Site Map

"I Have Just Been Shot..."

On October 14, just weeks before the 1912 presidential election, Roosevelt was preparing to deliver a campaign speech in Mikwaukee when a would-be assassin shot him in the chest.  John Schrank, a saloon owner who had been following the candidate around the country, had reportedly been motivated by dreams in which former president McKinley urged him to kill Roosevelt. The bullet struck Roosevelt in the chest, but only after penetrating his eyeglasses case and the folded text of the 50-page speech he planned to give. Ignoring his friends’ advice to seek medical help immediately, he proceeded with his speech as blood darkened his overcoat:

Friends… 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.

He spoke for 50 minutes before finally letting his staff take him to the hospital.

Photo Credit: LOC LC-USZ62-134760