Clay Risen and the rise of the Rough Riders
When the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, it had a standing army spread out across the country that numbered fewer than 30,000 soldiers.
Cuba sat at the center of the conflict. Spain’s vicious suppression of a Cuban rebellion became a humanitarian crisis. And a mysterious explosion on the USS Maine in Havana Harbor proved a spark for American intervention. Also, the United States was a nation redefining its identity, having endured its own Civil War and nearing the end of its westward expansion.
A pressing military conflict and a lack of available troops led to the formation of the Rough Riders, a remarkably varied group of scholars, artists and cowboys — all citizen soldiers, who volunteered and fought at the Battle of San Juan Heights, a myth-making moment in the life and career of Theodore Roosevelt, who would go on to iconic renown. The Rough Riders remain a storied group, particularly in Texas, thanks to the preservation efforts of the Menger Hotel Bar in San Antonio, the place where Rough Riders from all over the country would congregate.
Clay Risen, the deputy op-ed editor at the New York Times, sifted through history and mythology to tell this story in “The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century,” a book that focuses on a brief moment in our nation’s history that codified a rugged mythology and also set a precedent for America’s approach to international concerns that has spanned more than a century. The tale is tragic as well as triumphant, with some misadventure and ill planning that pepper it with occasional moments of comedy.
Risen will discuss “The Crowded Hour” — Roosevelt’s phrase for the battle — at Brazos Bookstore this week.
Q: There are a few points in the book where you touch on the idea of nostalgia, which to me becomes a defining characteristic of 20th-century America. Do you think the prevalence of nostalgia at that time took root because our country was so young?
A:
Yeah, one of the things I found interesting was that there was already a nostalgia for an America that came before 1898, a nostalgia around the West. There weren’t really cowboys anymore, at least not in the romantic sense. So by creating this unit and glorifying cowboys, they were taking part in nostalgia while also creating a new mythology. And using older mythology to create a new myth. And to your point, there’s always some desire to mythologize the recent past in a way that makes it very useful. We are a young country, but we’re also obsessed with our youth, which is different than a lot of other countries. So the Spanish-American War was really driven by a younger generation. People who were young during the Civil War or who came along after. They were obsessed with the mythology to some extent of the Civil
War, and the fighting prowess of Americans and the idealism of Americans embodied by the Civil War. Every president between Grant and Roosevelt was a veteran of the war. They knew war was this horrible thing. They saw the reality of what it was like. But they had children and nephews who were ready to get back at it. There was already this coherent naive myth about what war was like. So the most horrible event in American history to that point was mythologized almost immediately, and there was this nostalgia present that is embodied in the Rough Riders’ story. Also the nostalgia about the West. That readiness to take on the world, to close the frontier.
Q: There are some familiar players in addition to Roosevelt. Like Frederic Remington.
A:
An earlier draft had a longer section about Remington. He’s a fascinating character. He was this talented artist who didn’t know what his purpose was in life. So he went out west and started drawing and painting this idyllic version of the culture out in the West. He sent them back to magazines and art dealers, and they gobbled it all up. He was in real time creating a mythology about what the West was. He was the favorite artist of Nelson Miles, who was a commander out west. And he’d request Remington’s
work. Miles oversaw more than one massacre of Native Americans, but he had Remington there, and he came up with a picture that was different from reality. It wasn’t just propaganda, though. It’s what the public wanted. This strain of mythology fed into the Spanish-American War. The Civil War was over. We were done settling the West. What did that mean to us as Americans, who thought we were special and different?
Q: The debate between the Jacksonian and Hamiltonian approach to building an army was interesting. Hamilton’s belief ultimately prevailed, with a large standing army. But it’s interesting that a lot of people still believe in the Jacksonian idea of the citizen who can take up arms at a moment’s notice.
A:
One thing I hope comes out of the book is that it’s a book of history, and not about today, but there are relevant themes. Things we work through as Americans today, we can look back at the founding of the country and the earliest principles and constructions and see them there. You hear people talk about Venezuela, “overthrow the tyrant,” that’s the same sort of thing. That’s what the U.S. does, we go in an overthrow tyrants. That was certainly one motive for what happened in Cuba. And that sort of thinking resonates today. The Iraq war had some of that. There were a lot of conversations about using American power for good. Where we find problems is when we don’t really have a plan. We’re going to invade this country, conquer it, then what? That happened in Iraq. And the same thing happened in Cuba. The Philippines. Time after time, we go in without a plan. Vietnam. We have this idea that American power is an answer in and of itself. But it isn’t.
Q: There’s a sub-story here about journalism. You spend a substantial amount of time telling the stories of some reporters and how the news of the combat was reported.
A:
Yeah, Richard Harding Davis, he was a really good journalist. One of the reasons I focused on the journalism as much as I do is that one of the traditional stories of the Spanish-American War is that of the yellow press, that it was “Hearst’s war.” That (William Randolph) Hearst, more than anyone else, made the war happen. These myths stuck around a long time despite the fact that media historians and researchers pretty thoroughly debunked them long ago. There was reputable journalism that went into the Hearst papers then. What Americans read was a pretty good reflection of what was going on in Cuba. There was some about the destruction of the Maine but more about the humanitarian crisis, what we’d call today a genocide. And some of it, Richard Harding Davis’ stuff reads really well today. He’s gratuitous in his love of Teddy Roosevelt. But the writing and reporting are great. Davis is in a through-line of reporters to Ernie Pyle in World War II and David Halberstam in Vietnam and George Packer today. There was a sense of value in battlefield correspondence. To help the reading public understand what we were doing overseas. It’s integral to the whole package of the American experience.
Q: Back when I was in college, the Menger in San Antonio sold “Walk softly and carry a big drink” shirts. Texas really seemed like a perfect place for this group of people to converge.
A:
Yes, and one of the things that’s fun about a story like this is that some of the mythology is true. Some of the stories check out. Some larger-than-life characters are larger than life. There were some amazing characters who did some amazing things.
Yet the mythology speaks to the need for something different from reality. Something, some sense of gloss that we look for. At the time, these guys were celebrities in San Antonio. National celebrities. They were talked about like the weather. “Here’s what the Rough Riders are doing today.” It wasn’t really news. But people wanted to know that stuff. “What are they doing today? Oh, good, now I can plan my day.”
Q: There’s one soldier, Buckey O’Neill, whose brashness and demise feel very American to me.
A:
He’s one of my favorite characters in the book. Right before the Battle of San Juan Heights, he’s relaxing with the other soldiers waxing on and on about, “When you go home, I’m staying here. This is my place.” Talking about eating a big steak, dreaming about what his future is going to be.
Q: In the movies, that makes him a dead man.
A:
Exactly. But that scene to me is very humanizing. He’s thinking about something other than war. Making plans. I guess that’s not uniquely American, but it’s very American to think, “I’m here now; how will this work out for me? How will I take advantage of this moment? Even though none of us may live through this tropical hellscape where thousands of people want to kill us. But I already have a plan.” Then, very graphically, he gets killed, one of the first guys killed, and in a very dramatic way.