Leonard Wood, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Leonard Wood

5th Chief of Staff of the United States Army

Date of Birth: 09-Oct-1860

Place of Birth: Winchester, New Hampshire, United States

Date of Death: 07-Aug-1927

Profession: physician, politician, military officer, surgeon

Nationality: United States, Cuba

Zodiac Sign: Libra


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About Leonard Wood

  • Leonard Wood (October 9, 1860 – August 7, 1927) was a United States Army major general, physician, and public official.
  • He served as the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, Military Governor of Cuba, and Governor General of the Philippines.
  • He began his military career as an army doctor on the frontier, where he received the Medal of Honor.
  • During the Spanish–American War, he commanded the Rough Riders, with Theodore Roosevelt as his second-in-command.
  • Wood was bypassed for a major command in World War I, but then became a prominent Republican Party leader and a leading candidate for the 1920 presidential nomination. Born in Winchester, New Hampshire, Wood became an army surgeon after earning a Doctor of Medicine degree from Harvard Medical School.
  • He received the Medal of Honor for his role in the Apache Wars and became the personal physician to the President of the United States.
  • At the outbreak of the Spanish–American War, Wood and Roosevelt organized the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry regiment.
  • Wood was promoted to the rank of brigadier general during the war and fought in the Battle of San Juan Hill and other engagements.
  • After the war, Wood served as the Military Governor of Cuba, where he instituted improvements to medical and sanitary conditions.
  • President William Howard Taft made Wood the Army Chief of Staff in 1910, and Wood held that position until 1914.
  • Several Republican leaders supported Wood for the role of commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, but the Woodrow Wilson administration selected John J.
  • Pershing. After Roosevelt's death in 1919, many of Roosevelt's former supporters backed Wood for the presidential nomination at the 1920 Republican National Convention.
  • Wood received the most votes on the first four ballots of the convention, but the Republicans nominated Warren G.
  • Harding for president.
  • Wood retired from the army in 1921 and was appointed Governor General of the Philippines later that year.
  • He held that position until his death in 1927. Biographer Jack Lane sums up his importance: Wood played a significant role in shaping many of the United States's major developments in the early twentieth century: progressivism, expansionism and colonialism, military reform, preparedness and American intervention in World War I, and the election of 1920.
  • He was particularly representative of an era that valued moral and physical strength.
  • Although admired by his generation for his honesty, forthrightness, and his intense and vigorous approach to life, he fell short of greatness.

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