Traces the life and career of the American artist and illustrator famous for his scenes of nineteenth-century Western life

Frederic Remington

Samuels, Peggy

Samuels, Harold

Arts & Photography

Univ of Texas Pr

DOUBLEDAY

Their immediate target was the central sector of the fortified San Juan Heights. Capturing the blockhouse on San Juan Hill was key to breaching the Spanish defenses on the heights above the city of Santiago de Cuba. At one o’clock in the afternoon of July 1, 1898, thirty-nine-year-old Colonel Teddy Roosevelt prepared to advance at the head of his Rough Riders during the Cuban phase of the Spanish-American War. A mixture of cowboys and socialites, the Rough Riders were the most colorful regiment in the American V Army Corps. Roosevelt and his volunteer cavalry were positioned in the rear of two regular regiments on the right side of the arena. They faced the lower and thinly defended rise called Kettle Hill, rather than San Juan Hill. The only American officer to remain mounted in the battle, Roosevelt initiated an unauthorized charge up Kettle Hill. While racing up the slope, he was forced to dismount and climb the crest on foot. As his young volunteers fell in behind, Roosevelt reveled in his triumph. Afterward, in describing his self-perceived role to reporters, Roosevelt cast himself as the most promotable hero in the campaign and, thus, laid the foundation for his legend. That legend, of Teddy Roosevelt valiantly leading the Rough Riders in their charge up San Juan Hill, had a great deal to do with making Roosevelt president and has endured for nearly a century. The reality as shown in this fast-paced narrative is that the charge Roosevelt led was foolhardy and occurred not on San Juan Hill but on the smaller and less important Kettle Hill. Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan explains what Roosevelt did and why he did it. The authors tell the story in two separate but interwoven tracks. The main tracks begins with the formation of the Rough Riders and carries the story of Roosevelt’s involvement forward to the time of the charge and immediately after. In alternating chapters, the second track provides flashbacks offering a succinct look at the events of Roosevelt’s earlier life that motivated him to storm the hill in what he later called his “one crowded hour.” Military historians and general readers interested in the Spanish-American War and those wanting a further look into the charismatic and persuasive politicians will find this never-before-told story an important contribution to understanding the period.

Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan: The Making of a President (Volume 54) (Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series)

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Texas A&M University Press

Samuels Encyclopedia of the Artist of the American West

Reference

Book Sales

Illustrated with Remington's paintings and drawings, this collection brings together more than a hundred articles and his two novels, all depicting the West with the painter's characteristic gritty realism

Collected Writings of Frederic Remington

Literature & Fiction

Remington, Frederic

History & Criticism

Dissects and studies twenty-one classic Western paintings, and analyzes the lives and styles of the artists, including Remington, O'Keefe, and Catlin

Techniques of the Artists of the American West

Samuels, Joan

Fabian, Daniel

Wellfleet

On February 15, 1898, the Secretary of the Navy received an anguished telegram from Captain Charles Sigsbee: "Maine blown up in Havana harbor at nine forty tonight and destroyed." Two hundred sixty-seven American officers and enlisted men were killed in an explosion that was the immediate cause of the Spanish-American War and ended the short career of the first U.S. battleship built domestically with materials manufactured in the United States. At first ascribed to a Spanish mine, the Maine disaster has been scrutinized and challenged over the years, most notably in 1974 when Admiral Hyman G. Rickover employed naval engineers to demonstrate that the explosion was caused by spontaneous combustion in the ship's coal bunkers, adjacent to the gunpowder magazines. In Remembering the Maine, Peggy and Harold Samuels reveal heretofore secret documents - including an 1898 report suppressed by President McKinley, and unpublished testimony of Cubans, Spaniards and Americans - which question the findings of the Rickover report and show that a mine set by Spanish extremists in Havana destroyed the Maine. This historical whodunit describes in detail the controversial evidence, political impediments, and faulty investigations that have confounded this military mystery for almost one hundred years. With investigative zeal, the authors review contemporary press coverage of the disaster, reveal inadequate scientific understanding (at the time) of spontaneous combustion, and scrutinize the findings of the blue-ribbon Rickover commission. They detail the Maine's architecture, analyze the properties of explosives carried on the ship, explain the political tensions between Spain and the United States, and bring to light the liaisons between Cuban rebels and newspaper magnates Hearst and Pulitzer. Among other pieces of evidence, the Samuels uncover an overlooked account by a man who manufactured mines for a group of Spanish extremists, witnessed the explosion, accused his employers of murder, and was subsequently imprisoned for many years. Sifting through myriad written sources, and meticulously reviewing Rickover's report, the authors demonstrate that radical followers of Spanish General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau - known as "the Butcher" - in hopes of engaging the United States in war set the mine that destroyed the battleship. As a result of the explosion's controversy, the watchword "Remember the Maine!" has echoed in American history as both a clarion call for military supremacy and a warning against unnecessary aggression. After almost a century, the mystery is solved and the men of the Maine are vindicated.

REMEMBERING THE MAINE

History

Americas

Smithsonian

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