“As far as the political effect of my actions;--in the first place, I never _can_ get on in politics, and in the second, I would rather have led that charge and earned my colonelcy, than serve three terms in the United States Senate. It makes me feel as though I could now leave something to my children which will serve as an apology for my having existed. [How much his existence needed an apology!] In spite of the strain, and the anything but hygienic conditions under which we have lived, I am in very good health. If we stay here all summer, we shall have yellow fever among us, of course, but I rather think I will pull through that too. I wish they would let us go to Porto Rico, or if not, then let me get all my regiment together in Maine or somewhere like that and get them in trim for the great campaign against Havana in the Fall. I wish you could see these men. I am as proud of them as I can be, and I verily believe they would go anywhere with me. They are being knocked down right and left, however, with the fever. I shan’t take any risks unless I really think I ought to, and now, I begin to believe that I am going to get home safely.” A letter from Bob Ferguson about the same time backs up his future position in regard to moving the men, and reiterates: “It was a glorious spin, over trenches and barbed wires instead of oaken panels, however. One never expects to see the like again;--Corinne and Anna must have suffered terribly from Theodore’s wild, whirlwind career! His courage all through was so simple and so true to him. The Spaniards laughed at the Cubans, and said they had no fighting to do until the Americans came;--they ‘kept on coming.’ One officer told Colonel Wood that the Americans were ‘magnanimous, brave, and ferocious.’ If Cervera had stayed in harbor with his ships, we would have been in the devil of a hole between starvation and fever. It is lucky things went as they did.” And again, on August 6, he writes to me: