Roosevelt Rough Rider or Veteran Advocate Extraordinaire

Roosevelt was not only the one future President to serve in the Spanish-American War, but in addition was a Veteran’s Advocate of all conflicts extraordinaire. Teddy Roosevelt especially is remembered for his support in remembrance of Veterans of the Civil War, both Blue and Gray. Years before President Wilson’s Armistice Day, Roosevelt praised American Veterans for their service and sacrifice, paying homage to a spirit of unity that brought peace and tranquility, often at a horrific price.

When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Roosevelt resigned his position in the Department of the Navy, formed the Rough Riders (a volunteer cavalry regiment) and led a famed charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba.

Roosevelt was one of the most colorful, flamboyant and interesting personalities of any period in United States history. He was a historian, naturalist, explorer, rancher, war hero, journalist and reform-minded civil servant. To some he was larger than life, like his monument later carved in stone on Mount Rushmore. The sickly boy had grown into an exemplar of manliness and “muscular Christianity,” and an exceptional President who led a crusade for social justice and challenged the power of America’s corporations.

On July 4, 1903, in a speech to veterans, Roosevelt shared, “A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have.”  

As President, Roosevelt frequently lauded the nation’s veterans and sought to ensure that they were well treated. He praised Civil War veterans for saving the union. Without their sacrificial service during the nation’s “greatest crisis,” the rest of American history would have been meaningless “and our great experiment in popular freedom and self-government” would have been “a gloomy failure.” Because of their courage, Roosevelt proclaimed in 1901, “we are united in our devotion” to the nation, and Americans “in every part of the country” could “glory in the valor shown” by both the sons of the North and the South “in the times that tried men’s souls.”

Roosevelt commended Civil War veterans for showing Americans that “the greatness of a nation is to be measured not by . . . its material prosperity,” but by the citizens it produces. By their willingness “to count everything” else “as dross” compared with “the sacredness of the republic” these soldiers had preserved the United States.

In 1905, Roosevelt as President, paid homage to all veterans, as he spoke in many Southern States;

“Last Memorial Day I spoke in Brooklyn at the unveiling of the statue of a Northern general, under the auspices of the Grand Army of the Republic, and that great audience cheered every allusion to the valor and self-devotion of the men who followed Lee as heartily as they cheered every allusion to the valor and devotion of the men who followed Grant…..

“The proud self-sacrifice, the resolute and daring courage, the high and steadfast devotion to the right as each man saw it, whether Northerner or Southerner – these qualities render all Americans forever the debtors of those who in the dark days from 1861-1865 proved their truth by their endeavor. Here around Richmond, here in your own State, there lies battlefield after battlefield, rendered forever memorable by the men who counted death as but a little thing when weighted in the balance against doing their duty as it was given them to see it……”

As we remember the service and sacrifice of those who have protected our peace of mind and domestic tranquility, let’s not forget Presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, who could speak, not just softly, but resolutely, and still possess and wield a formidable stick.

Bummer