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The NEED of the HOUR As Pastors that come from many different backrounds and cultures we must pull together to support each other in our great time of battle. The KEY is "together"!!!
~ How Teddy Rossevelt formed the Rough Riders ~
By May 11th, just sixteen days after war had officially been declared aganist Spain in Cuba, almost all of the one thousand troopers had arrived in San Antonio. The scene was historic. At no moment in U.S. history had so many diverse sets of individuals come together in the name of anything. It was chaos, exactly the hippodrome affair that Theodore feared. “It was the society page, financial column and Wild West Show all wrapped up in one,” a reporter quipped. The diversity was accentuated by the different habiliments of fashion. Some wore dude rags, standing collars, patent leather shoes, and hard-boiled hats. The millionaires and Fifth Avenue dandies were dressed in suits accompanied by “wagon loads each of solid leather trunks and hat boxes.” The cowboys adorned chaps, high-heeled boots, and spurs. A few of the athletes, dressed casually in khakis and polo shirts, swung golf clubs or threw around a football. The miners and down-and-out’s wore soiled and tattered blue denim overall jumpers. The musicians had their drums, guitars, fifes, cornets, and violins. The gamblers had dice, cards, faro, and crap lay-outs. Florence, the Arizona mountain lion, now the mascot of the entire Camp Wood, was on the prowl lurking through the luggage for loose food. One rough rider recalled that through all the commotion, he even remembered seeing a few Bibles.
The clash of cultures, personalities, antecedents, and wealth symbolized the greatest asset for a country on the rim of a new frontier: diversity. The ivy leaguers with rosy cheeks stood beside cowboys, whose gristly faces had been leathered by the sun and the wind and the snow. The yachtsmen shook hands with the Cherokees. A Cree stared at a Scottish laird trying to figure out what planet the man had come from. Charles Younger, son of Bob Younger of Jesse James’s gang, watched the Texas rangers with steely eyes. William Tiffany, the fair-faced, wealthy societal chap noticed that the Marshal of Dodge City was missing an ear, “bitten off in a bar fight,” it was later explained. The nation’s tennis champion stood gracefully next to the hardened teamster from the steel mill. The world’s greatest polo player was perplexed on just how to go about mingling with the fugitive mountain-man who was running from the law and asked everyone just to call him “Mr. Smith,” because, as Mr. Smith later explained: “I had a little trouble with a gentleman, and—er—well, in fact, I had to kill him.”
Under the scorching Texas sun stood millionaires who never held a job, as well as lawyers, stockmen, doctors, farmers, college professors, miners, adventurers, preachers, prospectors, socialists, journalists, clerks, artists, writers, grocers, linemen, jockeys, insurance agents, a cigar maker, four low-life congressmen, two mechanics, four watchmakers, eight marshals of the law, a publicist, several Jews, some Gentiles, many professed Christians, several Native Americans, a hundred and sixty cowboys, forty-four ranchers, several West Point graduates, ten football players, a few professed thinkers, eight plumbers, four electricians, one weatherman, two singers, one songwriter, five salesmen, thirty-one railroad men, an agent of the Internal Revenue Service, an architect, and two actors. They had come from forty-two states and four unnamed territories.
One man, who was being held for murder, was paroled by a federal judge so that he could enlist with the regiment. He joined the Rough Riders, fought in Cuba, returned to America and was acquitted, not for lack of evidence but because he came home a war hero.
The muster was created on May 17th, and was equally as diverse. The Easterners had wealthy names like Reginald, Winthrop, Townsend, Percival. From the West there was “Hell-Roarer,” an unusually shy and quiet man; “Metropolitan Bill,” who got the nickname because he boasted his worldly adventures by telling people he had an aunt who at one time had lived in New York; “Rocky Mountain Bill,” distinguishable by a huge scar above his right eye made by the claw of a bear—not to be confused with “Smoky Mountain Bill,” another man; “Dead Shot Jim,” who as he claimed, could shoot a jackrabbit in the eye at a thousand yards from the back of a galloping stallion; “Prayerful James,” who only knew profanity; “Sheeney Solomon,” a huge redheaded Irishman; “Lariat Ned,” who claimed he could lasso a squirrel; “Pork-Chop,” a Jew; “Rattlesnake Pete,” who had lived with the Moquis tribe and was a snake-whisperer; “Smoky Moore,” who tamed vicious horses, known in the frontier as “smoky horses”; “Happy Jack,” the only name he would give it was still uncertain whether he had actually been paroled from McAlester penitentiary; and “Hells Bells,” Happy Jack’s bunkmate, a Baptist minister. Only fifteen days prior, the regiment was an assorted set of individuals from every walk of life, a mob of characters clinging to their own factions, speaking and acting in partisan terms. Now, as the train charged east, they were wholly united, the latest incarnation of the American frontiersman. They were still wild and unruly, rowdy and boisterous—prone to extraordinary insubordination. But now they trusted one another and wanted to fight together. They were not a mob; they were frontiersmen. — John Knokey, Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of American Leadership
The clash of cultures, personalities, antecedents, and wealth symbolized the greatest asset for a country on the rim of a new frontier: diversity. The ivy leaguers with rosy cheeks stood beside cowboys, whose gristly faces had been leathered by the sun and the wind and the snow. The yachtsmen shook hands with the Cherokees. A Cree stared at a Scottish laird trying to figure out what planet the man had come from. Charles Younger, son of Bob Younger of Jesse James’s gang, watched the Texas rangers with steely eyes. William Tiffany, the fair-faced, wealthy societal chap noticed that the Marshal of Dodge City was missing an ear, “bitten off in a bar fight,” it was later explained. The nation’s tennis champion stood gracefully next to the hardened teamster from the steel mill. The world’s greatest polo player was perplexed on just how to go about mingling with the fugitive mountain-man who was running from the law and asked everyone just to call him “Mr. Smith,” because, as Mr. Smith later explained: “I had a little trouble with a gentleman, and—er—well, in fact, I had to kill him.”
Under the scorching Texas sun stood millionaires who never held a job, as well as lawyers, stockmen, doctors, farmers, college professors, miners, adventurers, preachers, prospectors, socialists, journalists, clerks, artists, writers, grocers, linemen, jockeys, insurance agents, a cigar maker, four low-life congressmen, two mechanics, four watchmakers, eight marshals of the law, a publicist, several Jews, some Gentiles, many professed Christians, several Native Americans, a hundred and sixty cowboys, forty-four ranchers, several West Point graduates, ten football players, a few professed thinkers, eight plumbers, four electricians, one weatherman, two singers, one songwriter, five salesmen, thirty-one railroad men, an agent of the Internal Revenue Service, an architect, and two actors. They had come from forty-two states and four unnamed territories.
One man, who was being held for murder, was paroled by a federal judge so that he could enlist with the regiment. He joined the Rough Riders, fought in Cuba, returned to America and was acquitted, not for lack of evidence but because he came home a war hero.
The muster was created on May 17th, and was equally as diverse. The Easterners had wealthy names like Reginald, Winthrop, Townsend, Percival. From the West there was “Hell-Roarer,” an unusually shy and quiet man; “Metropolitan Bill,” who got the nickname because he boasted his worldly adventures by telling people he had an aunt who at one time had lived in New York; “Rocky Mountain Bill,” distinguishable by a huge scar above his right eye made by the claw of a bear—not to be confused with “Smoky Mountain Bill,” another man; “Dead Shot Jim,” who as he claimed, could shoot a jackrabbit in the eye at a thousand yards from the back of a galloping stallion; “Prayerful James,” who only knew profanity; “Sheeney Solomon,” a huge redheaded Irishman; “Lariat Ned,” who claimed he could lasso a squirrel; “Pork-Chop,” a Jew; “Rattlesnake Pete,” who had lived with the Moquis tribe and was a snake-whisperer; “Smoky Moore,” who tamed vicious horses, known in the frontier as “smoky horses”; “Happy Jack,” the only name he would give it was still uncertain whether he had actually been paroled from McAlester penitentiary; and “Hells Bells,” Happy Jack’s bunkmate, a Baptist minister. Only fifteen days prior, the regiment was an assorted set of individuals from every walk of life, a mob of characters clinging to their own factions, speaking and acting in partisan terms. Now, as the train charged east, they were wholly united, the latest incarnation of the American frontiersman. They were still wild and unruly, rowdy and boisterous—prone to extraordinary insubordination. But now they trusted one another and wanted to fight together. They were not a mob; they were frontiersmen. — John Knokey, Theodore Roosevelt and the Making of American Leadership
