The Career of Leonard Wood Part 2

THE OFFICIAL

Chance no doubt at times plays an important part in the making of a man. Yet perhaps Ca.s.sias' remark, through the medium of Shakespeare, that "The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings," has the truer ring. Chance no doubt comes to all of us again and again, but it is the brain that takes the chance which deserves the credit and not the accidental event, opportunity or occasion offering.

It was not chance that sent Leonard Wood to Arizona to fight Indians.

It was the result of long hours of meditation in Boston when, as a young doctor, he decided finally to leave the usual routine of a physician's career and strike out in another and less main-traveled road. There was nothing of luck or chance in this decision, the carrying out of which taught him something that he used later to the advantage of himself and his country.

Out of the Indian experiences came to him in {62} the most vigorous possible way through actual observation the necessity for bodily health. No man could ride or walk day in and day out across waterless deserts and keep his courage and determination, to say nothing of his good common sense, without being in the best of physical condition. No man could get up in the morning after a terrific night's march, and collect his men and cheer and encourage them unless he was absolutely fit and in better condition than they.

He learned, too, that all matters of outfit, care of person, of equipment, of horses required the most constant attention day by day, hour by hour. He had to deal with an enemy who belonged to this country, who knew and was accustomed to its climatic conditions as well as its topography, and he had to beat him at his own game, or fail.

He learned that preparation, while it should never delay action, can never be overdone. This must have been drilled into the young man by the hardest and most grueling experiences, because it has been one of the gospels of his creed {53} since that time and is to this day his text upon all occasions.

He learned, too, something deeper than even these basic essentials of the fighting creed. He developed what has always been a part of himself--the conviction that authority is to be respected, that allegiance to superior officers and government is the first essential of success, that organization is the basis of smoothly running machinery of any kind, and that any weakening of these principles is the sign of decay, of failure, and of disintegration.

He learned that a few men, well trained, thoroughly organized, fit and ready, can beat a host of individualists though each of the latter may excel in ability any of the former, and there is in this connection a curiously interesting significance in the man's pa.s.sionate fondness throughout his whole life for the game of football. At Middleboro, in California, in service in the South and in Washington, he was at every opportunity playing football, because in addition to its physical qualities, this game above all others depends for {54} its success upon organization, preparation and what is called "team play."

Through these early days it is to be noted, therefore, as a help in understanding his great work for his country which came later that his sense of the value of organization grew constantly stronger and stronger along with a solid belief in the necessity for subordination to his superior officers and through them to his state and his flag.

The respect which he acquired for the agile Indians went hand in hand with the knowledge that in the end they could not fail to be captured and defeated, because they had neither the sense of organization, nor the intelligence to accept and respect authority which not only would have given them success, but would in reality have made the whole campaign unnecessary, had the Indian mind been able to conceive them in their true light and the Indian character been willing to observe their never-changing laws.

The result, however, was that the spirit of the Indians was broken by the white man's relentless determination.

The hostile Apaches were finally disposed of by {55} sending them out of the territory. They were treated as prisoners of war and the guarantees that General Miles had given them as conditions of surrender were respected by the Government, although there was a great feeing in favor of making them pay the full penalty for their outrages. President Grover Cleveland expressed himself as hoping that "nothing will be done with Geronimo which will prevent our treating him as a prisoner of war, if we cannot hang him, which I would much prefer."

At the end of the campaign General Miles set about reorganizing his command. For several months Wood was engaged in practice maneuvers.

The General wished to expand his heliographic system of signaling, and to that end commenced an extensive survey of the vast unpopulated tracts of Arizona, which his troops might have to cover in time of action. Wood was one of the General's chief a.s.sistants in this survey, and in 1889, when he was ordered away, he probably knew as much of Arizona and the southwestern life as any man ever stationed there.

The orders which took him from the border {56} country made him one of the staff surgeons at Headquarters in Los Angeles. This post promised to be inactive and uninteresting but Captain Wood managed to distinguish himself in two respects, first as a surgeon and second as an athlete. This period of his life varied from month to month in some instances, but in the main it was the usual existence of an army official in the capacity of military surgeon. It extended over a period of eleven years, from 1887 to 1898. These were the eleven years between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-seven--very critical years in the existence of a man. It was during these years that he met Miss Louise A. Condit Smith, a niece of Chief Justice Field, who afterwards became his wife and began with him a singularly simple and homelike family life that is the second of his vital interests in this world.

He has never allowed his family life to interfere with his service to his country. And, paradoxical as it may seem, he has never allowed his lifework for his state to interfere with the happy and even tenor of his home existence. Children came in due course and the family unit became complete--that quiet, straightforward {57} existence of the family which is the characteristic of American life to-day, as it is of any other well-organized civilized nation.

In the practice of his profession he was able to do a lasting service to his commanding officer. General Miles suffered a grave accident to his leg when a horse fell upon it. It was the opinion of the surgeon who attended him that amputation would be necessary. But the General was of no mind to beat a one-legged retreat in the midst of a highly interesting and successful career. Captain Wood had inspired confidence in him as an Indian fighter--a confidence so strong that he thought it might not be misplaced if it became confidence in him as a doctor--and so Wood was summoned.

"They say they will have to cut off this leg, but they are not going to do it," said the General. "I am going to leave it up to you. You'll have to save it."

A few weeks later General Miles was up and about, and under his young surgeon's care the wound healed and the leg was saved.

While stationed at Los Angeles headquarters {68} Wood found himself with enough time for much hard sport. It was a satisfying kind of life after the strenuous months of border service.

In 1888 he was ordered back to the border where he served with the 10th Cavalry in the Apache Kid outbreak. After a few months of active service, he was ordered to Fort McDowell and then, in 1889, to California again.

From California he was ordered to Fort McPherson, near Atlanta, Georgia, where he again distinguished himself at football. He trained the first team in the Georgia Inst.i.tute of Technology, became its Captain and during the two years of his Captaincy lost but one game and defeated the champion team of the University of Georgia.

An incident has been told by his fellow players at Fort McPherson which shows exceedingly well a certain Spartan side to Wood's nature.

One afternoon at a football game he received a deep cut over one eye.

He returned to his office after the game and, after coolly sterilizing his instrument and washing the wound, stood before a mirror and calmly took four st.i.tches in his eyelid.

Such were the characteristics, such the {59} experience, of the young man when in 1896 he was ordered to Washington--that morgue of the government official--to become a.s.sistant Attending Surgeon. The holder of this position often shares with the Navy Surgeons the responsibility of medical attention to the President, and in addition he acts as medical adviser to army officers and their families and is the official physician to the Secretary of War.

It was not an office that appealed to Captain Wood. It could not; since he was a man essentially of out-of-doors, of action and of administration. Yet he seems to have made such a success of the work that he became the personal friend of both Cleveland and McKinley. His relations with President Cleveland were of the most intimate sort, resulting from mutual respect and liking as well as a mutual understanding on the part of both men of the other's good qualities.

He saw him in the White House at all hours of the day and night; saw him with his family and his children about him; noted their fondness for their father and his devotion to them. It was a quality so marked in Lincoln, so strong in most great men {60} of the sound, calm, fearless, administrative sort. Wood himself has exhibited the same quality in his own family. And in those days the perfect understanding of the father and his children, the simple family life that went on in the splendid old house in Washington which combined the dignity of a State and the simplicity of a home unequaled by any great ruler's house upon this earth--all tended to bring out this native quality in the President's medical adviser.

It was at the conclusion of Cleveland's second term that Wood was a.s.signed to this position. On one of the President's trips for recreation and rest--a shooting expedition on the inland waters near Cape Hatteras--he was one of the party which included also Admiral Evans and Captain Lamberton. The hours spent in shooting boxes or in the evenings in the cabin of the lighthouse tender gave opportunity for him to study Cleveland off duty when the latter liked to sit quietly and talk of his early life, of his political battles, of fishing, shooting, and of the urgent questions which beset him as President. And Wood brought away with him a profound respect for the {61} combination of simplicity and unswerving love and devotion to his country, coupled with rugged uncompromising honesty which seem to have been the characteristics of Grover Cleveland.

This particular trip was immediately after the inauguration ceremonies of President McKinley, and Cleveland was not only tired from the necessary part which he himself had taken in them, but also from the first natural let-down after four years of duty in the White House.

Wood has given a little sketch of the man:

"I remember very well his words, as he sat down with a sigh of relief, glad that it was all over. He said: 'I have had a long talk with President McKinley. He is an honest, sincere and serious man. I feel that he is going to do his best to give the country a good administration. He impressed me as a man who will have the best interests of the people at heart.'

"Then he stopped, and said with a sigh: 'I envy him to-day only one thing and that was the presence of his own mother at his inauguration.

I would have given anything in the world if my mother could have been at my inauguration,' {62} and then, continuing: 'I wish him well. He has a hard task,' and after a long pause: 'But he is a good man and will do his best.'"

He has spoken often, too, of Cleveland's love of sport, of the days which Jefferson, the actor, and Cleveland spent together fishing and shooting on and near Buzzard's Bay--the same spot where he himself as a boy spent his days in like occupations. The sides of Cleveland's character that appealed to him were the frankness with which he expressed his views on the important questions of the day, the sterling worth and high ideals which emphasized his sense of duty, his love of country and his desire to do the best possible for his fellow citizens, coupled with his perfectly unaffected family feelings and the amazing devotion and affection which he invariably elicited from all those who came into a.s.sociation with him, even to the most humble hand on the light house tender. Jeffersonian simplicity could have gone no further, nor could any man have been more definite, far-sighted and fearless than was Cleveland in his Venezuelan Message.

These two extremes made a vivid and lasting impression upon {63} the young man, because both sides struck a sympathetic chord in his own nature.

There followed, then, the same a.s.sociation with McKinley, growing out of the necessary intimacy of physician and patient. But in this latter case two events, vital to this country as well as to the career of Leonard Wood, changed the quiet course of Washington official life to a life of intense interest and great activity.

These two events were Wood's meeting with Theodore Roosevelt and the Spanish War.

One night in 1896 at some social function at the Lowndes house Wood was introduced to Roosevelt, then a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy. It seems strange that two men so vitally alike in many ways, who were in college at about the same time, should never have met before. But when they did meet the friendship, which lasted without a break until Roosevelt's death, began at once.

That night the two men walked home together and in a few days they were hard at it, walking, riding, playing games and discussing the affairs of the day.

This strange fact of extraordinary similarities {64} and vivid differences in the two men doubtless had much to do with bringing them together and keeping them allied for years. Both were essentially men of physical action, both born fighters, both filled with an amazing patriotism and both simple family men.

On the one hand, Roosevelt was a great individualist. He did things himself. He no sooner thought of a thing than he carried it out himself. When he was President he frequently issued orders to subordinates in the departments without consulting the heads of the departments. Wood, on the other hand, is distinctly an organizer and administrator. When he later filled high official positions, he invariably picked men to attend to certain work and left them, with constant consultation, to do the jobs whatever they were. If a road was to be built, he found the best road builder and laid out the work for him leaving to him the carrying out of the details.

Yet again both men had known life in the West, Roosevelt as a cowboy and Wood as an Indian fighter. Both had come from the best old American stock, Roosevelt from the Dutch of {65} Manhattan and Wood from New England. They were Harvard men and lovers of the outdoor, strenuous life. Their ideals and aspirations had much in common and they were both actuated by the intense feeling of nationalism that brought them to the foreground in American life.

Soon they were tramping through the country together testing each other's endurance in good-natured rivalry. When out of sight of officialdom, they ran foot races together, jumped fences and ran cross-country. Both men had children and with these they played Indians, indulging in most exciting chases and games. They explored the ravines and woods all about Washington, sometimes taking on their long hikes and rides various army officers stationed at Washington.

Few of these men were able to stand the pace set by the two energetic athletes, and it was of course partially due to this fact that Roosevelt in later years when he was President ordered some of the paunchy swivel-chair Cavalry and Infantry officers out for cross-country rides and sent them back to their homes sore and blistered, and with {66} every nerve clamoring for the soothing restfulness of an easy chair.

Wood was dissatisfied in Washington, bored with the inaction. He longed for the strenuous life of the West. The desire became so strong that he began a plan to leave the army and start sheep-ranching in the West. It was the life, or as near the life as he could get, that he had been leading for years; and the present contrast of those days in the open with the life he was now leading in Washington became too much for him.

Here again seemed to arise a turning point. Had it not been for his own confident conviction that war was eventually coming with Spain, Wood would probably have gone to his open life on the prairie. What this would have meant to his future career n.o.body can tell, nor is speculation upon the subject very profitable. But it is interesting to note that what deterred him were his ideas on patriotism and a man's duty to his country, which struck a live, vibrating chord also in Theodore Roosevelt's nature and influenced Wood to stay in his position and wait.

It is only possible to imagine now the {67} conversations of these two kindred spirits on this subject. Roosevelt, as is well known, was for war--war at once--and he did what little was done in those days to prepare. There must have been waging a long argument between the now experienced Indian fighter and doctor, and the great-hearted American who knew so little of military affairs.

These talks and arguments became so frank and outspoken that they were well-known in Washington circles. Even President McKinley used to say to Wood:

"Have you and Theodore declared war yet?"

And Wood's answer was:

"No, we think you ought to, Mr. President."

As each day pa.s.sed it seemed more likely that Spain and America would become involved over the injustices Cuba and the Philippines were being forced to suffer at the hands of their greedy and none too-loving mother country. On their long walks they discussed all the phases of such a conflict and each of them became anxious for war without further delay, for delay was costing time and money, and peaceful readjustment seemed {68} quite out of the question. So keen had they become in this war question that the two of them became known in Washington as the "War Party."

It was becoming evident to many others that war was inevitable when the destruction of the _Maine_ in Havana Harbor brought the situation to a head. It found both these men prepared in their own minds as to what their courses should be. When Wood arrived at Fort Huachuca in 1885 he was asked by Lawton why he came into the army. Lawton had studied law at Harvard after the Civil War and was interested in the views of a man who had studied medicine there. Wood replied that he had come into the army to get into the line at the first opportunity; and from that moment he began systematically his preparation for transfer. As a part of this policy he took every opportunity to do line duty. The result was that when the Spanish War came he had strong letters from Lawton, General Miles, General Graham, Colonel Wagner, General Forsythe, and others, recommending him for line command. These recommendations varied from {69} a battalion to a regiment. Both Roosevelt and Wood had discussed the possibility of organizing regiments, Roosevelt in New York and Wood in Ma.s.sachusetts, but as turmoil and confusion enveloped the War Office they realized that this plan was not feasible.

The efforts of Roosevelt's superiors to keep him in his official capacity as a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy and away from active service were fruitless. Finally, when it became evident that he would go into the service and see active fighting, Secretary of War Alger offered him the colonelcy of a regiment of cavalry. Roosevelt, because of his lack of experience in military affairs, refused the offer but agreed to accept the position of lieutenant colonel of such a regiment if his friend, Leonard Wood, would accept the colonelcy. Secretary Alger and Leonard Wood agreed, and work was commenced at once organizing a regiment that was later to become known as the Rough Riders. The official name of the regiment was the 1st Volunteer Cavalry. The name Rough Riders "just grew." The organization became known under that name among the friends {70} of its leaders, later among the newspaper correspondents and consequently the public, and finally when it appeared in official doc.u.ments it was accepted as official.