Though
thoroughly shunted off the front page by the European war, Mr. Roosevelt continues
to see visions of dreams of 1916… Now, what would Mr. Roosevelt in his third
term, if he got it? By the law of his nature and that of his political
career—he must seek notoriety, but how? … He would become a “war president.”
The Argus was simply restating what many people had come to understand
about Roosevelt. He was a man who loved war… and actually reviled the idea of
peace. “In strict
confidence,” he wrote a friend before the Spanish American War, "
I would welcome almost any #war, for I think this country needs one.”
War produced #heroes he believed, and above all, he needed
to be a hero. “None of our men of peace,” he once reflected, can rank
with heroes of war.” The European war would give him the chance to become the
hero again, if only the bookish, peace mongering, effeminate Woodrow Wilson would allow him to raise a
volunteer regiment, like the “Rough Rider” company he assembled for the only
real military experience of his life; three months in Cuba, 1898.
The fact that he had
little actual experience on military service would not prevent him from
promoting himself as a man capable of leading hundreds of men into harms
way. Theodore Roosevelt joined the
New York National Guard on 1 August 1882. T.R. was commissioned a 2nd
Lieutenant, B Company, 8th Regiment. He was promoted to Captain, and resigned
his commission in 1886. Four years of part-time, once a month maneuvers did not
equip him for Cuba.
For
the three months TR was involved with the volunteer Calvary Company known as
the #RoughRiders, the unit suffered the highest causality of any in the Cuban theater. Upon return he wrote his friend Cecile Spring Rice, “I have played it in bull
luck this summer. First to get to go to war, then to get out of it…”
He had gotten what he
wanted. Massive publicity, a slight wound on his hand, and he had killed a
human being—he shot a retreating Spanish soldier in the back. He was not
awarded the Medal of Honor that he lobbied so desperately for after the war because the army
board did not find his service above of that of an ordinary soldier. It wouldn’t be
until 2001—when Roosevelt's reputation had morphed from what fellow offers in Cuba had described at best as a mediocre performance into the greatest military hero American had ever produced— President
Bill Clinton would award the highest military honor the U.S. could bestow.
It was commonly, although not popularly, broadcast by soldiers in the field the day Roosevelt "took" San Juan Hill (which was actually called Kettle Hill before Roosevelt's media campaign).
According to
historian and Roosevelt critic Richard Franklin Pettigrew,
over 100 soldiers testified in sworn affidavits, Roosevelt was not even present at the battle, but that it was the African American, “Buffalo Soldiers,” of the 10th
Cavalry, 3rd
Cavalry, and the Gatling gun and Hotchkiss machine
gun that supported
Roosevelt’s amateur 1st Volunteer Cavalry in securing the objective.
In 1914, Roosevelt would again
attempt to parley his reputation as a military genius and strategist, which—as
critic Edward Garstin Smith wrote,"had the tinsel of stage-setting" as he played "a sort of
serio-comic tragedian who has interested part of his audience, amazed another,
and disgusted the remainder"—in to a third term as the President of the
United States.
No comments:
Post a Comment