The Rough Riders quotes

The mustering-places for the regiment were appointed in New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory.

The difficulty in organizing was not in selecting, but in rejecting men.

Within a day or two after it was announced that we were to raise the regiment, we were literally deluged with applications from every quarter of the Union.

that is, from the lands that have been most recently won over to white civilization, and in which the conditions of life are nearest those that obtained on the frontier when there still was a frontier.

They were a splendid set of men, these Southwesterners⁠—tall and sinewy, with resolute, weather-beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man straight in the face without flinching.

They included in their ranks men of every occupation; but the three types were those of the cowboy, the hunter, and the mining prospector—the man who wandered hither and thither, killing game for a living, and spending his life in the quest for metal wealth.

They included in their ranks men of every occupation; but the three types were those of the cowboy, the hunter, and the mining prospector—the man who wandered hither and thither, killing game for a living, and spending his life in the quest for metal wealth.

In all the world there could be no better material for soldiers than that afforded by these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough riders of the plains.

They were accustomed to handling wild and savage horses; they were accustomed to following the chase with the rifle, both for sport and as a means of livelihood.

Brodie was running a big mining business; but when the Maine was blown up, he abandoned everything and telegraphed right and left to bid his friends get ready for the fight he saw impending.

Then there was Micah Jenkins, the captain of Troop K, a gentle and courteous South Carolinian, on whom danger acted like wine.

In action he was a perfect gamecock, and he won his majority for gallantry in battle.

… possessed but half a name, colored by some adjective, like Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of Arizona, Smoky Moore, the broncobuster, so named because cowboys often call vicious horses “smoky” horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who had lived among the Moquis and taken part in the snake-dances.

Some were professional gamblers, and, on the other hand, no less than four were or had been Baptist or Methodist clergymen⁠—and proved first-class fighters, too, by the way.

Some were men whose lives in the past had not been free from the taint of those fierce kinds of crime into which the lawless spirits who dwell on the borderland between civilization and savagery so readily drift.

… of giving it two tremendous twists, first to one side and then to the other, as it bolted, with the result that, invariably, at the second bound its legs crossed and over it went with a smash, the rider taking the somersault with unmoved equanimity.

The life histories of some of the men who joined our regiment would make many volumes of thrilling adventure.

We drew a great many recruits from Texas; and from nowhere did we get a higher average, for many of them had served in that famous body of frontier fighters, the Texas Rangers. Of course, these rangers needed no teaching.

… had kept his nerve and held his own, year after year, while living where each day and night contained the threat of hidden death from a foe whose goings and comings were unseen, was not apt to lose courage when confronted with any other enemy.

An experience in following in the trail of an enemy who might flee at one stretch through fifty miles of deathlike desert was a good school out of which to come with profound indifference for the ordinary hardships of campaigning.

As a rule, the men were more apt, however, to have had experience in warring against white desperadoes and lawbreakers than against Indians. Some of our best recruits came from Colorado.

A brave but fastidious member of a well-known Eastern club, who was serving in the ranks, was christened “Tough Ike”; and his bunkie, the man who shared his shelter-tent, who was a decidedly rough cowpuncher, gradually acquired the name of “The Dude.”

One unlucky and simple-minded cowpuncher, who had never been east of the great plains in his life, unwarily boasted that he had an aunt in New York, and ever afterward went by the name of “Metropolitan Bill.”

A huge redheaded Irishman was named “Sheeny Solomon.” A young Jew who developed into one of the best fighters in the regiment accepted, with entire equanimity, the name of “Pork-chop.”

… to detail, has positively unlimited opportunity for the display of “individual initiative,” and is in no danger whatever either of suffering from unhealthy suppression of personal will, or of finding his faculties of self-help numbed by becoming a cog in a gigantic and smooth-running machine.

If such a battalion chief wants to get anything or go anywhere he must do it by exercising every pound of resource, inventiveness, and audacity he possesses.

The help, advice, and superintendence he gets from outside will be of the most general, not to say superficial, character.

… and where the younger men had all their lives long drunk in the endless tales told by their elders, at home, and at the crossroads taverns, and in the courthouse squares, about the cavalry of Forrest and Morgan and the infantry of Jackson and Hood.

The blood of the old men stirred to the distant breath of battle; the blood of the young men leaped hot with eager desire to accompany us.

The older women, who remembered the dreadful misery of war—the misery that presses its iron weight most heavily on the wives and the little ones—looked sadly at us;

The blood of the old men stirred to the distant breath of battle; the blood of the young men leaped hot with eager desire to accompany us.

The older women, who remembered the dreadful misery of war⁠—the misery that presses its iron weight most heavily on the wives and the little ones⁠—looked sadly at us; but the young girls drove down in bevies, arrayed in their finery, to wave flags in farewell to the troopers and to beg cartridges and buttons as mementos.

Everywhere we saw the Stars and Stripes, and everywhere we were told, half-laughing, by grizzled ex-Confederates that they had never dreamed in the bygone days of bitterness to greet the old flag as they now were greeting it, and to send their sons, as now …

No outsider can appreciate the bitterness of the disappointment. Of course, really, those that stayed were entitled to precisely as much honor as those that went. Each man was doing his duty, and much the hardest and most disagreeable duty was to stay.

Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is very often the accident of glory.

All this and much more we explained, but our explanations could not alter the fact that some had to be chosen and some had to be left. One of the Captains chosen was Captain Maximilian Luna, who commanded Troop F, from New Mexico.

Once a strange ship steamed up too close, and instantly the nearest torpedo-boat was slipped like a greyhound from the leash, and sped across the water toward it; but the stranger proved harmless, and the swift, delicate, death-fraught craft returned again.

It was very pleasant, sailing southward through the tropic seas toward the unknown.

We knew not whither we were bound, nor what we were to do; but we believed that the nearing future held for us many chances of death and hardship, of honor and renown. If we failed, we would share the fate of all who fail;

If we failed, we would share the fate of all who fail; but we were sure that we would win, that we should score the first great triumph in a mighty world movement.

At night we looked at the new stars, and hailed the Southern Cross when at last we raised it above the horizon.

In the daytime we drilled, and in the evening we held officers’ school; but there was much time when we had little to do, save to scan the wonderful blue sea and watch the flying-fish.

He had taken so many chances when death lay on the hazard, that he felt the odds were now against him; but, said he,

“Who would not risk his life for a star?”

Had he lived, and had the war lasted, he would surely have won the eagle, if not the star.

Afterward we found that the Spanish guerillas imitated these bird-calls, but the sounds we heard that morning, as we advanced through the tropic forest, were from birds, not guerillas, until we came right up to the Spanish lines.

It was very beautiful and very peaceful, and it seemed more as if we were off on some hunting excursion than as if were about to go into a sharp and bloody little fight.

Of course, we accommodated our movements to those of the men in front.

but I knew it could not be wrong to go forward, and I thought I would find Wood and then see what he wished me to do.

I was in a mood to cordially welcome guidance, for it was most bewildering to fight an enemy whom one so rarely saw.

I had not seen Wood since the beginning of the skirmish, when he hurried forward. When the firing opened some of the men began to curse. “Don’t swear—shoot!”

I had not seen Wood since the beginning of the skirmish, when he hurried forward. When the firing opened some of the men began to curse.

“Don’t swear⁠—shoot!”

growled Wood, as he strode along the path leading his horse, and everyone laughed and became cool again.

It was a very lovely morning, the sky of cloudless blue, while the level, shimmering rays from the just-risen sun brought into fine relief the splendid palms which here and there towered above the lower growth.

The lofty and beautiful mountains hemmed in the Santiago plain, making it an amphitheatre for the battle.

Immediately our guns opened, and at the report great clouds of white smoke hung on the ridge crest. For a minute or two there was no response.

S. Cowles, of the Navy. At the time I did not know of Gould’s exploit, and supposed my feat to be unique; and although Gould had killed his Spaniard in the trenches, not very far from me, I never learned of it until weeks after.

It is astonishing what a limited area of vision and experience one has in the hurly-burly of a battle.

There was very great confusion at this time, the different regiments being completely intermingled—white regulars, colored regulars, and Rough Riders. General Sumner had kept a considerable force in reserve on Kettle Hill, under Major Jackson, of the Third Cavalry.

he was ordered to go to the United States, but he heard that we were to assault Santiago, so he struggled out to rejoin us, and thereafter stayed at the front. Cosby, badly wounded, made his way down to the seacoast in three days, unassisted.

With all volunteer troops, and I am inclined to think with regulars, too, in time of trial, the best work can be got out of the men only if the officers endure the same hardships and face the same risks.

In my regiment, as in the whole cavalry division, the proportion of loss in killed and wounded was considerably greater among the officers than among the troopers, and this was exactly as it should be.

… critics, and as they knew I was aware of this, the correspondent finally ventured the remark, that he thought our soldiers fought even better than the Turks, but that on the whole our system of military administration seemed rather worse than that of the Greeks.

As a nation we had prided ourselves on our business ability and adroitness in the arts of peace, while outsiders, at any rate, did not credit us with any especial warlike prowess; and it was curious that when war came we should have broken down precisely on the business and administrative side, while the fighting edge of the troops certainly left little to be desired.

I was very much touched by the devotion my men showed to me. After they had once become convinced that I would share their hardships, they made it a point that I should not suffer any hardships at all;

We did no fighting in our new position, for the last straggling shot had been fired by the time we got there. That evening there came up the worst storm we had had, and by midnight my tent blew over.

I had for the first time in a fortnight undressed myself completely, and I felt fully punished for my love of luxury when I jumped out into the driving downpour of tropic rain, and groped blindly in the darkness for my clothes as they lay in the liquid mud.

It was Kane’s night on guard, and I knew the wretched Woody would be out along the line and taking care of the pickets, no matter what the storm might be;

Accordingly I had to put a stop to these acts of kindness on the part of my men; against which action Happy Jack respectfully but strongly protested upon the unexpected ground that

“The Almighty would never let a man catch a disease while he was doing a good action.”

I did not venture to take so advanced a theological stand.

All the clothes were in rags; even the officers had neither socks nor underwear.

The lithe college athletes had lost their spring; the tall, gaunt hunters and cowpunchers lounged listlessly in their dog-tents, which were steaming morasses during the torrential rains, and then ovens when the sun blazed down; but there were no complaints.

Through some blunder our march from the intrenchments to the camp on the foothills, after the surrender, was made during the heat of the day;

It was a very beautiful and almost terrible sight; for the sun rose behind the storm, and shone through the gusty rifts, lighting the mountain-crests here and there, while the plain below lay shrouded in the lingering night.

The angry, level rays edged the dark clouds with crimson, and turned the downpour into sheets of golden rain; in the valleys the glimmering mists were tinted every wild hue; and the remotest heavens were lit with flaming glory.

One day General Lawton, General Wood and I, with Ferguson and poor Tiffany, went down the bay to visit Morro Castle.

he was a nephew of the Governor of Alabama, and when at Princeton had played on the eleven. We had plenty of horses, and these rides were most enjoyable.

Galloping over the open, rolling country, through the cool fall evenings, made us feel as if we were out on the great Western plains and might at any moment start deer from the brush, or see antelope stand and gaze, far away, or rouse a band of mighty elk and hear their horns clatter as they fled.

An old friend, Baron von Sternberg, of the German Embassy, spent a week in camp with me.

No general who was worth his salt would have failed to fight under such conditions; the only question would be as to how the fight was to be made.

War means fighting; and the soldier’s cardinal sin is timidity.

General Wheeler remained throughout steadfast against any retreat from before Santiago.