the Mausers were whining as viciously as ever. Although he did not fully realize it, he had succeeded brilliantly in his first military skirmish. By engaging and driving back the enemy’s foremost flank, he had exposed troops holding the top of the ridge to cross-fire from the entire line of Rough Riders, and frontal attack from General Young’s regulars.59 The way was now open for a final grand charge by all the American forces, with Roosevelt commanding the extreme left, Wood commanding the center, and the regulars on the right advancing under orders from General Wheeler himself. About nine hundred men broke out into the open and ran up the valley (Roosevelt stopping to pick up three Mauser cartridges as souvenirs for his children),60 their rifle-cracks drowned in the booming of four Hotchkiss mountain-guns. Like ants shaken from a biscuit, some fifteen hundred Spaniards leaped from their rock-forts along the ridge and scattered in the direction of Santiago. “We’ve got the damn Yankees on the run!” roared Fighting Joe.61
By 9:20 A.M. the Battle of Las Guásimas was over. An exhausted major looked at his watch, shook it incredulously, and held it up to his ear. He was sure that the engagement had lasted at least six hours.62 Actually it had been only two.
A few minutes later the first of General Lawton’s infantrymen arrived and found that their services were not needed. Lawton was furious. According to one report he accused Wheeler of deliberately stealing a march on him. “I was given command of the advance, and I want you to know that I propose to keep it, by God, even if I have to put a guard to keep other troops in the rear!”63 Fighting Joe was philosophical, for he received in due time the congratulations of General Shafter. As long as that leisurely officer remained on board the Segurança, Wheeler, not Lawton, was the senior general ashore, and he could issue and interpret orders as he saw fit. For the moment he was satisfied. He had driven back the Spaniards; his bandy-legged cavalry had outmarched the infantry; best of all, he had avenged Appomattox. Such triumph was cheap at a cost of sixteen Americans dead and fifty-two wounded, to Spain’s figures of ten and eight.64 Others, gazing at the sightless eyes of Hamilton Fish, or the shattered spine of Edward Marshall (writhing in agony as he dictated his dispatch to Stephen Crane),65 might wonder if the Battle of Las Guásimas had been really worth it.
“ONE OBJECT AT LEAST was accomplished,” wrote Leslie’s correspondent Burr McIntosh, whom Roosevelt had also left behind at Siboney. “The names of several men were in the newspapers before the names of several others, and a number of newspaper men, who were sure to write things in the proper spirit, were given the necessary ‘tip’.”66 Also the necessary flattery: Roosevelt was quick to cite Richard Harding Davis in his official report, and even tried to get the Associated Press to mention Davis’s gallantry while the battle was still going on.67 Davis, who tended to treat friends as they treated him, responded with laudatory accounts of the battle, earning praise for “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” as its only apparent heroes. In Washington there was talk of promoting Roosevelt to the rank of brigadier general, and in New York a coalition of independent Republicans announced that they intended to nominate him for Governor in September.68
Whether the praise was deserved or not, Roosevelt’s personal views of his role in the Las Guásimas victory were modest, and remained so always. He liked to joke about his inability to see the enemy, his difficulty running with a sword swinging between his legs, and his policy of firing at any target that was not a tree. However, “as throughout the morning I had preserved a specious aspect of wisdom, and had commanded first one wing and then the other wing, the fight really was a capital thing for me, for practically all the men had