The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [199]
San Antonio was a fillip to Roosevelt. He liked being dependent on his own horse and seeing sagebrush. No doctor or pharmacist could have uplifted him better than the opportunity to lead lineal descendents of Andrew Jackson’s fighting force in the Battle of New Orleans. Whether a volunteer was a Fort Worth bronco buster, a Newport polo swell, or a Tucson shopkeeper, each of the Rough Riders shared traits with the others: they all shot straight, were in good physical condition, hated Spain, and were willing to mobilize quickly. “I suppose about 95 per cent of the men are of native birth,” Roosevelt wrote. “But we have a few from everywhere including a score of Indians, and about as many of Mexican origin from New Mexico.”19
Many fine firsthand accounts have been written of Roosevelt’s arrival in San Antonio, colorful portrayals of him pacing around like a bantam rooster in a new fawn uniform with canary-yellow trim, sweat constantly beading on his forehead from the Texas heat. The regiment’s chant soon became, “Rough, tough, we’re the stuff. We want to fight and we can’t get enough.”20 Throughout San Antonio signs were hung welcoming each state and territory and offering hospitality.21 The Menger Hotel—built twenty-three years after the fall of the Alamo—housed a replica of the pub inside Great Britain’s House of Lords; bartenders used to give out free shots of whiskey, in solidarity with the men. (The hotel later renamed the room the Roosevelt Bar.) However, Colonel Wood upbraided the much younger Roosevelt for purchasing beer kegs for volunteers. “Sir,” Roosevelt apologized when reprimanded, “I consider myself the damndest ass within ten miles of this camp.”22
Before Roosevelt headed down to San Antonio for the training, he gave away his Elkhorn Ranch to Sylvane Ferris and sold his last head of cattle. (He had visited the ranch only infrequently in 1893, 1894, and 1896.23) Roosevelt nevertheless differentiated himself in San Antonio from the other Ivy Leaguers in the Rough Riders. Without falsity, he presented himself as both a Knickerbocker and a wilderness hunter to the rank and file training along the San Antonio River. As Owen Wister put it, Roosevelt embodied both the East (as a socialite) and the West (as a cowboy). Regularly, Roosevelt jogged and rode horseback for miles in the lean May sunshine with his regiment, not far from the Alamo. Many of the Rough Riders had fought against the Comanche and Apache, and had won. Roosevelt knew that in cow country, along the wild borderlands with Mexico, men gave each other nicknames like Red Jim, Bear Jones, or Dutchey; he was honored to be called “the Colonel” by everybody.24
II
The Rough Riders eventually boarded a slow-moving train to Tampa Bay on May 30, with Arizona providing the regimental colors. Before the departure from San Antonio Roosevelt worried that the warhorses, ears pricked, snorting, and rattling the boards in the railcar stalls, were being bullied and whipped as they were loaded onto the railcars by supposed horse masters. The harassing shouts of “Yahah!” bothered him. Taking charge of the situation, Roosevelt waved the others away and loaded the ponies properly into their compartments for the journey to Florida.25 Back in 1894 Owen Wister had written a short story, “Balaam and Pedro,” in Harper’s Monthly about the abuse of a horse he encountered on a western trek; the Wyoming character who stopped the inhumane treatment became the hero of The Virginian. (Wister, in fact, praised Henry Bergh’s movement to prevent cruelty to animals in his 1905 novel.26) Now Roosevelt, like the protagonist of Wister’s tale, was protecting horses under his command.
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt in his Rough Riders uniform.
T.R. in Rough Riders uniform. (Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library)
Once the train reached Galveston the dry heat was replaced by muggy