4 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTIONQuitting Kansas for more adventurous frontiers, Funston
explored Alaska and Death Valley as a Department of Agri
culture botanist. Returning to New York in 1896 from an un
successful business venture in Central America, he joined the
Cuban insurgent army out of curiosity. After running the
blockade, he subsequently commanded Maximo Gomez' artil
lery (three guns) in two years of fighting. In 1898, sick,
wounded, and exhausted, Funston reached the American
legation in Havana and returned to Kansas before the out
break of war. On the strength of his Cuban service he became
colonel of the Twentieth Kansas and led his regiment in
thirty-five engagements against the Filipinos. For swimming
the Rio Grande under fire at Calumpit, Luzon, and organizing
a bridgehead which flanked the insurgents in a bitter skirmish,
he won the Medal of Honor and promotion to Brigadier
General, Volunteers. In 1901, as a district commander on
Luzon, Funston engineered the most daring coup of the
insurrection. Using loyal Macabebe scouts as a screen, he and
a handful of Americans, posing as captives, bluffed their way
to Aguinaldo's heavily-guarded headquarters and seized the
general-president. Elihu Root in his report for 1901 called the
feat "the most important single military event of the year."
In April, 1901, Funston, at the age of thirty-six and without
a day's service as a Regular, became a Brigadier General,
United States Army. His unorthodox career and sudden pro
motion led Adjutant General Henry C. Corbin to comment:
"I am making lieutenants of better stuff than Funston every
day. Funston is a boss-scout—that's all!"^6 In 1906, Funston
again made headlines when an earthquake devastated San
Francisco. As the senior officer present in the Bay area, he
directed the soldiers who fought fires, rescued survivors, halted
epidemics, stopped looting, treated the injured, and recap
tured zoo animals. Yet these heroics did not obscure the fact
that Frederick Funston knew Cubans and he knew guerrilla
warfare, and in 1906 these were qualities the Army could
ill-afford to ignore.
Whatever the accomplishments of individual officers, the
Army by 1906 was no longer a haven for sword-waving