by Clay Risen
Toward the end of my research, I made a brief but invaluable trip to Santiago de Cuba to see the sites of the Fifth Corps campaign. I could not have made it without the advice of Damien Cave and Hannah Berkeley Cohen. While there, I stayed at Roy’s Terrace Inn; I recommend it to anyone passing through this lovely city.
Whatever one thinks of the introductory chapter, it would not be half as good as it is were it not for the input of James Goodman, David Greenberg, Jim Ledbetter, Michael Massing, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, and James Traub. Thank you.
This book would not exist were it not for Kathy Belden, my editor at Scribner, who not only took a chance on my proposal, but took my gawky first draft and turned it into something worth reading. Kathy and her entire team deserves my sincere thanks. I will forever be in debt to Heather Schroder, my agent, who first gave me the opportunity to pursue book writing and has been with me ever since.
My wife, Joanna, and my children, Talia and Elliot, suffered greatly for this book, both from my long absences and my diminished attention at home. I love you all the more for putting up with me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© GEORGE SCOTT
Clay Risen is the deputy op-ed editor at the New York Times and the author of Single Malt: A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotland; The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act, which was nominated for the PEN Galbraith Award and an NAACP Spirit Award; the bestselling American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye: A Guide to the Nation’s Favorite Spirit; and A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.
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ALSO BY CLAY RISEN
The Bill of the Century:
The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act
A Nation on Fire:
America in the Wake of the King Assassination
Single Malt:
A Guide to the Whiskies of Scotland
American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye:
A Guide to the Nation’s Favorite Spirit
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NOTES
Introduction: New York City, 1899
1 Moses King, The Dewey Reception in New York City: Nine-Hundred and Eighty Views and Portraits (New York: M. King, 1899), pp. 110–11.
2 New York Times, October 1, 1899, cited in Mike Wallace, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 38; King, p. 122.
3 New York Times, October 3, 1899.
4 Theodore Roosevelt, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt: The Years of Preparation. Edited by Elting E. Morison. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951, p. 495.
5 Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 190.
6 Jacob A. Riis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen (New York: Macmillan, 1904), p. 182.
7 Frank Ninkovich, Global Dawn: The Cultural Foundation of American Internationalism, 1865–1890 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 39.
8 Edward M. Coffman, The Regulars: The American Army, 1898–1941 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 4; J. P. Clark, Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), p. 116; New York Times, April 19, 1898.
9 Reprinted in the Cameron County, Pennsylvania, Press, June 30, 1898.
Chapter 1: “The Puerility of His Simplifications”
1 John D. Long, America of Yesterday: The Diary of John D. Long, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1923), p. 139.
2 John D. Long, The Journal of John D. Long, ed. Margaret Long (Rindge, N.H.: Richard R. Smith Publisher, 1956), p. 212.
3 David F. Trask, The War with Spain in 1898 (New York: Free Press, 1981), pp. 24–25.
4 For an unmatchable and quite enjoyable discussion of Roosevelt’s speaking style, see Edmund Morris’s prologue to The Rise of Roosevelt, especially pages xxv–xxvi (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979; revised and expanded, 2001).
5 Long, The Journal of John D. Long, p. 213.
6 Ibid.
7 David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), pp. 111–12 and 162; Tim Egan, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2009), p. 35.
8 Edmund Morris, The Rise of Roosevelt, pp. 58, 59, 73.
9 For details of Theodore Roosevelt Sr.’s will, see New York Times, February 17, 1878; McCullough, p. 126; Edmund Morris, The Rise of Roosevelt, p. 145.
10 McCullough, pp. 306–8; Edmund Morris, The Rise of Roosevelt, p. 143.
11 Ibid., p. 333; C. W. Guthrie, ed., The First Ranger: Adventures of a Pioneer Forest Ranger (Huson, Mont.: Redwing Publishing, 1995), pp. 26–28.
12 For a general introduction to the Hay-Adams circle, see Patricia O’Toole, The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880–1918 (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1990); Morris, p. 425.
13 For an overview of Roosevelt’s time as police commissioner, see Richard Zachs, Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York (New York: Anchor, 2012).
14 Edmund Morris, The Rise of Roosevelt, pp. 578, 584.
15 William McKinley, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1897, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25827&st=inaugural&st1=, accessed May 30, 2018.
16 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 222.
17 Margaret Leech, In the Days of McKinley (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), p. 213.
18 Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913; rpt., Modern Library, 2004), p. 459; Naval Institute Proceedings 23, no. 3 (1897): 447.
19 Leech, p. 157; Michael Blow, A Ship to Remember: The Maine and the Spanish-American War (New York: William Morrow, 1992), pp. 20–21.
20 Hay cited in Edmund Morris, The Rise of Roosevelt, p. 455; David Healy, U.S. Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), pp. 115, 119.
21 Henry James, “Theodore Roosevelt and the National Consciousness,” Literature, April 23, 1898, p. 484.
22 Chris Emmett, In the Path of Events, with Colonel Martin Lalor Crimmins: Soldier—Naturalist—Historian (Waco, Tex.: Jones & Morrison, 1959), p. 71; Hermann Hagedorn, Leonard Wood: A Biography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931), pp. 133–36.
23 Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Leonard Wood, January 11, 1898, Box 26, Leonard Wood Papers, Library of Congress; Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899; rpt., Library of America, 2004), p. 14.
Chapter 2: “One Does Not Make War with Bonbons”
1 John H. Latane, “Intervention of the United States in Cuba,” The North American Review 166, no. 496 (March 1898): 350–61; George H. Gibson, “Opinion in North Carolina Regarding the Acquisition of Texas and Cuba, 1835–1855,” The North Carolina Historical Review 37, no. 2 (April 1960): 185–201.
2 John Lawrence Tone, War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 1–3.
3 George C. Musgrave, Under Three Flags in Cuba:
A Personal Account of the Cuban Insurrection and Spanish-American War (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1899), p. 16.
4 Forum, February 1897, p. 659.
5 Tone, p. 28.
6 Musgrave, p. 19; Frederick Funston, Memories of Two Wars: Cuban and Philippine Experiences (London: Constable & Co., 1912), p. 64.
7 The Cosmopolitan, August 1895, p. 470; Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895–1902 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), pp. 168fn, 169; Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, February 1897, p. 28.
8 Funston, p. 19.
9 Foner, pp. 95, 174.
10 Funston, p. 32.
11 Tone, pp. 82, 155; Musgrave, p. 22.
12 Louis A. Pérez Jr., Cuba Between Empires: 1878–1902 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1983), pp. 53–55.
13 Tone, p. 164.
14 Stephen Bonsal, The Real Condition of Cuba To-Day (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897), p. 139.
15 Ibid., p. 109.
16 Leslie’s Weekly, March 24, 1898, p. 199; Clara Barton, “Our Work and Observations in Cuba,” North American Review, May 1898, p. 552; Tone, pp. 223–24.
17 Musgrave, pp. 25, 29.
18 Bonsal, The Real Condition of Cuba To-Day, p. 149.
19 Charles H. Brown, The Correspondents’ War: Journalists in the Spanish-American War (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), p. 11.
20 Charles Bronson Rea, Facts and Fakes About Cuba: A Review of the Various Stories Circulated in the United States Concerning the Present Insurrection (New York: George Munro’s Sons, 1897), p. 26.
21 Arthur Lubow, The Reporter Who Would Be King: A Biography of Richard Harding Davis (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), p. 3.
22 Ibid., p. 68.
23 Douglas Allen, Frederic Remington and the Spanish-American War (New York: Crown, 1971), p. 11; David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), p. 127.
24 Letter from Richard Harding Davis to Rebecca Davis, n.d., Richard Harding Davis Papers, University of Virginia.
25 Letter from Richard Harding Davis to Rebecca Davis, January 16, 1897, Richard Harding Davis Papers, University of Virginia.
26 Ibid.
27 Davis, Cuba in War Time, pp. 53–54; Letter from Richard Harding Davis to Rebecca Davis, January 16, 1897, Richard Harding Davis Papers, University of Virginia.
28 Lubow, pp. 142–44.
29 New York Journal, February 12, 1897; Lubow, p. 143.
30 Letter from Richard Harding Davis to Charles Davis, n.d., Richard Harding Davis Papers, University of Virginia; Davis, Cuba in War Time, p. 104.
31 Davis, Cuba in War Time, p. 129.
32 Ibid., p. 133.
33 Roosevelt, The Rough Riders, p. 14; John J. Ingalls, America’s War for Humanity (New York: N. D. Thompson Publishing Co., 1898), p. 18.
34 New York Journal, February 9, 1898.
35 Beveridge cited in Healy, p. 101; James cited in Healy, p. 104.
36 Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961), pp. 3–5.
37 Cullom cited in Walter Millis, The Martial Spirit: A Study of Our War with Spain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), p. 29.
38 Leslie’s Weekly, March 24, 1898, p. 197; Ingalls, p. 20.
39 New York Sun, April 4, 1898.
40 Foner, pp. 130–31.
41 Ibid., pp. 210–14.
42 John L. Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain over Cuba, 1895–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 86–100.
43 Trask, p. 32.
44 Roosevelt, The Rough Riders, p. 14; Leonard Wood, “Research Materials for the Rough Riders,” Hermann Hagedorn Collection, Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
45 Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (New York: Little, Brown, 2010), p. 287.
Chapter 3: “A Burst of Thunder”
1 Long, America of Yesterday, p. 162.
2 Final Report on Removing Wreck of Battleship “Maine” from Harbor of Habana, Cuba (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 7.
3 Blow, p. 38.
4 Ibid., p. 93; Percy H. Epler, The Life of Clara Barton (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1915), p. 287.
5 Blow, pp. 96–101.
6 One could argue that the April 27, 1865, sinking of the Sultana, a paddlewheel steamer carrying former Union prisoners of war, killing 1,192, was a naval disaster. But the Sultana was a commercial vessel, and not all its passengers were military.
7 George Hyman Rickover, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1976), passim.
8 Davis letter cited in Lubow, p. 154; Roosevelt’s letter to Adams cited in Scribner’s, November 1919, p. 524.
9 Hagedorn, Leonard Wood, p. 141.
10 Long, America of Yesterday, pp. 163–70.
11 Theodore Roosevelt, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, pp. 801–3.
12 Mark Lee Gardner, Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill (New York: William Morrow, 2016), p. 14.
13 Michelle Bray Davis and Rollie W. Quimby, “Senator Proctor’s Cuban Speech: Speculations on a Cause of the Spanish-American War,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 55, no. 2 (1969): 131–41.
14 Speech by Senator Redfield Proctor on the Floor of the U.S. Senate on March 17, 1898, http://www.spanamwar.com/proctorspeech.htm, accessed September 25, 2018.
15 Ingalls, p. 17; Wall Street Journal, cited in Gerald F. Linderman, The Mirror of War: American Society and the Spanish-American War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), p. 42.
16 Sacramento Daily Record-Tribune, April 2, 1898; Scranton Tribune, April 28, 1898; R. A. Alger, The Spanish-American War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1901), p. 2.
17 The Independent article was reprinted in the New York Sun, April 4, 1898; Sacramento Daily Record-Tribune, April 2, 1898; Millis, p. 161.
18 Official Report of the Naval Court of Inquiry into the Loss of the Battleship Maine, March 21, 1898, http://www.spanamwar.com/mainerpt.htm, accessed May 30, 2018.
19 Cincinnati Inquirer, March 28, 1898.
20 New York Sun, March 29, 1898; Kansas City Journal, March 31, 1898; Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 638.
21 William McKinley, First Annual Message, December 6, 1897, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29538, accessed May 30, 2018
22 Linderman, p. 24; Trask, p. 58.
23 Robert W. Merry, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), p. 260.
24 Washington Post, February 27, 1898.
25 Merry, p. 263.
26 Long, America of Yesterday, p. 176.
27 George E. Vincent, ed., Theodore W. Miller, Rough Rider: His Diary as a Soldier Together with the Story of His Life (Akron: Privately printed, 1899), pp. 3, 64–68.
28 Ibid., pp. 64, 68–69; “Letter from Theodore Westwood Miller to Mina Miller (Mrs. Thomas A.) Edison, April 22nd, 1898,” Edison Papers Digital Edition, http://edison.rutgers.edu/digital/items/show/146758, accessed May 29, 2018.
29 Sacramento Record-Union, April 19, 1898.
30 “A Rough Rider from Chautauqua,” Chautauqua Daily, August 18, 2016, http://chqdaily.com/2016/08/a-rough-rider-from-chautauqua, accessed May 29, 2018; Hendrick, p. 192.
31 “Letter from Theodore Westwood Miller to Mina Miller (Mrs. Thomas A.) Edison, April 22nd, 1898”; “Letter from Theodore Westwood Miller to Grace A. Miller, Mina Miller (Mrs. Thomas A.) Edison, April 26th, 1898,” Edison Papers Digital Edition, http://edison.rutgers.edu/digital/items/show/146759, accessed May 29, 2018.
32 New York Sun, April 22, 1898; New York Sun, A
pril 4, 1898; Sacramento Daily Record-Union, April 19, 1898; Hillsboro, Oregon, News Herald, April 28, 1898; New York Sun, April 26, 1898.
33 Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 336.
34 New York Tribune, April 19, 1898; Topeka State Journal, March 25, 1898; New York Sun, April 4, 1898; Los Angeles Herald, April 19, 1898.
35 El Paso Daily Herald, April 20, 1898.
36 Washington Times, May 1, 1898. For a thorough history of the other two regiments, see Clifford P. Westermeier, Who Rush to Glory: The Cowboy Volunteers of 1898 (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1958).
37 Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 641; New York Tribune, April 19, 1898.
38 Des Moines Register, July 10, 1898.
39 Long, America of Yesterday, p. 186.
Chapter 4: “The Days of ’61 Have Indeed Come Again”
1 New York Sun, May 8, 1898.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Letter to Leonard Wood from Theodore Roosevelt, May 9, 1898, Leonard Wood Papers, Library of Congress.
5 Ibid.
6 Scranton Tribune, April 28, 1898; New York Tribune, May 1, 1898; Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), pp. 158–59.