Book Synopsis Rough Riders is a classic biography of Theodore Roosevelt and his early days as a member of that historical unit. This book includes this snippet: DURING the year preceding the outbreak of the Spanish War I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. While my party was in opposition, I had preached, with all the fervor and zeal I possessed, our duty to intervene in Cuba, and to take this opportunity of driving the Spaniard from the Western World. Now that my party had come to power, I felt it incumbent on me, by word and deed, to do all I could to secure the carrying out of the policy in which I so heartily believed; and from the beginning I had determined that, if a war came, somehow or other, I was going to the front. Meanwhile, there was any amount of work at hand in getting ready the navy, and to this I devoted myself.