Excerpt from The Story of the Rough Riders: 1st U. S. Volunteer Cavalry; The Regiment in Camp and on the Battle Field Notwithstanding the fact that my connection with the regiment, as commanding officer, ceased on June 30th, the day before the San Juan charge, my interest in it has never lessened for a moment. I was naturally proud of my connection with it at the beginning. I am proud now of the fact that I went into the war as its colonel, and I am proud of its record. When I began to do what I could at San Antonio, to organize the regiment into a creditable military body, I said to the men of it: "Make yourselves as much like regular soldiers as you can in the shortest possible time. If you think only of that you will be thinking exactly of the right thing and you will have enough to think about to keep you very busy. If you devote your time and attention to that, the regiment will be a success. The men did make themselves so much like regulars that it was hard to tell the difference, and the regiment was a success." It would be utterly useless for me to recapitulate now the history of the good work the Rough Riders did. They were not the only good soldiers in the army, but they were among the best, and they did not do any bad work. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.