Sold – The Day War Is Declared Against Spain and He Takes Command of the Rough Riders, Roosevelt Seeks to Funnel Arms to the Cuban Revolutionaries Fighting the Spanish

In February 1895, Cuban patriots, led by Jose Marti, led an insurrection against Spain. They met at the house of Gonzala Quesada, a key architect of Cuba’s independence movement and its official minister in Washington, and declared Cuban independence, adopted a constitution, and named the nation the Republic of Cuba. Spain sent 100,000 troops to the island in response, and Marti was killed in battle. Arms were very hard to come by in Cuba, so it was necessary for the revolt’s military leadership (under general-in-chief Maximo Gomez) to use guerrilla warfare. The revolt had many supporters in the United States who wanted to offer assistance, and indeed the revolutionaries looked to the U.S. for help. But the official attitude of the American government was unwillingness to support the revolutionaries, and 59 out of 60 ships carrying arms from the U.S. to Cuba were intercepted by the U.S. Navy and not allowed to proceed to Cuba.

By the start of 1898 the U.S. senior political leadership saw war with Spain on the horizon, and it began to consider providing military aid to the Cubans. However, the American military establishment did not see things the same way. For their part, the Cuban leaders wanted the assistance, but knowing that some Americans openly advocated annexing Cuba to the United States, they were worried that the American embrace might lead to loss of their prime goal – Cuban independence.

In April of 1897, Theodore Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy as a reward for his tireless campaigning for the newly elected President, William McKinley. He foresaw that war could develop with Spain, and monitored the Cuban insurrection. Then the U.S.S. Maine blew up in Havana harbor, the Spanish were blamed and an outcry for war arose. From that moment, Roosevelt believed that trying to prevent the war would be impossible. He sprang into action, moving ammunition, readying ships for action, and moving to have Congress allow for enlisting unlimited sailors. He even cabled Admiral Dewey to be ready if war were to break out and gave him his objectives. TR also made it known to the President and others that if war came, he wanted to leave his post behind a desk in Washington and head for the front.

On April 11, 1898, President McKinley asked Congress to declare war on Spain. To quell the anxieties of the Cubans that the U.S. might occupy or annex the country in the aftermath of a war, on the 19th Congress added the Teller Amendment to the declaration, whereunder the U.S. “… hereby disclaims any disposition of intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island except for pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the island to its people.”

On April 20, 1898, the President gave an ultimatum requiring that the Spanish Government free Cuba in three days. On April 23, that ultimatum expired and the machinery was set in motion for an official declaration of war. Also on the 23rd, Secretary of War Russell Alger told Roosevelt of a proposed special regiment to be formed for the war; it would he known as the Rough Riders. When the war was commenced, he said, TR would be given the opportunity to command that regiment. Roosevelt expressed great interest. Congress declared war on the 25th, and that same day Roosevelt was officially offered the command of the Rough Riders, which he accepted. The legendary unit would consist of an odd but effective assemblage of Western cowboys and frontiersmen, and Eastern athletes and sons of prominent citizens.

William Astor Chanler was a New York State Democrat, a member of the State Assembly and future U.S. Congressman, and a friend of TR. A fervent supporter of the Cuban struggle for independence, in February 1897 he took a leave of absence in order to accompany a shipment of weapons and ammunition to the Caribbean together with Cuban revolutionary general Emilio Núñez. TR wrote him in December 1897, “I earnestly hope that events will so shape themselves that we must interfere [in Cuba] in the not so distant future.” Chanler later claimed to U.S. diplomat William Bullitt that he had then laid the mine that blew up the U.S. Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898, but whether that is true is not known.

Typed Letter Signed on his Navy Department letterhead, Washington, April 25, 1898, to “My dear Mr. Quesada” at the Legation of the Cuban Republic. “Permit me to introduce to you my warm personal friend Mr. Winthrop Chanler, the brother of Mr. William Astor Chanler, who has been so active in trying to help the Cuban cause, and who is an old subordinate and assistant of Gen. Nunez. Mr. Chanler is exceedingly anxious to bring arms to Gen. Gomez. He can readily pick up Spanish, and he will be of great assistance in bringing back information and getting us in touch with your people. I hope you will be able to take him. If there is objection raised from either the Army or Navy I wish you would refer to them either to myself or to Sen. Lodge. Sen. Lodge will, on being requested, at once give Mr. Chanler a letter, either to you or to the Army or Naval authorities.”

This letter was a very important strategic one for a number of intertwined foreign and domestic reasons. It would have the effect of bolstering the Teller Amendment by reassuring the Cubans that the American military intervention in Cuba was not a threat to Cuban independence and in fact would build up Cuban power. Chanler, the man proposed to run the arms, was well known to the Cubans and trusted by them. It also revealed that some in the U.S. political leadership seemed to be seeking an avenue to funnel arms to the Cuban revolt behind the backs (or at least without the concurrence) of the American military, who might have wanted full control and disapproved. True or not, at least this letter would have been designed to leave that impression on the Cubans, whose experience with the U.S. Navy had hitherto been bad and would likely welcome ways to circumvent it. It is intriguing to consider the exact intention (or indeed combination of intentions) of the letter, and the extent to which TR’s superiors, up to President McKinley himself, might have played a part in it. And since there is a chance that TR (and his ally Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge) was himself the initiator, we already see him making and implementing policy without authority and on his own account.