When Teddy Roosevelt Survived an Assassination Attempt
In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt had come to regret his decision to leave the White House in 1908. So he returned to the campaign trail, and ran for president as candidate of the Bull Moose Party. On October 14th, 1908, he made his way to a podium at the Milwaukee Auditorium, and opened with the unremarkable statement “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible“. Next, however, he delivered one of the most remarkable lines ever uttered from the presidential stump: “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have been shot“. As the audience gasped, TR unbuttoned his vest, to reveal a bloodstained shirt beneath and demonstrate his lucky escape from death. The former president then topped his previous statement with an even more memorable one: “it takes more than that to kill a bull moose!”
Roosevelt pulled out a fifty-page speech from his coat pocket, pierced through with a bullet, and continued: “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“. Just about any other candidate – except maybe Andrew Jackson – would have keeled over in shock. That, or at least bid the audience goodbye, before he rushed to seek medical care. Not Teddy Roosevelt. He assured his audience “I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap“, then proceeded to deliver a ninety minute fiery speech.