Reference
- Rough RidersVolunteer cavalry serving with the United States Army during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
When the United States went to war against Spain in 1898, the U.S. Army was small. This was in keeping with the traditional American view against a large standing army, an attitude held since colonial times. Therefore, when war broke out in April, it was necessary to raise an army as quickly as possible. Americans did so in the same fashion they had always done, not through conscription but by raising volunteer units.
Although most of the units raised were infantry, some cavalry units were also formed. What came to be designated the First Volunteer Cavalry was officially under the command of Regular Army Colonel Leonard Wood. However, its highest profile member and the one responsible for its character was Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had long advocated action against the Spanish over their actions in the Cuban Revolution, and now that war had come, he was not about to let others do all the fighting. Roosevelt believed that one should participate in the actions one advocates, so he quickly resigned his position as assistant secretary of the navy in order to join his friend Leonard Wood in San Antonio, Texas, where the First Volunteer Cavalry was forming in early May. Friends of Roosevelt flocked from across the country to join their comrade, and he attracted a mixed lot of recruits. Fellow polo players from Ivy League universities joined cowboys from the Dakotas with whom Roosevelt had worked in his younger days.
What made the Rough Riders so famous was not really their actions, but their publicity. Almost as soon as Roosevelt returned to the United States after the war, he began writing a book on his experience in Cuba, and The Rough Riders was an instant bestseller. It was during his campaign for national office (vice president in 1900, president in 1904) that Roosevelt called on his comrades from Cuba to speak for his cause. The press constantly asked him about the charge up San Juan Hill, and he finally got tired of correcting them and accepted the misinformation without contradiction. Thus, the highest profile unit in the war that brought the United States to international power became famous for something it never did: mount a cavalry charge up San Juan Hill.
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Who Were the Rough Riders? | National Geographic
- Who Were the Rough Riders?Teddy Roosevelt assembles a group of men in the First United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment.
Perspectives
The Crowded Hour
A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019 SELECTION The dramatic story of the most famous regiment in American history: the Rough Riders, a motley group of soldiers led by Theodore Roosevelt, whose daring exploits marked the beginning of American imperialism in the 20th century. When America declared war on Spain in 1898, the US Army had just 26,000 men, spread around the country--hardly an army at all. In desperation, the Rough Riders were born. A unique group of volunteers, ranging from Ivy League athletes to Arizona cowboys and led by Theodore Roosevelt, they helped secure victory in Cuba in a series of gripping, bloody fights across the island. Roosevelt called their charge in the Battle of San Juan Hill his "crowded hour"--a turning point in his life, one that led directly to the White House. "The instant I received the order," wrote Roosevelt, "I sprang on my horse and then my 'crowded hour' began." As The Crowded Hour reveals, it was a turning point for America as well, uniting the country and ushering in a new era of global power. Both a portrait of these men, few of whom were traditional soldiers, and of the Spanish-American War itself, The Crowded Hour dives deep into the daily lives and struggles of Roosevelt and his regiment. Using diaries, letters, and memoirs, Risen illuminates a disproportionately influential moment in American history: a war of only six months' time that dramatically altered the United States' standing in the world. In this brilliant, enlightening narrative, the Rough Riders--and a country on the brink of a new global dominance--are brought fully and gloriously to life.
Rough Riders
The award-winning, new definitive history of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders "Thrilling. ... A CLASSIC." --True West WINNER: Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award; New Mexico-Arizona Book Award; and Colorado Book Award The now-legendary Rough Riders were a volunteer regiment recruited in 1898 to help drive the Spaniards out of Cuba. Drawn from America's southwestern territories and led by the irrepressible Theodore Roosevelt, these men included not only cowboys and other Westerners, but also several Ivy Leaguers and clubmen, many of them friends of "TR." Roosevelt and his men quickly came to symbolize American ruggedness, daring, and individualism. He led them to victory in the famed Battle of San Juan Hill, which made TR a national hero and cemented the Rough Riders' iconic place in history. Now Mark Lee Gardner synthesizes previously unknown primary accounts--private letters, diaries, and period newspaper reports from public and private archives across the country--to breathe fresh life into the Rough Riders and pay tribute to their daring feats and indomitable leader.
Theodore Roosevelt: the Rough Riders, an Autobiography (LOA #153)
Reformer, rancher, conservationist, hunter, historian, police commissioner, soldier, the youngest man ever to serve as President of the United States--no other American public figure has led as vigorous and varied a life as Theodore Roosevelt. This Library of America volume brings together two of his most memorable autobiographical works. The Rough Riders (1899) is the story of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the regiment Roosevelt led to enduring fame during the Spanish-American War. With his characteristic élan he recounts how the regiment was raised from an unusual mixture of privileged Northeastern college men and hardened Southwestern frontiersmen--"these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough riders of the plains"--and how it trained in Texas and then "sailed southward through the tropic seas toward the unknown." Writing at the time when war could still be seen as a romantic adventure, Roosevelt vividly describes the confusion of fighting in the jung≤ the heat, hunger, rain, mud, and malaria of the Cuban campaign; and his "crowded hour" of triumph on the San Juan Heights during the Battle of Santiago. In An Autobiography (1913), Roosevelt recalls his lifelong fascination with natural history, his love of hunting and the outdoors, and his adventures as a cattleman in the Dakota Badlands, as well as his career in politics as a state legislator, civil service reformer, New York police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy, governor of New York, and president.
Rough Riders and the Imperial Dream
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Delve into the complex process by which the U.S. reversed its longstanding policy of isolationism to become actively involved in global affairs. Investigate the core ideas that built a case for American internationalism, as they manifested in the events of the Spanish-American War and the building of the Panama Canal.
Rough Riders
- The Roosevelt Way: What the rough rider can teach us about how to stop illicit traffickingLack of adequate border security results in trafficking of drugs and other illicit wares and it is therefore essential to establish local public administrations to tighten up the borders. An example of a US reformer, Theodore Roosevelt, is cited who made significant contributions to root out corruption and cronyism in the police department during the Progressive Era.
- Theodore Roosevelt, the rough riders and the alteration of mythTheodore Roosevelt's book, 'Winning the West' relates the story of a local militia called 'Over-the-Mountain Boys' who won battles on foot. After a decade of its writing, Roosevelt led to battle a same type of group, which was grown to be called 'Rough Riders.' This incident is a perfect example of how an event of history becomes a part of a myth that is open to alteration with the moving time. However, only the details are changed but the outline remains intact.
- Where did the black rough riders go?The Spanish-American War was a key moment in the development of U.S. imperialism and the popular western. Its iconic figure was Roosevelt's rough rider—the Anglo-Saxon gentleman cowboy par excellence—who yoked frontier heroism to overseas militarism, in the process justifying American extra-continental expansionism and extending the ideological reach of the western. The black military presence in Cuba—and, subsequently, Puerto Rico and the Philippines—threatened that process by challenging white superiority on the western frontier and the imperial battlefield. When white myth makers suppressed this story of black heroism, they drove it deep into the western's creative fabric. By following the fortunes of black soldiers, in print and in society, we can recognize how deeply the western formula is motivated and shaped by the blackness it denies and to what different ends African-American writers yoked western adventure, military action, and meanings of manhood in the United States.