The Secretary of War offered to make him Colonel of one of these regiments.  It is worth while to notice what his reply was.  He knew how to manage a horse and a rifle, he had lived in the open and could take care of himself in the field.  He had had three years in the National Guard in New York, rising to the rank of Captain.  Many men in the Civil War without one half of his experience and knowledge, gayly accepted Brigadier-Generalships.  Also, in the Spanish War, another public man, Mr. William J. Bryan, allowed himself to be made a Colonel, and took full command of a regiment, without one day’s military experience.  Yet Roosevelt declined the offer of a Colonel’s commission and asked to be made Lieutenant-Colonel, with Leonard Wood, of the regular Army as his Colonel.

When you hear or read that Roosevelt was a conceited man, always pushing himself forward, it may be well to ask if that is the way a conceited man would have acted.

Colonel Wood was an army surgeon, who had been a fighting officer in the campaign against the Apaches.  He had been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest decoration an American soldier can win for personal bravery.

The new regiment, the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, was promptly called, by some newspaper or by the public, the “Rough Riders,” and by that name it is always known.  Most of the men in it came from Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the Indian Territory, but it had members from nearly every State.  Many Eastern college men were in it, including some famous foot-ball players, polo-players, tennis champions and oarsmen.  The regiment trained at San Antonio, and landed in Cuba for the attack on Santiago on June 22.  The troopers had to leave their horses behind, so they were to fight on foot after all.  Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, somebody said, had become Wood’s Weary Walkers.  The walking was not pleasant to some of the cow-boys, who never used to walk a step when there was a horse to ride.

Within a day or two they were in a fight at Las Guasimas.  It was a confusing business, advancing through the jungle and fired at by an enemy they could not see.  The Rough Riders lost eight men killed and thirty-four wounded.  The Spaniards were using smokeless powder, then rather a new thing in war.  Two of our regiments at Santiago were still using black powder rifles, and the artillery used black powder, which by its smoke showed the enemy just where they were.  Our artillery was always silenced or driven off, because this country had been so neglectful of its Army and its men as to let poor, old backward Spain get better guns, and more modern ammunition than ours.  That never should happen with a rich, progressive country like ours.