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************Book Review***********
THE ARIZONA ROUGH RIDERS
Marty F. Feess, Theodore Roosevelt's Arizona Boys:
Cowboys and Politics in the Old West. Lincoln, Nebraska: Writers
Club Press, 5220 South 16th, Suite 200, Lincoln NE 68512 (www.iuniverse.com),
2001; paperback, 207 pp.
Reviewed by
John Allen Gable
It is always interesting and fun to read about the
Rough Riders. Around the time of the centennial of the Spanish-American War
many books appeared featuring the Rough Riders, including H. Paul Jeffers,
Colonel Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt Goes to War (1996),
and Dale L. Walker's The Boys of '98:Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough
Riders (1998). But what became of the Rough Riders after the war ?
That would make a great subject for a book. We know all about Leonard Wood
and TR, of course, but what about the others. Frank Knox was a Rough Rider,
and he went on to run for Vice President in 1936, and serve as Secretary of
the Navy during World War II. Jesse D. Langdon, the last surviving Rough
Rider, who died in 1979, held 89 patents for innovations and inventions. What
about the others ? Marty F. Feess tells us about Theodore
Roosevelt's Arizona Boys in a book about "cowboys and politics in
the Old West."
Some 200 men from Arizona enlisted in the Rough
Riders in 1898, including the colorful Buckey O'Neill, killed in Cuba, and
immortalized in Solon Borglum's glorious equestrian statue in Prescott, where
Buckey was once mayor. (Solon was Gutzon Borglum's brother, by the way).
While Feess gives an account of the regiment's history, most of his book is
devoted to the public and political careers of Arizona Rough Riders after the
war.
Arizona was a territory until 1912, and thus when
Theodore Roosevelt became President he could appoint his "Arizona boys" to
many offices under federal jurisdiction.
TR appointed Major Alexander Brodie the Governor of Arizona
( one of three Rough Rider territorial governors appointed by TR, says Feess);
and Rough Rider Tom Rynning became Captain of the Arizona Rangers. TR wanted
to make Rough Rider Ben Daniels a U.S. Marshal, but then it came out that
Daniels had once killed a man in Kansas, and also had served time in prison up
in Wyoming for stealing government mules. But TR had great faith in Daniels,
and the President and Governor Brodie then tried to make Daniels the
superintendent of the Arizona territorial prison. TR's Secretary of State,
John Hay, "remarked...that he believed the proverb ran, 'Set a Rough Rider to
catch a thief.' " Eventually TR succeeded in making Ben Daniels a marshal.
"Daniels met the challenge splendidly," writes Marty F. Feess, " and the
record he made suggests the redemptive power of the faith of one human being
in another. " The Rough Riders, it seems, did a good job for their former
Colonel. "In general, and with a few minor exceptions, Roosevelt's Rough
Riders performed their duties well in various appointed positions and
contributed positively to sound government in Arizona," says Feess. A number
of the appointed Rough Riders were Democrats, which did not endear TR to the
Arizona Republican leadership.
Feess identifies John Greenway, J.L. B. Alexander,
George Wilcox, Ben Daniels, and Dwight B. Heard as the main leaders of the
Progressive or Bull Moose Party in Arizona.
All but Heard had been Rough Riders. Alexander, Wilcox, and
Daniels had held appointments under the Roosevelt administration, and all
three had been dismissed under President William Howard Taft. In 1912
President Taft came in fourth in Arizona! Democrat Woodrow Wilson was first,
TR second on the Progressive ticket, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs came in
third, with Taft in fourth place.
Mine operator John Greenway, a veteran of the Rough
Riders and one of the Arizona Bull Moose leaders, became a brigadier general in
World War I, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and three medals
from France. Greenway's statue by Gutzon Borglum was put in the U.S. Capitol's
statuary hall by Arizona. Feess tells us that in 1923 General Greenway married
Isabella Selmes Ferguson, widow of fellow Rough Rider Robert Ferguson. After
General Greenway's death, Isabella Selmes Ferguson Greenway was elected as a
Democrat to Congress from Arizona.
Theodore Roosevelt's Arizona Boys,
of course, is not the whole story of the Rough Riders after 1898, but of the
veterans in one state. Yet Arizona Boys surely indicates
that a book about the saga of all the Rough Riders after 1898 would make
fascinating reading. Marty F. Feess, a high school teacher in Arizona who
received a Ph.D. in history
in 1999 from Northern Arizona University, has produced in
Theodore Roosevelt's Arizona Boys a competent and
well-focused volume of political history. On the negative side are the
glaring typographical errors in the text of this book, the lack of
documentation of sources by footnotes, and the absence of any index. The
problems created for the researcher or even the casual reader by the lack of
an index are obvious.
There were even more Rough Riders from New Mexico
than Arizona, and maybe that is a good place to pick up where Arizona
Boys leaves off for whoever takes up the challenge to write the saga
of the Rough Riders after 1898.