On October 14, 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt was leaving his hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when an assassin lunged from the crowd and shot him. The bullet struck him in his chest, but this was not the end of the line for the burly former President; it wasn’t even the end of his day. Roosevelt, despite the blood staining his shirt, continued on to perform his campaign speech that evening, before making his way to a hospital. The event has gone down as yet another example of Roosevelt’s bravery, ruggedness, and determination.
It was this same resolve that had brought Roosevelt to the Presidency in the first place. As a young New York City lawyer he fearlessly took on powerful figures like railroad baron Jay Gould, men usually beyond the reach of criticism and investigation. After the Spanish American War broke out, Roosevelt raised his own military unit, dubbed the Rough Riders, which he outfitted at his own expense (they wore Brooks Brothers uniforms). With this successful sojourn into war, Roosevelt returned from Cuba a hero and rode the positive public sentiment to the governorship of New York State. He would fill this role for almost exactly one year, before he was offered the role of Vice President under William McKinley in his re-election bid. They won the White House, but McKinley was shot and killed by an assassin just a few months after taking office, making Roosevelt the youngest President to ever hold the office at 42 years-old.
Roosevelt’s Presidency was marked by that same “rough riding” sentiment. He took on the major trusts of the robber barons, and defined American foreign policy through his “big stick” diplomacy. He was instrumental in the creation of some of the first national parks, and was also responsible for the initiation of the Panama Canal project, one that would change the global trade landscape for the next century. He was elected to a second term in 1904, and when it came time to pass the baton and follow Washington’s two-term precedent (the two-term limit for Presidents wasn’t legally mandated until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951), Roosevelt gave up the office reluctantly. He bowed out and campaigned for his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft.
In a bid to remove himself entirely from the American political scene, Roosevelt went on a big game hunting expedition in Africa, touring the continent and killing thousands of animals both large and small to send back to American museums. Many of the taxidermic models filling the National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City came from this Roosevelt expedition. Once he had satisfied his adventurous desires, Roosevelt returned to America and lamented the sorry state of the country. He quickly soured on Taft, and decided the best thing for himself and for the country was to run for a third term in the election of 1912.
This brings us to the campaign trail in Milwaukee, where Roosevelt had traveled to make a speech. John Schrank, a Bible scholar and drifter, had traveled to Milwaukee on a private mission to stop Roosevelt from gaining a third term in office. He waited outside Roosevelt’s hotel among the crowd and when Roosevelt emerged to get in his car, Schrank fired a single bullet into his chest. The bullet punctured Roosevelt’s glasses case, his 50-page speech, and then entered the former-President’s chest. Roosevelt reportedly felt no immediate pain and so continued on to the auditorium to deliver his speech, but in the car one of his aides noted the blood staining his shirt. Roosevelt determined the the bullet had not punctured his lung as he was having no trouble breathing, and thus decided to deliver the speech as best he could before going to the hospital.
Cementing the brash and tough-as-nails image history has of him, Roosevelt took the stage and delivered as much of his speech as he could. He would make a full recovery, with doctors opting to leave the bullet in place as that would be safer than removing it. His actions that day show us that while there are many myths and legends in history, Theodore Roosevelt’s legendary resolve and stubbornness belong firmly in the realm of fact.
The beginning of his speech that evening:
Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.
