Your TR Source
Letters to the editor debating the veracity of accounts of President Roosevelt’s actions as a Rough Rider during the event at the San Juan heights.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-08-28
Congressman Fleming responds to Colonel Bacon’s statement that disputes President Roosevelt’s actions in the Battle of San Juan Hill. While in the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1898, Fleming spoke to wounded soldier from the Rough Riders regiment who recounted the battle and his experience with Roosevelt.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-08-17
This article comments on William H. Fleming’s report of President Roosevelt’s military record. Fleming, a Rough Rider, is responding to Colonel Bacon’s statement disputing Roosevelt’s account of his actions during the Battle of San Juan Hill.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-08-17
Colonel Alexander S. Bacon accuses President Roosevelt of lying about his charge on San Juan Hill.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-08-14
“I have your letter of the 9th inst., and shall sign that land grant just as soon as it comes before me. By the way, I am very much afraid I shall have to court martial Col. Bacon. I am reluctant to do so unless it is absolutely necessary.”
1900-06-12
President Roosevelt asks Senator Knox whether it would be worth stopping the lies of Joseph Pulitzer about the purchase of the Panama Canal once and for all. Roosevelt has received a full list of the stockholders of the Panama Canal Corporation from William Nelson Cromwell, as well as papers regarding what those companies did in connection to the purchase of the canal. While the scandal has not touched the government, Roosevelt thinks it may be good to make these documents public and explains how Cromwell obtained them.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-12-10
President Roosevelt advises French Ambassador Jusserand to not reply to the “very impertinent” letter he received from the Sabbatarian Society. Roosevelt knows a member of the society to be a “lying blackguard,” and says it is no one’s business why Jusserand met with Roosevelt on a Sunday.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-02-24
President Roosevelt responds to allegations that diminished his role in the Battle of San Juan Hill. For clarification, Roosevelt offers Fleming a copy of The Rough Riders and cites accounts written by other officers on the scene.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-08-18
General Boynton provides President Roosevelt with publishing information regarding the “Army and Navy Critic.” Boynton also includes a brief biography of an author in that publication, “Colonel” Alexander Samuel Bacon.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-09-06
Governor Roosevelt is in the midst of a violent altercation. Dressed in his trademark Rough Riders uniform, a book narrating his Cuban adventures is strapped around his chest and a bandage labeled “Iron” is on his cheek. As Roosevelt shoots at a fleeing man and at a rabbit disappearing down a hole, he is thrown off his balance by an exploding bomb called “Altgeld’s reply to the St. Paul speech,” and is hit with a brick labeled “From Colonel Bacon.” Off to the side, Governor John Peter Altgeld prepares to throw another bomb.
At the moment there is little known about the creator of this original cartoon. It is decidedly denigrating to Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, and deals with a controversy that arose in 1900. Roosevelt was Governor of New York and as such reviewed court-martial charges against soldiers in the Seventy-First regiment, New York Volunteers, at the Battle of San Juan Hill. Alexander S. Bacon, a National Guard colonel who had not served in Cuba, was retained as their counsel. In the course of a public-relations campaign he leveled charges about Roosevelt’s actions on the field, imputing cowardice. Bacon wrote a book, The Seventy-First at San Juan, that strongly disputed Roosevelt’s claims, such as encountering a trench filled with Spaniards. All the soldiers ultimately lost their court-martial appeals. Roosevelt was Governor of New York when this cartoon was drawn, but is in Rough Rider garb because of the wartime controversy. The radical and anti-Imperialist Governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, is depicted favorably. Roosevelt’s best-selling book The Rough Riders here has the title Alone in Cuba, as famously parodied by humorist Finley Peter Dunne (“Mr. Dooley”).