It remains one of the most mythologized images of the Spanish American War: Theodore Roosevelt charging on horseback, leading his Rough Rider volunteers up Cuba’s San Juan Hill through the smoke and chaos of battle to achieve victory decisive. Carefully crafted by Roosevelt himself, it was an image that raised his public profile and propelled him to the White House.
But that’s not entirely accurate.
A combination of savvy public relations and racial bias overplayed the 40-year-old Roosevelt’s combat role while downplaying the bravery and contributions of the black troops, known as the Buffalo Soldiers, who served alongside white soldiers on this same battlefield. In his book on the war, Roosevelt referred to them as “shirkers”. But for many historians, they are among the toughest fighting heroes of the Three Week War.
In their effort to capture the strategically important city of Santiago de Cuba, some 8,000 Americans fought for the two nearby hills of San Juan Heights, including Roosevelt’s Volunteer Regiment and some 1,250 black soldiers. Unlike most American wars, the fighting was an integrated effort. “Regulators and volunteers, black and white, fought side by side, endured scorching heat and driving rain, and shared food and drink and peril and discomfort,” wrote the U.S. Department of Defense historian Frank Schubert in 1998. “They forged a victory that didn’t belong primarily to TR, nor did it belong primarily to the Buffalo Soldiers. It belonged to all of them.”
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Roosevelt wanted war
The future president and black soldiers took wildly divergent paths to this scorching battlefield on Cuba’s southeast coast that summer of 1898.
From his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt, a blue-blooded former New York City Police Commissioner, purchased firearms, ammunition, and other equipment to prepare Navy ships for foreign conflict. According to biographer Henry Pringle, these moves reflected Roosevelt’s general “lust for war.” In 1897, Roosevelt, who supported American expansionism, wrote to a friend: “I should agree to almost any war, because I think this country needs it.
Roosevelt got his wish in February 1898 after the battleship USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor and sank, killing more than 260 officers and sailors. Although its cause was never definitively determined, the incident heightened American tensions with Spain over its brutal treatment of Cubans resisting their colonial rule. Roosevelt called the explosion in Maine a “dirty act of treason” for which the Spaniards had to answer. So when Congress declared war in April, he resigned his post and wasted no time in forming the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. Known as the “Rough Riders”, it featured a diverse mix of athletes, miners, cowboys, upper class gentlemen, Native Americans, prospectors and others.
READ MORE: How Teddy Roosevelt created an image of American manhood
Buffalo Soldiers called up for service in Cuba
Soldiers of the U.S. 24th Infantry marching in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, c. 1898
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Impressed by the service of black soldiers in the Union Army during the Civil War, Congress created six all-black cavalry and infantry regiments in 1866, a year after the conflict ended. Later grouped into four regiments, the 9and and 10and The cavalry and the 24and and 25and Infantry – Black troops served primarily on the western frontier, helping build infrastructure, protect white settlers, and fight Native Americans. Their nickname, the Buffalo Soldiers, may have come from the Plains Indians, who compared their black, curly hair to buffalo fur and their fierceness in battle to the mighty creature they revered.
While fighting on behalf of a government that had abolished slavery years earlier, black troops faced discrimination in the military, repressive Jim Crow segregation and violent attacks by civilians, many of them s objected to the idea of armed black men.
Military officials, assuming that black troops had a greater tolerance for tropical climates and immunity to tropical diseases, saw them as ideal soldiers to deploy to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to help rout the Spanish. Of the 17,000 American soldiers sent to Cuba, 3,000 were black.
READ MORE: Who were the Buffalo Soldiers?
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Black and white troops fought side by side
9th Calvary black troops leading a charge at San Juan Hill, Cuba
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American troops landed at the southeastern tip of Cuba on June 22, 1898, with the aim of capturing the port city of Santiago de Cuba, where the Spanish were anchored. Two days later, during the enemy engagement at Las Guásimas, the Rough Riders struck first. But they, along with other troops, were locked in an intense skirmish until the Buffalo Soldiers 10and The cavalry regiment arrived and forced a Spanish retreat.
A week later, on July 1, the Americans set out to take Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill, two high points in San Juan Heights about a mile from Santiago. Roosevelt’s volunteers, along with regular enlisted troops, black and white, were tasked with taking the blockhouse atop Kettle Hill, while other regiments were concentrated on San Juan Hill.
Rough Riders and Buffalo Soldiers of the 9and Calvary was the first to reach the summit of Kettle Hill, coming under heavy Spanish fire as they climbed and engaging in hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. Roosevelt was slowed down when his horse snagged on barbed wire just below the crest of the hill, forcing him to continue on foot for the rest of the day. After taking the blockhouse, the American units then raced from Kettle Hill and across an exposed valley to join the pitched battle at San Juan Hill. On the descent, Roosevelt attempted to rally men behind him, but according to Schubert, only five heard him in the noise and confusion. Grouping slows it down further.
Meanwhile, other black and white troops have taken control of the second hill. Sergeant George Berry of the 10and Cavalry, a Buffalo soldier, wore the colors of his regiment and that of the 3rd regiment he got from a wounded white soldier – and planted them on top of San Juan Hill. Overall, writes military historian Roger D. Cunningham, the black troops “made a significant contribution to the rapid victory, earning five Medals of Honor and 29 Certificates of Merit for gallantry under fire.” A Buffalo Soldier named Edward Lee Baker was awarded the Medal of Honor for gallantry on July 1, 1898. The medal citation reads, “In cover and under fire saved a wounded comrade from drowning . Some 26 Buffalo Soldiers died in the fighting.
READ MORE: 6 things you might not know about the Spanish-American War
Roosevelt dominated the narrative
Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders atop San Juan Hill
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“Roosevelt didn’t get to the top of San Juan Hill until the fighting was over,” said Jerry Tuccille, author of The Roughest Riders: The Untold Story of the Black Soldiers of the Spanish-American War. “But of course there were six journalists handpicked (by him). They gave him a warm welcome… The media loved him because he was a colorful character and an adventurer. He was an excellent copy.
The journalists on site helped to shine his legend. Noted fiction writer and award-winning correspondent Richard Harding Davis, whom Roosevelt had befriended before the war, wrote how, while ascending Kettle Hill, the ambitious Lieutenant Colonel, on horseback, s rushed behind regular troops to hasten their advance, and how he repeatedly galloped between rifle pits to inspire black soldiers and Rough Riders.
“No one who saw Roosevelt take this ride expected him to finish it alive,” Davis said breathlessly. “…It looked like recklessness, but in fact he set the tone with his horse and inspired his men.” Watching Roosevelt, he added, “made you feel like you wanted to clap.” Roosevelt then commissioned a painting from renowned artist Frederick Remington of his charge up the hill – a memorable but somewhat fictionalized image of the cowboy soldier.
In the aftermath of the war, Roosevelt praised the role of the Buffalo soldiers: “Nobody can tell if they were the Rough Riders or the [Black] the men of 9and [Cavalry] who presented themselves with the greatest courage to offer their lives in the service of their country. But in his book titled The Rough Riderspublished a year later with a possible presidential race in mind, Roosevelt revised his account, writing, “The black troops shirked their duties and would go only so far as they were led by white officers.”
READ MORE: How Teddy Roosevelt’s belief in racial hierarchy shaped his policies
The Buffalo Soldiers have become a beacon of hope
The following year, 1900, Roosevelt was elected Vice President of the United States. He became president in September 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley.
Upon returning home, the Buffalo Soldiers were briefly celebrated as war heroes. But they soon discovered that their uniforms did not protect them from the indignity of segregation or racial violence and terrorism.
For many black Americans, however, the Buffalo Soldiers were symbols of hope – America’s “race heroes” of the time. Their service and valor have been celebrated in black media, theatre, poetry and art.
“Negroes had little, at the turn of the century, to help maintain our faith in ourselves except the pride we took in the 9and and 10and Cavalry, the 24thand and 25and Infantry,” wrote Rayford Logan, a founding African-American historian. “Many black houses had imprints of the famous charge of colored troops on San Juan Hill. They were our Ralph Bunche, Marian Anderson, Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson.
