While Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee in October 1912 for a third term, John Scrhank fired a shot at him shortly before a planned speech. The bullet went through a steel glasses case and through his 50 page speech folded once in his breast pocket before hitting him in the chest. Roosevelt knew that he had been shot but knew enough about bullet wounds to know that because he wasn’t coughing up blood then his lungs weren’t punctured.Despite his bullet wound in the chest Roosevelt made his speech and talked for a full 90 minutes before he was finished. All the while that he talked blood continued to soak the front of his shirt. His opening comment of his speech was “Ladies and gentlemen, 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.”As soon as the speech was over his bodyguards finally convinced him that he should go to the hospital. The doctors probed and X-rayed the wound and found that the bullet had gone three inches into his chest lodging in his chest muscle. The shot did not penetrate anything major and the doctor concluded that it would be more harmful to remove it so Roosevelt kept the bullet in his chest for the rest of his life.The shooter later wrote that he had not shot at Roosevelt the citizen but Roosevelt the third termer. He meant the shot as a warning to other third termers. He also wrote that he had been advised by the ghost of the former President William McKinley who had appeared to avenge his death while pointing to a picture of Roosevelt. This had happened in a dream so could never be proven.SiteTheodore Roosevelt
Comments