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IN AN EXTRAORDINARY UNPUBLISHED LETTER, WRITTEN WHILE STILL IN CUBA,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT MAKES A PASSIONATE DEFENSE OF THE ROUGH RIDERS

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Typed Letter Signed to Colonel [William C.] Church, Headquarters 2nd Brigade, Cavalry Division, “In camp near Santiago de Cuba,” 5 August 1898. 2 pages, 8" x 10½".

Future President Theodore Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy when war with Spain was declared on April 25, 1898. Roosevelt had long favored such a war, and he had long wanted an opportunity to prove himself in military combat. He resigned almost immediately in order to organize and fight with the First U. S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, which brought together men from Roosevelt’s disparate worlds of cowboy Westerners and Ivy League Easterners. Quickly dubbed the “Rough Riders,” the regiment trained in Texas. Roosevelt was initially a lieutenant colonel but was promoted to colonel in June.

The Rough Riders arrived in Cuba on June 22. Two days later, they fought their first battle at Las Guásimas, where the Spanish had set up their first line of defense in high ridges along the road to Santiago. With other American forces, the Rough Riders helped push the Spanish out of the area and clear the road to Santiago. Almost immediately afterwards, there were conflicting reports as to whether the Rough Riders had been ambushed by some Spanish troops in the opening stages of the battle, a charge that Roosevelt and the Rough Riders always denied. Then, on July 1, the Rough Riders fought in their next and more famous engagement, the battle for San Juan Heights. Here Roosevelt led the Rough Riders in their successful charge up Kettle Hill, making the first break in the Spanish defenses, and he led them again as they joined in the larger attack on San Juan Hill, where he emerged as the senior officer in command at the extreme front of the American line. Following the capture of the heights overlooking Santiago, a siege of the city ensued. The Spanish then lost a naval battle at Santiago on July 3, and they finally surrendered the city on July 17.

Here, less than three weeks later, Roosevelt writes from Cuba to William C. Church, the founder and editor of The Army and Navy Journal, which had been published since the Civil War. In a letter marked “Private and not for publication,” Roosevelt vigorously counters criticisms of the Rough Riders.

“I do not mind much what the lay papers say, but I do very seriously object to the ‘Army and Navy Journal’ giving countenance to a baseless slander,” Roosevelt asserts. “I have just seen the issue of your paper in which you (apparently editorially) quote and impliedly endorse a couple of letters from privates of the 71st New York...in which statements are made that the Rough Riders in their first fight shot into one another, and from love of notoriety pushed themselves into a position where they had to be rescued. You had a correspondent at the front, with Captain [John H.] Parker’s Gatling Battery, and he could readily have told you that these statements were the most absurd falsehoods. The Rough Riders, as I think any regular will tell you, were the only volunteers who deserved to rank with the regulars in point of fighting capacity, and I think I can say we rank with the very best, and Captain Parker...will surely tell you the same, as will the men and at least the junior officers of the two regular regiments in the Brigade I now have the honor temporarily to command.

“At the fight in question [Las Guásimas], not one of our men was hit by our own bullets. It is possible that when we first made touch with the regulars one of our men was struck by a volley from them. We had gone forward, in obedience to an order from General [Samuel B. M.] Young, to attack one wing of the enemy while he took the other. We struck the Spaniards at almost the exact moment that he did, and the program was carried out just as he had planned it. It was no more an ambush than South Mountain [a Civil War battle] was an ambush; we had to force a very difficult position of pass and jungle, and we forced it.

“As for being influenced by love of notoriety, that is an accusation I shan’t answer, for it is simply the way in which envy would speak of all men who are generously eager to prove their truth by their endeavor and risk their lives for honor and duty.

“It is not true that we supported the 71st [New York] in any attack. At the fight of July first [San Juan Heights] we led the three assaults in which we were engaged, none but regulars being with us, and at the end of the day I was in the extreme front and the men under me were nearer the enemy than any other part of our line and represented the fragments of the six cavalry regiments; and I was the highest officer left and was in command of all of them for 24 hours.” He has signed in full, “Theodore Roosevelt.”

Even today there is disagreement among historians as to exactly what happened at Las Guásimas. David Trask, in The War with Spain in 1898, for example, disputes the view that the Rough Riders were ambushed, while Edmund Morris, in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, supports it. As Trask notes, the jungle terrain at Las Guásimas seriously limited visibility and undoubtedly led to much of the confusion in determining precisely what happened during the battle. And even Morris, who argues for an ambush, gives Roosevelt and the Rough Riders high marks for their performance at Las Guásimas and offers no support for the charge of friendly fire.

It must have been especially galling to Roosevelt that the allegations published by The Army and Navy Journal came from members of the 71st New York, another volunteer regiment. As Roosevelt notes in this letter, the 71st New York was “the one regiment here the conduct of some of whose members has laid them open to the very gravest censure by the regulars with whom they were associated.” On July 1, as American forces were working to position themselves for the attack on San Juan Heights, the inexperienced 71st New York Volunteers had recoiled in the face of severe fire and, barely avoiding a wild retreat, the regiment was moved aside to make way for other troops. After the war, a special court of inquiry would condemn the senior officers of the regiment for not leading their unit forward.

The letter is written on the front and back of a single sheet of paper. There are a number of handwritten corrections to the typed text, one made by a clerk, but the rest all in Roosevelt’s hand. There are two small pencil notations by the recipient in the top margin. The letter has some slight creasing and a pin hole at the margins, but is overall in very good condition.

Roosevelt’s letters from Cuba are very few, and this one has exceptional content. $45,000.00

Page one of the letter is shown above; page two is shown below.

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