Among my friends was the then Army Surgeon Leonard Wood.  He was a surgeon.  Not having an income, he had to earn his own living.  He had gone through the Harvard Medical School, and had then joined the army in the Southwest as a contract doctor.  He had every physical, moral, and mental quality which fitted him for a soldier’s life and for the exercise of command.  In the inconceivably wearing and harassing campaigns against the Apaches he had served nominally as a surgeon, really in command of troops, on more than one expedition.  He was as anxious as I was that if there were war we should both have our part in it.  I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it.  Moreover, I had very deeply felt that it was our duty to free Cuba, and I had publicly expressed this feeling; and when a man takes such a position, he ought to be willing to make his words good by his deeds unless there is some very strong reason to the contrary.  He should pay with his body.

As soon as war was upon us, Wood and I began to try for a chance to go to the front.  Congress had authorized the raising of three National Volunteer Cavalry regiments, wholly apart from the State contingents.  Secretary Alger of the War Department was fond of me personally, and Wood was his family doctor.  Alger had been a gallant soldier in the Civil War, and was almost the only member of the Administration who felt all along that we would have to go to war with Spain over Cuba.  He liked my attitude in the matter, and because of his remembrance of his own experiences he sympathized with my desire to go to the front.  Accordingly he offered me the command of one of the regiments.  I told him that after six weeks’ service in the field I would feel competent to handle the regiment, but that I would not know how to equip it or how to get it into the first action; but that Wood was entirely competent at once to take command, and that if he would make Wood colonel I would accept the lieutenant-colonelcy.  General Alger thought this an act of foolish self-abnegation on my part—­instead of its being, what it was, the wisest act I could have performed.  He told me to accept the colonelcy, and that he would make Wood lieutenant-colonel, and that Wood would do the work anyway; but I answered that I did not wish to rise on any man’s shoulders; that I hoped to be given every chance that my deeds and abilities warranted; but that I did not wish what I did not earn, and that above all I did not wish to hold any position where any one else did the work.  He laughed at me a little and said I was foolish, but I do not think he really minded, and he promised to do as I wished.  True to his word, he secured the appointment of Wood as colonel and of myself as lieutenant-colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry.  This was soon nicknamed, both by the public and by the rest of the army, the Rough Riders, doubtless because the bulk of the men were from the Southwestern ranch country and were skilled in the wild horsemanship of the great plains.