The Career of Leonard Wood

by Joseph Hamblen Sears

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 assistant 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 nobody 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.