The Story of the Rough Riders, 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry: The Regiment in Camp and on the Battle Field

From inside the book
The author makes no apologies for devoting an entire book to the story of one regiment in the Spanish-American War. The history of the Rough Riders is really the historyof the war, for from its beginning to its end these men were at the forefront of the fighting, and did work on a par with our very best regulars. The American people has already formed its estimate of them. Captain Lee, who was the English military attached during the entire campaign, told me that they were the best regiment of volunteer soldiers ever organized, and this English estimate quite agrees with that made by George Lynch, an experienced correspondent from London. He said:
"No European, who has had an opportunity to study the Rough Riders, fails for a second to appreciate the American soldier. It would be madness to back the English, German, or French fighting machines against men like those in the First Volunteer Cavalry."
The Rough Riders were the first volunteer regiment organized, armed, and equipped. They were the first volunteer soldiers to land in Cuba. They raised the first flag flown by the military forces of the United States on foreign soil since the Mexican War. They were the first regiment of the army to fire a shot at the Spaniards, and the first man killed was one of them. Indeed, they bore the brunt of the first battle, and they bore it with unexampled bravery. In the second battle, their colonel and his men led the van and headed one of the most desperate charges in the history of warfare. From first to last they were always in the lead, and always a credit to themselves and to their country.
If these men do not deserve a history book devoted entirely to them, then I am ignorant of any men who do.
My own connection with the regiment began the day after they landed in Cuba (where I had gone as war correspondent for the New York Journal), and lasted just twenty-four hours. It was then quickly put a stop to by a Mauser bullet. Not more than six weeks ago Colonel, now Governor, Theodore Roosevelt sent me the medal of the regiment, and was good enough to say that he was glad to consider me a member of it. Like medals and like letters were sent to Richard Harding Davis, the able correspondent of the New York Herald and Scribner's Magazine, and to Captain McCormack of the regular army. Both of these gentlemen were with the Rough Riders in the battle of Las Guasimas, and, I think, afterwards at the battle of San Juan.
The fact that I was shot while on the battlefield with this regiment, naturally made me feel a deep sympathy with it, a hearty pride in all its achievements, and constant interest in everything it did in Cuba and, after its return, in America. When Mr. John H. Cook, the President of the G. W. Dillingham Company, asked me to write a history of the regiment I was, therefore, greatly pleased. Of course it was impossible that I should not have at hand some of the required material. My long illness, however, had not permitted me to gather it in a systematic or sufficient way, and so I have had to call to my assistance several members of the regiment, as well as others.


This book published in 1899 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.