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was essentially an exercise in showing the flag.6 America was inching closer to war with Spain. When on February 15 the Maine exploded in a fireball, killing 262 U.S. sailors, Roosevelt’s war fervor increased. He blamed Spain for the explosion. While President McKinley ordered a report to find out whether the Maine had been sabotaged by Spain or whether a short-circuit fire had blown up the gunpowder kegs, Roosevelt grew impatient. Believing that the U.S. Navy was in a perfect state of readiness, the best it had been since the Civil War, he wanted the Spanish forts in Cuba reduced to burned wood and rubble. All-out war against Spain, he believed, should be declared at once. “Cuban independence,” no longer a remote concept, had become Roosevelt’s new rallying cry and his response to those who advocated peace at any price. “Personally I cannot understand how the bulk of our people can tolerate the hideous infamy that has attended the last two years of Spanish rule in Cuba,” Roosevelt wrote to William Sheffield Cowles, “and still more how they can tolerate the treacherous destruction of the Maine and the murder of our men!”7

Pledging to go and fight in Cuba himself—even though he was nearing forty and had six children to help raise—Roosevelt famously declared that the cautious President McKinley had “no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.”8 Warring with his own administration, Roosevelt said that come hell or high water he was going to fight on the front lines in Cuba or Puerto Rico (or even the Philippines if need be). He wrote to Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, a Bostonian physician with a world-class collection of Japanese art, on March 29, 1898, “A man’s usefulness demands on living up to his ideals in so far as he can. Now, I have consistently preached what our opponents are pleased to call ‘jingo doctrines’ for a good many years. One of the commonest taunts directed at men like myself is that we are armchair and parlor jingoes who wish to see others do what we only advocate doing. I care very little for such a taunt, except as it affects my usefulness, but I cannot afford to disregard the fact that my power for good, whatever it may be, would be gone if I didn’t try to live up to the doctrines I have tried to preach.”9

Less than two weeks later, President McKinley reluctantly asked Congress for a declaration to interfere in Cuban affairs. Roosevelt was all for the declaration but emphatically against the annexation of Cuba, unless Havana wanted it.10 Congress became engulfed in a heated debate. Was war the right choice? Should America defend its honor in Cuba? These questions became academic when, on April 23, Spain declared war on the United States. President McKinley called for three regiments of volunteers to supplement the depleted army. Then on May Day, out of the clear blue sky, astounding news arrived. The previous day Commander Dewey—known for his fearless firefights along the Mississippi River as a Union naval lieutenant during the Civil War under Admiral David Farragut’s command—had crushed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, without losing a single U.S. sailor in battle. A few days later, on May 6, Roosevelt simply resigned as assistant secretary so he could implement the Kimball Plan, defend the Monroe Doctrine, and revenge the Maine. In quick order he received an army commission, purchased an appropriate outfit at Brooks Brothers, and departed for drill training in San Antonio, Texas. Nobody in official Washington could believe how childishly he was acting. Bigelow, who shared with Roosevelt a love of jujitsu,*11 wrote to Henry Cabot Lodge, “If T.R. goes, the country will not trust him again.”12 Seconding that opinion was Henry Adams, who asked mutual friends, “Is he quite mad?”13

Roosevelt became so distracted by the prospect of war that for the first time since the founding of the Boone and Crockett Club, he missed its annual dinner that January. The concept of American imperial ambitions consumed Roosevelt to the point of monomania. Pestering everybody he knew who was in a position to help, Roosevelt kept