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BEGIN INTERVIEW
START TAPE 011
INT: Roosevelt, where he is at this point, what his academic and social background is, end on how he gets asked to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
JG: The nature writer John Burroughs said of his friend, Theodore Roosevelt, "Roosevelt was a many-sided man and every side was like an electric battery." Roosevelt was, ah, very much a Renaissance man. He had many talents, pursued many interests during his life. He was a naturalist, a writer, and so on. But he was also a professional politician. And he'd been in politics since 1881. So by 1898, he'd been in politics for 17 years. He was elected to the New York State legislature at the age of 23, in 1881, the youngest member of the legislature. And, ah, the thing was, he was a professional politician. He was a loyal Republican. Ah, he had campaigned loyally for the Republicans in every election, and they had annual elections in New York State in those days. And so the party owed him, particularly when he had stood by the ticket in 1884 when many Republicans deserted the candidate in 1884. So they owed him. And so they had to give him a job. But always they made sure that they gave him a job as low as possible. Ah, he got the dull, hard jobs. So in 1886 he was given the nomination for Governor of -- excuse me -- for mayor of New York City. In 1886 he was given the nomination for mayor of New York City when there wasn't the chance of winning. He campaigned for the Republicans in 1888 and he was given the job as US Civil Service Commissioner, a position he held from 1889 to 1895. That was the good gray cause. It should have buried him, ah, but he put it on the front pages. Every time they gave him a nothing job, he turned it around and ended up on the front pages and, therefore, built up his stature all the more. In 1896, ah, he campaigned, ah, for the party and, ah, they owed him. He was at that point a very popular police commissioner of New York City. When the Republicans had won the election in New York City in 1895, they actually tried to make him street commissioner. He turned that down and was put into the police department, which should have killed him off because it was a political mess. He put that on the front pages, really turned the force around, campaigned for McKinley in 1896. So he won the position. He would have liked a cabinet post. He was more or less entitled to that kind of position. Ah, ah, his good friend, Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator from Massachusetts, lobbied for him, as did others. He was owed. But McKinley, ah, was, ah, afraid that Roosevelt would, ah, steal thunder, would be, ah, too dangerous to work with, too difficult to work with in any cabinet position. So he gave him the job of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt was already -- was known as an expert on the Navy. And, ah, so it was a low position. Two Presidents, Harrison and McKinley, had both turned down, ah, Roosevelt for cabinet positions. Assistant Secretary of the Navy was the best he could do. And until he emerged as a war hero from 1898, that was about as high as he was ever going to go, given the situation. He wasn't going to be nominated for Governor of New York. He wasn't going to get a cabinet portfolio.
INT: What about McKinley made him fear Roosevelt?
JG: Well, Roosevelt ...
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JG: Roosevelt was a reformer, and he had been from day one, from 1881. Always in politics he'd been a reformer. He'd stayed within the Republican Party. He was a regular in that sense. He didn't bolt the party, but he was always working for reform. And so McKinley, and everybody else in the United States, had seen what Roosevelt did in the New York legislature, as Civil Service Commissioner, as the police commissioner of New York City, ahm, and so they -- he knew that he would -- he would likely be a kind of reformer. Now he was identified as a big Navy man for naval expansion. So, once again, McKinley could just see trouble.
INT: What were Roosevelt's attitudes about naval expansion?
JG: Roosevelt believed in naval expansion. He thought that naval expansion -- the Navy was it in those days militarily. Ahm, given our geographical location, the Army wasn't of much importance because, ah, you know, ah, we wouldn't be threatened on land. But the Navy was everything. There was no air power at that time, so what it meant to be a world power at that point as far as the United States was concerned, naval power.
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INT: What was Roosevelt's attitude toward naval expansion and forging new frontiers?
JG: Ah, Roosevelt, when he was a senior at Harvard, had begun writing a book on the naval War of 1812. He read all the literature on the subject, didn't like what he found, he found it insufficient, and so published his first book, the first of over 30 books that he wrote, in 1882 when he was 23 years old, called The Naval History of the War of 1812, over 500 pages, a highly technical history still in print today, a classic, and instant classic. In fact, it was put on every ship of the United States Navy. Now through the study of that war that was more naval than any other war we ever had, the War of 1812, ah, Roosevelt saw the importance of sea power. Now Admiral, ah, Alfred Thayer Mahan, the great historian of, ah, naval power, ah, had gotten most of his ideas from 18th century, from studying the French and the British and through the many wars between France and Britain. And TR had gotten his ideas from the 1812 war. TR became friends with Admiral Mahan, who became a teacher at the new Naval War College. And TR was lecturing at the Naval War College already in the late 1880s. And he and Mahan became close friends. TR favorably reviewed Mahan. At the time Mahan's books were published, TR was far better known as a personage and as an author, and as a historian, ah, than Mahan. So he helped give, ah, Mahan, ahm, his start. And Roosevelt learned from Mahan, yes, a great deal, but Mahan learned from him as well. And that's true of Frederick Jackson Turner as well. Frederick Jackson Turner was much instructed by TR's history of the frontier, which in many ways anticipates, ah, Turner. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a four-volume history of the frontier which runs from 1763 to 1807. And this had been pub-- this was published between 1889 and 1895 in various volumes, comes out to the four volumes. And, ahm ...
INT: What do both Turner and Roosevelt advocate regarding the frontier?
JG: Ahm, both Turner and Roosevelt have an appreciation of the importance of the frontier. They look at it somewhat differently, ahm, but both of them saw it as essential, ahm, to forming the American character.
INT: It would continue overseas?
JG: No. This is what people say about Roosevelt. What do I know? (Laughs) But I don't find all these things.
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JG: Roosevelt's idea of imperialism and so on was extremely restricted. I mean he was not in favor of, you know, colonization or any of that stuff.
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INT: Would you say an expanded frontier necessarily implied expansion overseas at that time?
JG: Didn't. No. No, no, no. He wanted equivalencies, equivalencies of the frontier. Yeah. You really quite -- you know, almost people -- most -- people didn't then, but now they misunderstand him. You know, Roosevelt was living in a world of imperialism and everything about foreign policy and national policy in the 1890s, and for some years thereafter, was done in an imperialistic context. Roosevelt, ah, accepted the world that he found. He saw that imperialism had it's uses. It was the name of the game. He believed it was a stage, a stage which would pass away. Ah, he thought the British Empire had great utility for preserving world peace. He thought the German empire was rather a bad idea because it threatened world peace. He thought a Japanese empire was both good and bad because in some ways it could bring stability, in some ways it could threaten world peace. For the United States, Roosevelt's only interest in imperialism was highly limited. He wanted coaling stations. He wanted, ahm, areas that were sort of ours naturally. Hawaii had fallen into our lap. Otherwise, he probably wouldn't have given it much thought. We needed Guam as a coaling station. Ah, he didn't really want the Philippines. The Philippines came to us. It had a certain utility establishing us as an Asian power, but we already were an Asian power by virtue of Hawaii and Guam and American Samoa. Ah, but he, of course, did not want to let it go to the Germans. No. In terms of the frontier and the closing of the frontier, Roosevelt looked for equivalencies. What was to replace or play the same role that the frontier had? And a whole bunch of things could. One -- one thing you do is you preserve wilderness areas ...
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INT: Talk about the Roosevelt reaction to the Maine explosion.
JG: When Roosevelt heard ...
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JG: When Roosevelt heard that the -- the Maine had exploded, he believed it had been caused by Spanish treachery and, of course, the first and then the much later subsequent courts of inquiry also indicated that ship was sunk by an outward explosion. There was superficial evidence at that -- at that point to indicate that it had been sunk by an outward force. Today, of course, we're pretty sure it was spontaneous combustion, an internal explosion. So, of course, he thought it was certainly a sufficient cause to, ah, throw down the gauntlet to Spain.
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JG: Roosevelt saw that a war, any war, could serve the national interest in that it would, ah, focus on the military, it would help us to build up our military, and, ah, make us a first class world power. That doesn't mean he would go out and start a war, but the Cuban situation presented, ah, a, ah, a venue for, ah, improving the United States in several respects as far as he was concerned.
INT: What sort of respects?
JG: To bring us into the position of being ...
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JG: Roosevelt thought that, ah, a war with Spain over Cuba would make us a world power. Ah, naturally the situation presented itself. He'd had nothing to do with bringing it about. Ahm, the war was of long-standing and it was one of several rev-- revolutions. So he saw that there -- that there could be a positive use for this situation. Ah, whereas, of course, the merits of the case of Cuba, Spain vis-a-vis the United States could be decided entirely on -- by themselves, he saw that there -- that there were uses as an exponent of naval -- of naval power, this would give a chance to expose the -- ah, to expose the Navy to practical action and to give, ah, Congress an excuse for expanding the Navy. And, of course, he saw naval power as absolutely essential if we were going to be an international power, if we were going to have any world trade, if the Monroe Doctrine was going to have any, ah, utility and, indeed, if we were able to protect ourselves in the future.
INT: How did he see war in terms of benefitting the national character?
JG: I don't know. I really don't.
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INT: Talk about the Rough Riders and what Long thought.
JG: Both Russell Alger, who was Secretary of War, and John Davis Long, who was Secretary of the Navy, were very mild-mannered, non-aggressive types and, of course, war was approaching. Alger, for example, hadn't even spent the money Congress had appropriated for the Army by the time we got into the war. TR was, of course, an activist and he saw war around the corner, so he began preparing the Navy. He would often do this when Secretary Long was either absent for the afternoon, sometimes having massage therapy, or on a long and extended vacation. He was an older man. Interesting thing about it was, Roosevelt proceeded, often without consulting Long, but when Long came back, he never rescinded any of the orders. I mean he could see that basically this was something that needed doing and that he would have gotten around to it maybe himself in another month or two, or whatever. President McKinley was a very sharp guy. Nothin' went on that McKinley didn't know about. McKinley knew this stuff was going on, too, and McKinley let it stand. Now, for example, you take the situation with Admiral Dewey. TR had told Dewey to go to Hong Kong, buy enough coal to be able to get somewhere. Everybody knew what that meant, the Philippines. Now this had actually been discussed, that the Philippines, if we ever went to war with Spain, you'd have to take out the Philippines, because, otherwise, our west coast would be in danger. So that was part of the -- the accepted war plans. Now but when a war comes, sometimes you change your war plan. But that was a war plan that was in place. And so TR was basically doing, you know, what -- what someone should do under those circumstances and -- and not making it up. It was already there on the desk, so to speak. And he put it into action because his -- his superior didn't want to take the initiative, nor did the President want to take the initiative. But when it was done, they let it stay, which was sort of a vindication that it was the wise thing. Now the Rough Rider regiment summed up a great deal about TR. The regiment was largely composed of, on the one hand, Eastern, Northeastern aristocrats, Ivy League Athletes, and, of course, that was TR's own background. He was a knickerbocker aristocrat from New York City, old Dutch money. He was a boxer at Harvard. This was his experience. These were his friends, the people he knew, the Ivy League athletes and -- and, ah, then the regiment was composed also of cowboys and Indians, largely from the -- from the West and from the Southwest. And this was based on Roosevelt's experience as a cattle rancher in the 1880s. He was one of the most famous, ah, cattle ranchers we ever had because he wrote books about it, which gave us our conception, or at least much of our conception of what the West was like. So he had worked with cowboys, he knew cowboys, he'd been through that experience and so he brought cowboys into the regiment. Now what did these guys have in common? This. They didn't need to learn how to shoot or to ride, because they didn't need that training because all rich people, you know, had guns and went hunting and had horses. And, of course, cowboys and Indians knew how to ride and shoot. So that's what they had in common. They were ready to go!
INT: Describe the disembarkation at Tampa and how Roosevelt acted.
JG: The whole transport of the American troops, including the Rough Riders, first from Tampa, Florida, down to Cuba and then the landing in Cuba were total snafu. They were very well poorly organized. There weren't enough ships provided for the transport of the horses of the cavalry. As a consequence, the Rough Riders became an infantry regiment because there weren't sufficient -- there wasn’t sufficient -- sufficient space on the -- ah, on the ships to bring these horses over. TR basically commandeered trains, he commandeered space on the boats. He just moved ahead very aggressively to make sure that his boys got a place on the boats. As it was, not all the Rough Riders did get on transports and many of them were left behind with the horses in Tampa, Florida. When they got to Daiquiri, which was the beach in Cuba near Santiago where they were going to land, immortalized, of course, in a drink, ah, the Daiquiri, ah, fortunately, the Spanish had fled because they would have really made a mess of the -- of the American troops. TR had two horses which had been put on, you know, for his own use which had been put on the ships. They were unloading them with wenches underneath their bellies. One horse was named Rain in the Face and one was Texas. He'd bought them both in Saguine(?), Texas when he put the Rough Rider regiment together in San Antonio. First, they began lowering from the ship. They had no docks, no docking facilities. They lowered Rain in the Face into the water. Race in the Face died, drowned in place before the harnesses got off. The same point, Texas was going down. Roosevelt yelled, "Cut the -- cut the wrench -- cut the wench." They cut it and, ah, little Texas went right into the drink. He -- his head came up, he looked around, and he started swimming out to sea. On the shore the bugler saw this and began blowing and Texas heard the bugle call and turned around and started swimming in to shore. And so that's how TR had a horse to go up San Juan Hill on.
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JG: It was a mess and most of the Rough Riders were nude by the end of the day because all dye in their uniforms came off when it got wet. It was also woolen uniforms. So, you see ...
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JG: The -- the landing at Daiquiri was, I mean, one hell of a mess. And one of the problems was, of course, most of the cowboys -- the cowboys and Indians couldn't swim. They'd never really see water. The cowboys kept referring to the -- to the, ah -- to the ocean as the "crick". And, ah, when they got ashore, of course, their uniforms were wool, they were hot and the dye started coming off. And, ah, so they really were not very practical. So most -- most of them stripped down and just wore their, ah, sombreros. So by the end of the day you had all these nude Rough Riders with cowboys hats on working in the surf trying to get stuff in.
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JG: When, ah, the war broke out with Spain, Roosevelt immediately resigned his position in the Navy Department and asked for and received a commission in the Army. He did this because he wanted to practice what he'd preached. He'd advocated going into the war and he was, ah, still a young man. So, therefore, he, therefore, felt he had to put his body, you know, where his mouth had been and so that he'd better live up to his own ideal. So that's why he resigned. Secretary of the Navy John Davis Long wrote in his diary that this was a big mistake and, of course, Roosevelt would come out as a big war leader if he stayed in Washington with the Navy Department because there'd be so much focus on the Navy Department. And, of course, if Roosevelt had been killed, it certainly would have been a bad career move, wouldn't it? Ahm, but, ahm, of course, Roosevelt became a war hero and that was very important to his political career and Lodge -- I mean Davis later wrote in his diary how Roosevelt had, of course, made the right decision from the standpoint of his own life. At the time it didn't look like that. Looked like he was risking his life and that probably he might have been even going away from what his duty was, because many people, most of his friends said, "Your duty is with the Navy Department where your expertise is." But he felt that he had to live up to his ideals and went off to, ah, to Cuba. You see, his role in the war was first through the Navy, getting the Navy ready for the war, and then he became one of the great field heroes of the war through the Army. So he had both a naval and an army impact on the war. Let's say a few things about the war.
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JG: There are several things about the Spanish-American war that I think have largely been forgotten. The first thing is, Spain declared war on the United States. And one reason why that's forgotten is when they declared war on us, Congress said, "You can't declare war on us. We declare war on you." And so they post-dated their declaration of war to the day before the Spanish declaration of war. So if you look at -- at most chronologies, you'll see "Declaration of war by the United States followed by declaration of war by Spain." In reality, it was declaration of war by Spain and then Congress declared war. So the immediate cause of the Spanish-American War was 'cause they declared war on us and the thing was over Cuban independence. And I'll tell you, they talked a good -- they talked a lot diplomatically. I have no reason whatsoever, from any of the evidence I've seen, to believe they were negotiating in good faith. There wasn't a single political leader in Spain, a single political party or a single group, except for the anarchists, who favored Cuban independence in Spain. It would have been political suicide for any Spanish politician to get rid of the Spanish empire, understandably. Cuba just plain wasn’t ever gonna get free unless we did something about it. And they weren't strong enough to win their own independence. So we had to intervene. Now most people don't realize the Spanish army at the outset of the war was seven times the size of the United States Army, seven times. Now we had a larger population, so ultimately we had a potential of overpowering them. But starting out, they had seven times the number of troops we did. Of course, some in Spain, some in the Philippines, some in Cuba, some in Puerto Rico, and so on. They also had a larger navy than the United States. Now history was to show, subsequent events were to show that their navy was in poor condition and that ours was in excellent condition, and that our volunteers were able to carry the day in the field against the Spanish army. But at beginning of the war this was far from obvious and the Spanish had great confidence in their military and in their navy. And they actually thought that they could perhaps fight us to a draw or -- or defeat us. So, you see, when the war started out, it looked like we were taking on a great deal more than proved to be the case.
INT: Talk about the Battle of San Juan Hill.
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JG: The role of the Buffalo Soldiers in the Battle of San Juan Hill is very interesting. The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry were composed of African Americans. The Army was segregated in those days. And they were kind of off to the left of where the Rough Riders were initially. The Rough Rider, ah, took Kettle Hill and then they joined up with the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, which was assaulting San Juan Hill. Now at that point most of the, ah, black soldiers had become separated from their officers. There was a great, great deal of confusion at that part of the field. And Roosevelt took command and he blended in elements of the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry in side by side with the Rough Riders. You've got to remember this is battle. Things are confused. Now Roosevelt went up and told the black soldiers that, you know, he was taking over, that he was the ranking officer and they were to -- to follow him. And he announced at the time that, ahm, if any man went to the rear, retreated, or ran, he'd shoot him. And he said he didn't -- he said at the time, he said, "I don't mean to insult you or any -- I'm not saying you are going to run, but I've just got to make this very clear right at this point." And then he said, of course, they acquitted themselves great in battle and Roosevelt, for the rest of his life, paid tribute to the black soldiers he'd fought with at San Juan Hill. So actually, you see, you had all the Americans there -- cowboys, Indians, Ivy Leaguers, and -- and African Americans as well, in spite of the Army being segregated. Now frequently African Americans have not received their due in -- in -- in the wars for their service, but this is a case where they did. Ah, a bunch of them received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their activities on that day. The -- the last speech that Roosevelt gave in 1918 was for negro war relief in Carnegie Hall and started out the speech, as he had many times, by giving tribute to the African American soldiers, the Buffalo Soldiers, he'd fought with in Cuba.
INT: Talk about that article he wrote for Scribner's.
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JG: Roosevelt's political opponents accused him of insulting the blacks on the basis that in his articles he told about how he had said to them when he took command of them, ah, that he would shoot any of them if they retreated. Ahm, and he said at the time he didn't mean to imply that they were cowa-- ah, cowards or anything of the sort, just giving the -- the situation, because they had to move fast and they had -- and he had to take command and establish command. Some people said that he was, therefore, insulting the blacks by accusing them of cowardice or of questioning their competence as soldiers. We know that's not the case for a number of reasons. From the eyewitnesses and the way he was dealing with -- with the soldiers at the time and, secondly, from private accounts which he wrote at the time which he chose not to release. The reason he chose not to release that full account of the thing was he thought it would just prolong the discussion and be good for nobody, not good politically or good for race relations or anything else. He made it a point of stating that most of his Rough Riders were racists, because they were from -- they were from Texas and the Southwest, and that they blended very well because in -- in the heat of battle they really did become brothers and they literally shared a canteen. And the significance of that sounds cornball and it would have been lost on, you know, many people today, but, you know, in those days negroes and whites did not drink, ah, or eat out of the same utensils. So that they were literally sharing the canteen had a great significance and they were -- they were blended right in together and they got along well. And Roosevelt commented on that.
INT: What was the significance of the victory at San Juan Hill?
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JG: There was a ridge called San Juan Ridge which overlooked the city of Santiago. On the ridge were a bunch of hillocks, or hills, one of which, ah, is called by posterity Kettle Hill and another which is called San Juan Hill. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders charged up first Kettle Hill and then the so called San Juan Hill. Securing the heights meant that Santiago would fall and that, therefore, the war would be over and that whole theater or operations. So it was crucial to take that ridge, which was highly fortified and held by the -- by the Spanish troops. So it was important to take that ridge and it was a crucial part of the war because that was the end of the war as far as Cuba was concerned. Santiago surrendered. The Rough Rider image was crucial to -- to Roosevelt's political career because that's how he got nominated for Governor of New York. Thinking of it. In January of 1898 he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in Washington. On July 1st he was leading the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill and in November he's elected Governor of New York, busy year. He would never have been nominated for Governor of New York had he not been a war hero and had it not been thatthe Republicans in New York State were mired down in a scandal. They dare not run their incumbent governor, whose name was Black, for re-election. John C. Depew(?), the great Republican orator, said, "Look, if I go out campaigning this fall for the Republican ticket, people are gonna jump up and yell about the scandals. But if I have Roosevelt at the head of the ticket, I'll say, 'And Colonel Roosevelt always gets his man,' and then I'll tell the band to play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and everything'll go fine. But if we don't have Roosevelt at the head of the ticket, I won't have an answer for those insults about the Republican administration." And Roosevelt did not win in a landslide. It was a bad year for the Republicans, but he pulled it out and saved -- ah, saved their bacon that fall. They quickly found him a reformer and decided to get rid of him by kicking him upstairs to become Vice President. Now in those days, Vice President was not the stepping stone to the White House that it became from the 1950s on. In those days it was the end of the line, a dead letter office. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall used to tell the story, "A woman had two sons. One went to sea and one became Vice President and neither was ever heard from again." Now Roosevelt was nominated for Vice President in 1900 not because he was Governor of New York State, but because he was a war hero and, therefore, could add a lot of pizzazz to the Republican ticket and appeal. And his association with the West and with the westerners that were in the regiment helped offset the appeal of the Democrats in the West with William Jennings Bryan, the great -- of Nebraska, who was the Presidential candidate. The interesting thing is that almost every single Republican campaign button from 1900 shows pictures of both McKinley and Roosevelt, in other words, the candidate for President and Vice President. That's the only election in American history in which this is the case, that both candidates are on all the buttons. It's because of Roosevelt's appeal.
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JG: I mean, you know, Hearst didn't start the insurrection in Cuba. Hearst didn't invent the concentration camps. They were very real. Why he invented stories was, was, you see, he couldn't always get his stuff. He knew it was down there, but he couldn't always get to the back country and whatever.
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JG: Theodore Roosevelt becomes Vice President in the election of 1900.
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INT: Talk about the transfer of power become McKinley and Roosevelt ...
JG: Theodore Roosevelt got to be Vice President largely because he was a war hero, not because he was Governor of New York, because a war hero would help the Republican ticket. And he might have become President later rather than, as the case was, sooner, because at the time of President William McKinley's assassination in 1901, TR was already very busy working to run for the nomination in 1904. He was already out there organizing and lining up supporters for the -- to make a race for the nomination in 1904, when McKinley would be retiring. As it happened, William McKinley was assassinated at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. And on September the 14th, 1901, which is the real beginning of the 20th century for the United States, Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office as the 26th President of the United States. He was 42 years old, the youngest President in our history before or since. And this was the real beginning of the 20th century because we had a President who was modern, who was progressive, and, of course, this meant that the United States was going to continue to be involved in world affairs and was going to have, indeed, ahm, a celebrated Rough Rider leading the country, ah, which is somebody you pay attention to. Don't forget all the heads of state are wearing uniforms at this point. They're all kings of whatever and they've got closets full of uniforms. So when TR wears his colonel's great coat, Army surplus with a couple of chevrons, wears a sombrero, rather than the derby hat, and wears his boots around, this is nothing. This is normal. This is normal. And now in a sense we've gotten a kind of equality. You've got to take us seriously with Theodore Roosevelt as President.
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JG: Roosevelt, of course, favored making Cuba independent. And even when there were troubles when he was President, he was always absolutely adamant that -- that Cuba should remain independent. The Philippines was different. He didn't believe it capable of self-government and he also believed it would be seized by a foreign power, probably Germany, if the United States left it. So he -- he thought we should, ah, take it over and there should be a period of tutelage. He was very disillusioned by what followed. Roosevelt believed that really the American people were not being altruistic to the Filipinos, not treating them the way they should be treated. Congress refused to give them, ah, trading privileges. American citizens did not warm to the cause of helping out the Filipinos. So he -- he more or less decided by the end of his administration that the United States was not fit for an imperialist path and in 1914 he actually came out finally and said, "It's time to let the Philippines go. They're our -- they are our achilles heel." And specifically, he was very afraid that, ah, Japan, ah, would strike us in the Philippines and get us involved in an Asian war, an Asian war which he believed the American people were in no way prepared to handle.
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JG: McKinley was a -- a President who led by consensus and he'd been a politician who led by consensus. He tried not to -- and express himself on any opinion or policy until he was kind of pretty much clear where the majority was. Roosevelt, by contrast, was always a leader. So McKinley kind of waited until there was a consensus on war and then went to war with Spain over Cuba. Of course, one of the results of the war was the Philippines, what to do with the Philippines. We retained them sort of because there wasn't much else to do. There was no question that they would have had a civil war among the islands and among its various ethnic groups, ahm, for control. And there's also no question whatsoever that some foreign power would have seized the Philippines at that time, probably Germany. The Germans were waiting right outside Manila Bay. So when we took over the Philippines, the civil war that would have probably happened anyway among the filipinos then became an insurrection against American rule. And, ah, that went on for some years, from 1899 until 1902 and then finally TR wrapped it up.
INT: Did Roosevelt grasp any irony ...
JG: Not that I know of. I can see what you're saying. Indeed, of course, Bryan was always a big one on that. Of course, one of Bryan's things was he didn't want any more colored people under the flag, he said “we can't handle the colored people we got now.”
INT: Characterize Roosevelt's response to the anti-imperialists?
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JG: The anti-imperialists, of course, were Roosevelt's opponents. They were critics of his administration. He knew most of these people personally. One of the leading ones, for example, was President Charles W. Elliott of Harvard. He was on the board at Harvard. This was the guy who was his college president. He knew him very well. He stayed in his house. He considered these people being "supremely unrealistic" and "supremely irresponsible", that they were running away from responsibilities in the Philippines by wanting to let them go and not caring what became of them, therefore. Of course, they weren't really thinking about it. So he thought they were unrealistic to think about, "Well, if we leave the Philippines, there'll be a civil war and then it'll be -- become a colony of another country." So he considered them, rather than being idealists or principled, he considered them fools.
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JG: The 20th century has been called "The American Century" and in many ways, of course, that means, ah, the United States power globally. And that really begins with the Spanish-American War and Roosevelt had a great deal to do, ah, with starting it out. I think in the long run we've certainly made mistakes and there've been a lot of, ah -- a lot of errors along the way, but the principles of the Declaration of Independence, it seems to me, are closer to realization because of the American Century than they were before. Look at the world in 1898, all of the world, and look at the world in 1998. And aren't there more people under freedom now than there were before?
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INT: Tell the story of the Rough Rider.
DIRECTIONAL
JG: When Roosevelt led the charge, he was on horseback initially, and, ah, he got ahead of his men. And, ah, all of a sudden he looked around and -- and there was nobody else. He was alone. So he went riding back and he was furious and he said, "Look, here I am on horseback exposing myself to fire and you're on foot and what's the matter with you?" And they said, "Well, you know, you move too fast for us and we didn't hear you. And, ah, we'll go with you, Colonel." And so up they went at that time. So he sort of, you know, charged part way up and then had to come back and then start the charge again. And further up the hill they came to a barbed wire -- this was Kettle Hill -- they came to a barbed wire fence. So he dismounted from Texas, ah, and -- and then went the rest of the way up the hill on foot.
DIRECTIONAL, BEEP, DIRECTIONAL
JG: When Roosevelt resigned, ah, to become an officer in the Rough Rider regiment, he ordered his uniforms from Brooks Brothers. And, of course, this was the first time that they said, "charge Theodore Roosevelt" written across his account.
INT: Describe the preparedness of the Army ...
JG: Well ... TR had, ah, learned through the Spanish-American War the almost total incompetence of the Army and the War Department. And when he became President of the United States, one of the first things he began to do was to reorganize the Army. Specifically, he reorganized the whole promotion situation, because it had been entirely on the basis of seniority, which had meant during the war that most of the officers were too old and were physically unfit for field command. He also specifically put in rules of physical fitness and then he himself passed all the tests, ah, memorably particularly in a 50-mile ride in a Virginia snowstorm at the end of his Presidency. In other words, he did all these things himself. And he pretty much shook up the command and pretty much got rid of most of the senior officers and brought forward able people, like John J. Pershing, Frank McCoy, ahm, and, indeed, many of the young officers of the Navy and the Army who got around TR, Simms and so on later became -- Winslow became, ah, the great soldiers of World War I in the next generation.
INT: Describe the conditions of the camps in Santiago.
JG: Ah, right after the Spanish surrender in Santiago, the men began to get malaria and yellow fever. Of course, we lost far more people to disease than we did to battle. It then became, ah, very necessary to get our boys out of there and back as quickly as possible. General Shafter had notified Secretary Alger of the situation, the Secretary of War, and had pleaded for immediate removal, but he hadn't gotten any answer. So Shafter called the officers together and said, you know, "Let's do something about this." And they came up with a round robin letter, but the regular officers would be risking their careers. So Roosevelt kind of took the blame for the whole thing. Now there was a question of how it was leaked to the press. Basically Shafter gave it out to the press, not Roosevelt. Now here's something that Roosevelt gets credit for that he doesn't deserve credit for, because right after Roosevelt's letter to Alger was released, ahm, Alger issued the order to bring the boys home. We now know that Alger had already prepared the order and so it was a coincidence. But, on the other hand, Roosevelt didn't know what was going on and Shafter hadn't heard. So they hadn't heard what was going on, so they -- you know, understandably. This probably lost Roosevelt the Medal of Honor, which is something that -- that really hurt his feelings. And I'm sure -- I know that it made McKinley furious, because McKinley hears about this fever business and the conditions down there in the newspaper! You know, so why hadn't Roosevelt written to him or gone through channels? Well, they had gone through channels, you know, and they hadn't gotten anywhere yet and this was an emergency situation, every day meaning death. The guys were dying there. They died on the boat and a whole bunch of them died when we got them back to shore.
DIRECTIONAL
BEEP BEEP
END INTERVIEW
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