George True Blood, seen here on Governors Island later in 1917 after his promotion to brigadier general, was responsible fro the tens of thousands of applications pouring in to the Eastern Department that winter just before America joined the war.

Americans were watching with increasing anxiety as the winter of 1917 moved along. Everyone was wondering what would happen with the German u-boat attacks and looking ahead to what spring and summer might bring. No one of course knew that the United Sates would enter the war the first week of April. The first week of March 1917 officials were predicting that 50,000 men and 10,000 young males between 15-18 would registeri to attend the Military Training Camps for civilians in Plattsburg, New York and elsewhere before they opened that June. They were to be called “Federal Reserve Students.”

Things had changed a great deal since the first camps in 1913; as pf summer 1917 the civilian camps were to officially be under the auspices of the Army. This had a number of implications. For one thing in previous years the men had paid their own way, which explains why most Plattsburg men came from upper class families, usually from the Northeast where interventionist sentiment was stronger than in the South and West. The Army would pay for uniforms, food, arms, and travel expenses. The duty of processing the letters of interest fell to Leonard Wood and his staff at the department of the East on Governors Island. He tasked his chief of staff Colonel George True Bartlett to take care of it.

Theodore Roosevelt was watching it all closely and was never happier than when he heard that his eighteen-year-old nephew, William Sheffield Cowles Jr., his sister Anna’s only son, was intending to attend. As it turned out, neither Cowles nor the other 60,000 boys and men attended the civilian training camps that winter. When war indeed came, the Army prioritized the camps at Plattsburg and elsewhere exclusively for military use alone.

(image/Library of Congress)

Civilian Plattsburg participants march on the Governors Island parade ground with broomsticks, winter 1917. It is unclear from the original Brooklyn Daily Eagle caption if this image was taken the day Colonel Roosevelt turned out at Governors Island on 17 February 1917.

Over the past century and a half many American presidents have visited Governors Island either before, during or after their administrations. Theodore Roosevelt visited one hundred years ago. His purpose was to meet the Commander of the Department of the East Major General Leonard Wood. Wood of course had been helping with the organization of the Plattsburg Preparedness camps that had taken place in Upstate New York over the previous few summers. With unrestricted German submarine now again a reality Preparedness was taking on increasing urgency. And so on the afternoon of Saturday 17 February 1917 Theodore and Theodore Roosevelt took the ten-minute ferry from Lower Manhattan. Roosevelt’s appearance was quite public; the former commander-in-chief received not one but two twenty-one gun salutes.

The Roosevelts had lunch with Wood and other dignitaries and watched a group of forty Plattsburg men, whom Roosevelt referred to as “rookies,” drill. The Plattsburgers apparently had been drilling most Saturdays for some time. One of the most striking things about the drill to Roosevelt was that the men had no rifles; instead they carried broomsticks as they marched. Not one to mince words, especially when given a chance to take a shot at Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt had something to say on the matter for the assembled journalists, averring that he was “filled with wonder and shame that a great people like ours should be in such a state of unpreparedness” as the country headed toward war.

On a happier note enjoy your Presidents Day Weekend, everyone.

(image/Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 20 February 1917)