Wood, Leonard (1860–1927) U.S. army officer and military governor. Born in Winchester, New Hampshire, Leonard Wood received his M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School in 1884. Two years later he secured an army appointment as a lieutenant and assistant surgeon in Arizona Territory, and took part in the campaign against Geronimo and his Apaches. Wood was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his performance as both a medical and line officer. In 1895 Wood became White House physician, eventually forming a close friendship with assistant secretary of the navy Theodore Roosevelt. They organized the 1st Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, known as the “Rough Riders,” for the Spanish-American War (1898). Wood was colonel in command, but in Cuba he quickly moved up to take over a brigade. He served as a military governor in both Cuba and the Philippines in the years after that conflict, accomplishing many needed reforms while earning promotions up to major general by 1903. In April 1910 he became chief of staff of the army. He firmly established that position by breaking the power of entrenched bureau chiefs, and was a strong advocate for preparedness. He worked around official channels to establish civilian training camps at Plattsburg, New York, which caused some friction with President Woodrow Wilson and the War Department. Though he was the senior officer in the army, Wood spent World War I training units in the United States. After the war he dabbled in politics and was unsuccessful in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He accepted an appointment as governor-general of the Philippines in 1921, and was serving in that position when he died in Boston following surgery.

Leonard Wood 1860-1927, American general and administrator, b. Winchester, N.H. After practicing medicine briefly in Boston, he entered the army in 1885 and was made an assistant surgeon; in 1891 he was promoted to captain. At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War he joined with his friend Theodore Roosevelt in organizing a volunteer cavalry unit—the Rough Riders—and as their commander he participated in the attack on Santiago de Cuba. He was military commander of Santiago (1898-99), and as military governor (1899-1902) of Cuba until the republic was formed, he cooperated in improving sanitary conditions on the island. Sent (1903) to the Philippines as governor of Moro prov., he was promoted (1903) to major general. He helped crush the opposition to U.S. occupation there, although he was criticized for his ruthlessness. From 1906 to 1908 he commanded U.S. military forces in the Philippines. Returning to the United States, he served (1910-14) as U.S. army chief of staff. He was commander (1914-17) of the Dept. of the East and after the outbreak of World War I in Europe led the movement for preparedness in America. He advocated the creation of civilian training camps, which brought him into conflict with the neutralist position of President Wilson, and incurred the President's displeasure. After the U.S. entry into World War I, Wood was refused a commission on the European front. He failed to win the Republican nomination for President in 1920, but he was appointed (1921) governor-general of the Philippines. Distrusting the natives' capacity for self-government, he reversed the lenient policy of his predecessor, F. B. Harrison. Wood liquidated the economic enterprises of the Philippine government, assumed wide powers of control, allowed little prerogative to the legislature, and surrounded himself with military advisers. Until Wood died in 1927, unrest was widespread among the Filipinos, and in 1925 the Philippine senate unanimously voted to hold a plebiscite on independence. The report of the Thompson Commission, sent to the islands in 1926, sharply criticized Wood's rule.

Bibliography: See biography by H. Hagedorn (1931, repr. 1969).

Leonard Wood

Leonard Wood (1860-1927), American Army officer and colonial administrator, was an ardent advocate of military preparedness.

A doctor's son, Leonard Wood was born in Winchester, N.H., on Oct. 9, 1860. After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1884, he joined the Army Medical Corps as a contract surgeon. While advancing to the grade of captain, which he reached in 1891, he proved himself an effective troop leader in the West and won the friendship of influential generals and politicians. Stationed in Washington after 1895, he was part of the White House inner circle of presidents Grover Cleveland and William McKinley and made friends in 1897 with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt.

When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, Wood and Roosevelt raised the famous "Rough Riders." As colonel of the regiment, Wood permanently left the Medical Corps for troop command. After participating in the Santiago de Cuba campaign, he was commissioned a brigadier general of volunteers in July 1898. In October he was appointed governor of Santiago Province, the first Cuban province to fall under United States control. Physically tireless, an inspiration to his staff, at once overawing the Cubans and winning their loyalty, Wood relieved suffering and restored order. As military governor of Cuba from 1899 to 1902, he repeated these achievements on a larger scale while preparing the island for independence. Wood advanced to the permanent grade of brigadier general in 1901 and to major general in 1903.

Wood served in administrative capacities in the Philippines and in the United States until 1910, when he was made Army chief of staff. He used his four-year term to assert power over the War Department bureaus, reorganize the Regular Army for greater wartime effectiveness, and launch a program of citizens' military-training summer camps. The camps constituted a step toward Wood's ultimate goal—universal military training, which to him meant schooling in patriotism and community service as well as in the use of arms. From 1914 to 1917 he was commander of the Department of the East. He spoke and wrote constantly about universal service and preparedness during America's years of neutrality early in World War I. Associating openly with Republican critics of Woodrow Wilson's administration, he went beyond the bounds of proper military conduct in advocating defense policies. In retaliation, the administration kept him from the front when the United States entered the war in 1917.

As political heir of Theodore Roosevelt, Wood made a strong bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920 but lost to Warren G. Harding. Wood was appointed governor of the Philippines by Harding in 1921 and served there until his death on Aug. 7, 1927.

Further Reading

The standard if excessively laudatory biography of Wood is Hermann Hagedorn, Leonard Wood (1931). For Wood's work in Cuba see David F. Healy, The United States in Cuba, 1898-1902 (1963). Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (1957), discusses Wood's military theories and political activities.

Additional Sources

Chapman, Ronald Fettes, Leonard Wood and leprosy in the Philippines: the Culion Leper Colony, 1921-1927, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982.

Lane, Jack C., Armed progressive: a study of the military and public career of Leonard Wood, San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1978. □