The First United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was organized by Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood, M.D. TR, who was Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the McKinley administration, and a leading advocate of the liberation of Cuba, the Spanish colony then fighting for its independence, asked the Department of War permission to raise a regiment after Spain declared war on the United States on April 24, 1898. Wood, an army doctor who had won the Medal of Honor fighting the Apaches in the 1880s, was President William McKinley's physician, and a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt.

Because he lacked military experience, Roosevelt suggested that Leonard Wood be given command of the volunteer cavalry regiment; and accordingly Wood became colonel, and TR was made lieutenant colonel, of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, soon popularly known as the "Rough Riders.".

The regiment, consisting of over 1,250 men, from all over the United States was mainly composed of cowboys, Indians, and other Wild West types, and Ivy League athletes and aristocratic sportsmen from the East. What did these two very different groups have in common ?

They could ride and shoot and were in shape, and thus could be ready for war with little training. The regiment was assembled at San Antonio, Texas in May, and shipped out to Cuba from Tampa, Florida-minus the horses-on June 14, 1898.

Rough Riders with Colonel Roosevelt at San Juan Heights, 1898

The Rough Riders were landed at Daiquiri, Cuba on June 22, and saw their first action in the Battle of Las Guasimas on June 24. The Rough Riders were part of the large American force that assembled for the assault on the Spanish fortifications protecting the city of Santiago. On the night of June 30, the eve of the big battle, Colonel Leonard Wood was promoted in the field to Brigadier General and Theodore Roosevelt was made Colonel of the Rough Riders.

On July 1, 1898 TR on horseback led the Rough Riders and elements of the Ninth and Tenth Regiments of regulars, African-American "buffalo soldiers," and other units up Kettle Hill. After that hill was captured, TR, now on foot, led a second charge up the San Juan Heights.This was what TR called his "crowded hour," his great moment.

After the capture of San Juan heights, overlooking Santiago, the city surrendered, and the war was virtually over. The toll from tropical diseases soon became worse than the losses in battle, and Roosevelt and other officers called for the American troops to be brought home quickly in order to save lives. The Rough Riders were shipped to Montauk, at the end of Long Island, and there the much-publicized and celebrated regiment was mustered out on September 16, 1898, after 137 days of service in the Army.

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt
at Camp in Montauk Point, Long Island, New York
where the Rough Riders spent time in quarantine after returning from Cuba.

Virgil Carrington Jones, in his book Roosevelt's Rough Riders (1971), writes of Roosevelt's regiment: "In the period of about four and a half months they were together, 37 percent of those who got to Cuba were casualties. Better than one out of every three were killed, wounded, or stricken by disease. It was the highest casualty rate of any American unit that took part in the Spanish-American War campaign."