July 1, 1898—Victory at what came to be known as the
Battle of San Juan Hill launched Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt on a political path that within three years landed him in the
White House. But on a personal level, it lifted a burden oppressing him for
nearly 30 years: the aching sense that his beloved father had not fully served
his country when it counted in the Civil War.
Since the dawn of the American republic, military
service had been the major means of gaining the Presidency for those without
governmental experience, as in the cases of Zachary Taylor and Ulysses S.
Grant. Battlefield triumphs had played an outsize role in the election of even
those who did serve in the government, such as George Washington and Andrew
Jackson.
T.R. fell into the second group. He was no soldier
for a substantial part of his career as Grant had been (or as Eisenhower would
be decades later). His ascent to the White House, while seemingly following the
conventional path of military glory, remains unique, as attested to in an
encyclopedia entry I came across in the second or third grade.
The encyclopedia’s table listed the occupations of
American Presidents before they reached the White House: “Farmer,” “Lawyer,”
“Soldier,” and even, in the case of Herbert Hoover, “Engineer.” But I was
puzzled by the entry for Roosevelt: “Publicist.”
The entry could
have read “Politician,” befitting someone who had served in the New York State
Assembly, on the U.S. Civil Service Commission, as New York City’s Police
Commissioner, and as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. It could have read “Author,” as he had already written 16 books by the
time he volunteered in the Spanish-American War—a conflict he had beaten the drums
for at the Navy Department.
But “Publicist”—or, to be more correct,
“Self-Publicist”—described exactly Roosevelt’s unusual trajectory to the White
House at age 42, the youngest age of any individual who ever became President.
He displayed a genius for putting his name before the public in a positive
light. And nowhere was this better demonstrated than in how the public came to
see him as a military hero of the unit formally called the 1st US Volunteer
Cavalry but that nearly everyone called the Rough Riders.
Several aspects of how he attracted press attention stand
out:
*Appearance.
Though not handsome, Roosevelt was a dandy at heart. In the 1880s, he had posed
several times in buckskin to signal his transition from Harvard swell to
Western rancher. When President William McKinley finally asked Congress for a
declaration of war against Spain for its alleged role in the sinking of the
Maine, T.R. quickly had several khaki uniforms custom-tailored for him by
Brooks Brothers. Later, as he prepared to lead his men into battle, he wrapped
a bandanna around his neck. While this fashion choice was undoubtedly useful in
protecting his neck against sunburn, it also lent him a dashing appearance when
the bandanna flowed behind him when he charged on horseback.
*Cultivating
an acquaintance. According to
Kathleen Dalton’s fine Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life,
T.R. made the most of a 34-year-old editor, reporter and novelist who had been
befriended by the colonel’s sister Bamie: Richard Harding Davis. Brimming with charismatic himself, Davis bonded quickly with
the equally magnetic Roosevelt. The head of the regiment, Leonard Wood, might,
under normal circumstances, have made an interesting story as a Medal of Honor
winner, veteran of the war against Geronimo, and personal physician to
President McKinley. Yet the coolly cerebral Wood paled in comparison with the
voluble, energetic Roosevelt. Attaching himself to T.R.’s motley cadre of Southwestern
cowpunchers, Oklahoma Indians, Ivy League football stars, and champion polo
players, Harding was there to record their bravery when they came out blazing
against a Spanish ambush in the jungle at Las Guasimas. Harding identified so
strongly with the unit that the correspondent directed fire against the enemy
himself—and, though he turned down Roosevelt’s offer of a commission, he
accepted one of only three honorary memberships ever given by the Rough Riders.
His colorful dispatches with the unit when it captured Kettle Hill and nearby
San Juan Hill made him the best-known of the correspondents of the war with
Spain.
*Accommodating
the press as much as possible. Exhibiting little of the hostility that led Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to court-martial a reporter during the
Civil War, Roosevelt made a concerted effort to win the media to his side. To a
remarkable degree, he succeeded. (One notable exception: reporter-novelist
Stephen Crane.) Even on the boats invading Cuba--often too crowded even for his own men--he
managed to make room for reporters.
*Support in
non-print media. Nearly 30 years before, New York’s notorious Boss Tweed
had said he didn’t mind newspaper exposes of his corruption—but, with many of
his supporters being illiterate, he couldn’t abide cartoons that anyone could
understand. Roosevelt sensed this and used it to his own benefit through
pictorial media, some in forms used first during wartime. One of these was the
motion-picture camera, with the Edison and Biograph companies recording images
of the troops on their way into action. “Buffalo
Bill” Cody incorporated reenactments of San Juan Hill into his enormously
popular Wild West show, an entertainment that so burnished TR’s heroic exploits
that the colonel did not go public with his strong disagreement with Cody about the role
of the federal government. Frederic Remington’s Charge of the Rough Riders (accompanying this post), depicting the colonel on horseback
leading his men up San Juan Hill, increased Roosevelt’s reputation for
fearlessness under fire.
*Writing about
the war himself. “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better
by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write
that history," Winston Churchill once observed—a thought boiled down by
posterity to “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Roosevelt
exhibited a similar urge to shape perception of his actions when he wrote the
account of his military service, The Rough Riders. It was a hit both during serialization and when published in book
form.
*Exhibiting a
good sense of humor. A certain recent President—no names mentioned!—has
displayed no small amount of…touchiness when
mocked. This only has made critics even more determined to prick his
vanity. The same could not be said for Roosevelt. Satirist Finley Peter Dunne,
commenting on The Rough Riders through fictional mouthpiece Mr. Dooley, waggishly
noted the author’s ego by saying the memoir should have been called instead Alone in Cuba. Was Roosevelt offended?
If he was, he did a good job of concealing it. He wrote the humorist to say how
much he chuckled over the piece—and ended up enjoying a cordial relationship
with him.
*Being slow to
correct accounts that worked in his favor. The Rough Riders were far
more instrumental in seizing Kettle Hill than in taking San Juan Hill, where
they played a more supporting role. But accounts in the press—including
among Roosevelt’s admirers—jumbled the two together, magnifying the importance of
the Rough Riders and diminishing other units (for instance, the
African-American “Buffalo Soldiers” whose deadly fire, T.R. admitted later,
provided him cover as he led the charge uphill at Kettle Hill). While this boosted Roosevelt’s
political career, it probably undercut his case for a Medal of Honor (not
granted him until 2001, more than eight decades after his death).
Proving himself in battle was not simply a matter of
winning fame for Roosevelt, however; it also involved redeeming the family
honor. During the Civil War, his father, a staunch Unionist, felt compelled,
because of his Georgia-born wife’s Southern sympathies, to sit out the war and
hire a substitute at $300 a year to take his place.
Even winning glory did not completely assuage
Roosevelt’s feelings about honor. During WWI, he had pushed his sons to enlist.
All served with honor, but one---the youngest, Quentin—was shot down in 1918 in
an aerial battle with German pilots. The sense of grief and guilt over this
loss was something that TR never really recovered from.
No comments:
Post a Comment