The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (135 page)

Within three days Shafter’s army was ordered to Montauk, Long Island.
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The Rough Riders sailed out of Santiago Harbor on 8 August, leaving Leonard Wood behind as Military Governor of the city. They were not sorry to see Cuba sink into the sea behind them. In seven weeks of sweaty, sickly acquaintance with it, they had seen it transformed from a tropical Garden of Eden to a hell of denuded trees, cindery fields, and staring shells of houses.
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The island’s bugs were in their veins, the smell of its dead in their nostrils, the taste of its horse meat and fecal water in their mouths. It would be days before the Atlantic breezes, cooling and freshening as they steamed north, swept away this sense of defilement.

Yet the farther Cuba dropped away, the brighter shone the memory of their two great battles—in particular that rush up Kettle Hill behind the man with the flying blue neckerchief. They had done something which orthodox military strategists considered impossible, namely, stormed and captured a high redoubt over open ground, using weapons inferior to, and fewer than, those of a securely entrenched enemy.
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In doing so they had been the first to break the Spanish defenses; charging on, they had been first to take and hold the final crest overlooking Santiago.

For Roosevelt himself, the “crowded hour” atop San Juan Heights had been one of absolute fulfillment. “I would rather have led that charge … than served three terms in the U.S. Senate.” And he would rather die from yellow fever as a result than never to have charged at all. “Should the worst come to the worst I am quite content to go now and to leave my children at least an honorable name,” he told Henry Cabot Lodge. “And old man, if I do go, I do wish you would get that Medal of Honor for me anyhow, as I should awfully like the children to have it, and I think I earned it.”
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With fulfillment came purgation. Bellicose poisons had been
breeding in him since infancy. During recent years the strain had grown virulent, clouding his mind and souring the natural sweetness of his temperament. But at last he had had his bloodletting. He had fought a war and killed a man. He had “driven the Spaniard from the New World.” Theodore Roosevelt was at last, incongruously but wholeheartedly, a man of peace.

I
T WAS
M
ONDAY, 15
August 1898. All morning the crowd scattered across the sands of Montauk Point grew larger, as the troopship
Miami
wallowed at anchor three miles out to sea. Soldiers and civilians, women and children, reporters and Red Cross staff squinted over the water, wondering when the Rough Riders would be allowed to disembark. While they waited, a westerly breeze snapped the sails of yachts in the harbor, and swished through the pines of Whithemard Headland.
¹
It was this prevailing wind that had determined the selection of Montauk Point as the mustering-out camp for General Shafter’s army. Presumably it would blow away whatever yellow-fever bacilli lingered among the troops—wafting them somewhere in the direction of Spain.

Not until nearly noon did the tugs bring
Miami
in, and nudge her sideways against the pier. The crowd peered eagerly at the deep rows of soldiers on board, searching in vain for a hero to recognize. Presently two spectacle-lenses flashed like prisms at the end of the bridge, and “a big bronzed-faced man in a light brown uniform”
²
was seen waving his campaign hat. A hundred voices delightedly roared “Roosevelt! Roosevelt! Hurrah for Teddy and the Rough Riders!” Beside him somebody made out a whiskery little general in blue. “Hurrah for Fighting Joe!”
³

“I shall never forget the lustre that shone about him.”
Colonel Roosevelt preparing to muster out at Camp Wikoff, Montauk, L.I
. (
Illustration 26.1
)

While sailors made the ship fast, an officer on the pier shouted, “How are you, Colonel Roosevelt?” The reply came back in a voice audible half a mile away: “I am feeling disgracefully well!”

There was a pause while Roosevelt allowed the crowd to study the dozens of emaciated faces elsewhere on deck. “I feel positively ashamed of my appearance,” he went on, “when I see how badly off some of my brave fellows are.” Another pause. Then: “Oh, but we have had a bully fight!”
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Laughter and cheers spread from ship to shore and back again.

A
QUARTER OF AN HOUR LATER
General Wheeler stepped onto the soil of Long Island, toting a Spanish sword so long and heavy its scabbard dragged on the ground. He received a tumultuous welcome, but, to quote Edward Marshall, “when ‘Teddy and his teeth’ came down the gangplank, the last ultimate climax of the possibility of cheering was reached.”
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Roosevelt’s appearance at close range showed that his claims of rude health were not exaggerated. Three months of hunger, thirst, heat, mud, and execrable food—not to mention that most arduous of human activities, infantry fighting—had not thinned him; if anything, he looked thicker and stronger than when he entrained for San Antonio. He wore a fresh uniform with gaiters and scuffed boots. A cartridge belt encircled his waist, and a heavy revolver thumped against his hip as he “fairly ran” the last few steps onto the dock.
⁶

Roosevelt was courteous to the official welcoming party—doffing his hat and bowing to the women on line—but out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a group of newspapermen, and soon made his way over to them.

“Will you be our next Governor?” a voice cried.

“None of that … All I’ll talk about is the regiment. It’s the finest regiment that ever was, and I’m proud to command it.”
⁷

While he talked, the Rough Riders were disembarking. To the horror and sympathy of the crowd, they appeared barely able to line
up on the dock, let alone march over the hill to Camp Wikoff, a mile or so inland. Their ranks were pitifully decimated. “My God,” said one witness, “there are not half of the men there that left.”
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Roosevelt was enjoying his conversation with the press so much that he paid little attention to the movement of soldiers behind him. His face radiated happiness as he described the feats of the Army’s “cracker-jack” regiment, and of himself as its Colonel. “This is a pistol with a history,” he said, fondling his revolver affectionately. “It was taken from the wreck of the
Maine
. When I took it to Cuba I made a vow to kill at least one Spaniard with it, and I did.…”
⁹

W
ELL MIGHT HE
be happy. Theodore Roosevelt had come home to find himself the most famous man in America—more famous even than Dewey, whose victory at Manila had been eclipsed (if temporarily) by the successive glories of Las Guásimas, San Juan, Santiago, and the round-robin which “brought our boys back home.”
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The news that the United States and Spain had just signed a peace initiative came as a crowning satisfaction. Intent as Roosevelt might be to parry questions about his gubernatorial ambitions—thereby strengthening rumors that he had already decided to run—his days as a soldier were numbered.
¹¹
It remained only to spend five days in quarantine, and a few weeks supervising the demobilization of his regiment, before returning to civilian life and claiming the superb inheritance he had earned in Cuba.
¹²

Shortly before two o’clock the Colonel strode onto the beach, where the Cavalry Division had formed in double file, and mounted a horse beside General Wheeler. Color Sergeant Wright hoisted the ragged regimental flag, the band crashed out a march, and the Rough Riders trooped off to detention.
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M
EANWHILE, AT THE OPPOSITE
end of Long Island, the man whose power it was to nominate, or not to nominate, Roosevelt for Governor sat pondering the state political situation. Senator Thomas Collier Platt was taking his annual vacation at the Oriental Hotel on Sheepshead Bay.
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He had been aware since at least 20 July that various groups of Republicans were working up a “Roosevelt
boom,” but not until yesterday, 14 August, had two trusted lieutenants approached him formally on the subject. These men were Lemuel Ely Quigg, Roosevelt’s backer for Mayor in 1894, and Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., chairman of the Republican State Committee. Since Quigg was, in turn, chairman of the New York County Committee, and as forceful as Odell was stubborn, Platt had no choice but to listen while they pleaded the cause of the man he still regarded as “a perfect bull in a china shop.”
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The Easy Boss knew that something drastic would have to be done to prevent the renomination, at the State Republican Convention in September, of Frank S. Black, New York’s present Governor. Black was a faithful protégé whose record victory in 1896 had covered Platt with glory; but he was also anathema to Republican Independents, who accused him, rather unjustly, of gross spoilsmanship in office.
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This negative reputation might be counterbalanced by positive support for Black in upstate rural areas, were it not for a new scandal which redounded to the Governor’s discredit. On 4 August a special investigative committee had reported on “improper expenditures” of at least a million dollars in the state’s stalled Erie Canal Improvement project.
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With the entire multimillion-dollar appropriation already spent, and less than two-thirds of the canal deepened, Platt was severely embarrassed. If he supported Black’s bid for reelection he would lay himself and the party open to charges of cynicism and irresponsibility—even though the Governor had not been personally involved in the scandal. If, on the other hand, Platt dropped Black, it would be tantamount to admitting that there had been high-level corruption.
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