The Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, during the
Spanish-American War,
Theodore Roosevelt, resigned his post and formed a volunteer regiment of cavalry, the Rough Riders, or
Rocky Mountain Riders.
Roosevelt took his men to Cuba and up San Juan Hill and traveled on to Kettle Hill with the Ninth Calvary (an African-American regiment) and reached the area finding that the Tenth Calvary general had already made the Spanish commander surrender.