You have been a most gallant officer and in the battle before Santiago showed superb soldierly qualities.  I would rather add to, than detract from, the honors you have so fairly won, and I wish you all good things.  In a moment of aggravation under great stress of feeling, first because I thought you spoke in a disparaging manner of the volunteers (probably without intent, but because of your great enthusiasm for your own men) and second that I believed your published letter would embarrass the Department I sent you a telegram which with an extract from a private letter of yours I gave to the press.  I would gladly recall both if I could, but unable to do that I write you this letter which I hope you will receive in the same friendly spirit in which I send it.  Come and see me at a very early day.  No one will welcome you more heartily than I.

Yours very truly, (Signed) R. A. ALGER.

I thought this a manly letter, and paid no more heed to the incident; and when I was President, and General Alger was Senator from Michigan, he was my stanch friend and on most matters my supporter.

APPENDIX B

THE SAN JUAN FIGHT

The San Juan fight took its name from the San Juan Hill or hills—­I do not know whether the name properly belonged to a line of hills or to only one hill.

To compare small things with large things, this was precisely as the Battle of Gettysburg took its name from the village of Gettysburg, where only a small part of the fighting was done; and the battle of Waterloo from the village of Waterloo, where none of the fighting was done.  When it became the political interest of certain people to endeavor to minimize my part in the Santiago fighting (which was merely like that of various other squadron, battalion and regimental commanders) some of my opponents laid great stress on the alleged fact that the cavalry did not charge up San Juan Hill.  We certainly charged some hills; but I did not ask their names before charging them.  To say that the Rough Riders and the cavalry division, and among other people myself, were not in the San Juan fight is precisely like saying that the men who made Pickett’s Charge, or the men who fought at Little Round Top and Culps Hill, were not at Gettysburg; or that Picton and the Scotch Greys and the French and English guards were not at Waterloo.  The present Vice-President of the United States in the campaign last year was reported in the press as repeatedly saying that I was not in the San Juan fight.  The documents following herewith have been printed for many years, and were accessible to him had he cared to know or to tell the truth.