StMU Research Scholars

Featuring Scholarly Research, Writing, and Media at St. Mary’s University

March 3, 2018

Teddy Roosevelt, the Birth of the Progressive Party, and the Speech that Slowed a Bullet

Stepping into an open-air car just after 8 pm, Teddy Roosevelt stood to wave to the adoring crowd that had gathered around him. Just as he raised his hat, the shot of a .38 colt revolver rang out from no more than five feet in front of him. As he fell back into the car, the crowd quickly disarmed the would-be assassin and began to attack him.1

Many events led up to this exact moment. Nearly twelve years earlier, Roosevelt had been William McKinley’s Vice President when McKinley had died from a similar assassin’s bullet just six months into his second term. Roosevelt’s subsequent rise to the presidency upset many in his own Republican Party, due to the fact that he had been placed as McKinley’s Vice President for the sole purpose of removing him from positions of power, particularly in the New York legislature. He had been a part of New York politics off and on from the age of twenty-three. But many in his own party were unhappy with Roosevelt because of his support for political reforms that would end corruption in politics, including that of the Republican Party Machine in New York, which made most of the major decisions for the entire Republican Party. At the time, the office of Vice President was seen as a dead-end for one’s political career, because it lacked any real power; so the move to “elevate” Roosevelt to be McKinley’s running-mate in 1900 made sense for the Party Machine to support. Unfortunately for them, McKinley’s untimely death foiled their attempts to end Roosevelt’s political career, and ultimately they fast-tracked him into the Presidency at the age of forty-two, which made him the youngest person to ever be sworn-in to this position. Roosevelt went on to become the party’s undisputed leader and easily won the Presidential election of 1904. During his years in office, Roosevelt was quite the well-rounded President. He worked on everything from domestic programs regulating railroads and food to conservation acts to foreign policy, even winning a Noble Peace Prize in 1906 for his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War.2

Though, when the election of 1908 rolled around, having already technically served two terms as President and wanting to follow the precedent of not seeking a third, Roosevelt stepped aside to allow the rise of William Howard Taft, his Secretary of War, to take his place on the Republican ticket. With Roosevelt’s backing, Taft took the Presidency easily. But not long after Taft’s administration began, Roosevelt, who had become increasingly progressive in the later years of his second term, did not like that Taft’s views and policies continued to move further and further right. Not only were his views and policies moving further right, but Taft directly undermined several policies and programs that Roosevelt had approved and developed during his two terms. This prompted some in the progressive wing of the party to support a more progressive man to take his place on the Republican ticket in the election of 1912. For a while, it seemed as though Robert La Follette, a Republican Senator from Wisconsin, would become the progressive opponent of Taft, but after several missteps and his sanity being called into question, Roosevelt announced his decision to seek a third term. Support began to build for Roosevelt, and ultimately he chose to challenge Taft at the Republican National Convention, with the backing of several prominent members of the party. Roosevelt narrowly failed to secure the nomination, again because of plots against him within the Machine and the committee giving all contested delegates to Taft. After this loss, Roosevelt walked out of the convention, and immediately created his own party, the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party, that was built on Roosevelt’s Square Deal platform focusing on helping all classes of people, not only with the support of those that backed him at the Convention, but several others as well.3 With the party bitterly split, Roosevelt did more campaigning himself than any of the other candidates, stopping in thirty-eight states. The exhaustion of all of the campaigning, and some bouts of sickness, had caused some previous speeches to be cancelled, or postponed, but, Roosevelt, determined to not cancel any more, arrived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 14, 1912, stopping first to have dinner at the Gilpatrick Hotel, before his speech. After dinner, on the way to his car, he met the assassin’s bullet.4

A Photo of the Shirt Roosevelt was wearing during the Attempt | Courtesy of Harlingue/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Immediately after the shot, Roosevelt quickly regained his footing and called the crowd off of the man. Many in the crowd even called for the man to be killed on the spot, but Roosevelt insisted he not be hurt.5 Roosevelt then attempted to determine why the assassin had fired at him, but to no avail;  though, later, it was found that a note in his pocket offered a reason of sorts: John Flammang Schrank, the would-be assassin and unemployed saloon keeper, who adamantly opposed the idea of three-term presidents, had a dream in which McKinley rose out of a coffin, pointed to a painting of Roosevelt, and asked him, Schrank, to avenge his death. Once Schrank was whisked away, everyone was sure that Roosevelt would immediately head to the hospital. But, being not only a skilled hunter, but anatomist as well, Roosevelt knew that since he was not coughing up blood, his lungs had not been hit. So he decided to head on to the auditorium to deliver his speech, to the protest of most everyone.6 Upon his arrival, he did allow a few doctors to assess the wound, but they saw that his fifty-page manuscript, which had been folded in half, and his lead-lined glasses case, had slowed the entry of the bullet into his chest; and so his speech would go on.7

Photo of Roosevelt’s Speech with Bullet Holes | Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection

With a clean handkerchief pressed against the hole in his chest, Roosevelt took the stage. The first words of his speech were ones that no one in the audience fully expected: “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.” Shock traveled through the audience, with many even calling out that his story was fake. Opening the breast of his jacket, exposing his blood-soaked shirt, he continued, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”8

The Lead Line Eyeglass Case that was in Roosevelt’s Pocket with Bullet Hole | Courtesy of History.com

Roosevelt then went on to deliver an most ninety-minute campaign speech titled “Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual,” that outlined his idea of “New Nationalism,” which was based on the beliefs of the safety and welfare of workers coming first before profits, the protection of property rights, and, what Roosevelt believed to be the most important, the welfare and protection of all people, no matter their class. His belief in the cause was so strong, that he even mentioned it as one of the reasons that he was still giving the speech:

“And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident and say a word of solemn warning to my fellow countrymen. First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death; and now I can not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things…I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the Progressive movement is for making life a little easier for all our people…I am absorbed in the success of that movement.”9

He only stopped once, roughly thirty minutes in, when he was interrupted by his campaign manger who attempted to convince him to go to the hospital, but Roosevelt waved him off. Only when the speech had been given in its entirety did he finally agree to go to the hospital. There, it was revealed that the bullet had lodged itself in one of his ribs and that it did not have a chance of shifting into his lungs, leading the doctors to determine that it would be safer to leave it where it was. After one week of recovery, Roosevelt was back on the campaign trail, with just over two weeks left until the election. Unfortunately, the bitter divide in the Republican Party cost not only Taft the election, but himself as well. Had one or the other run without opposition from the other, the Republican Party may have prevailed. While Taft and Roosevelt received over fifty percent of the popular vote when combined, the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, carried forty states and won in the electoral college in a landslide, 435 to 96, combined, which may in part be due to the fact that Roosevelt was running as a third party candidate. Even though Roosevelt did not win, he had come in second place, ahead of Taft. This was the first, and only, time in American history that a third party has done as well as Roosevelt did in this election, which demonstrated just how dominate he was on the political stage. Furthermore, his larger than life personality is displayed when later asked about how he remained calm enough to deliver his speech after having been shot, let alone one of its length, Roosevelt simply stated that he had been expecting it for a while, so he wasn’t surprised, and, “In the very unlikely event of the wound being mortal I wished to die with my boots on.”10

  1. Robert Walsdorff, “Death-defying speech, (cover story),” Cobblestone 14, no. 3 (1993): 40.
  2. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia Research Starters, 2013, s.v. Theodore Roosevelt,by William I. Hair.
  3. “Progressive (Bull Moose) Party (1912),” in Guide to U.S. Elections, 6th ed, Washington, D.C., United States: CQ Press, 2010. CQ Press Voting & Elections Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed February 22, 2018).
  4. Patricia O’Toole, “Assassination foiled: 100 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt was saved from a bullet by 50 pieces of paper,” Smithsonian, 2012, 64.
  5. Christopher Klein, “When Teddy Roosevelt Was Shot in 1912, a Speech May Have Saved His Life,” History.com, October 12, 2012, (Accessed February 22, http://www.history.com/news/shot-in-the-chest-100-years-ago-teddy-roosevelt-kept-on-talking.
  6. Patricia O’Toole, “Assassination foiled: 100 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt was saved from a bullet by 50 pieces of paper,” Smithsonian, 2012, 64.
  7. Patricia O’Toole, “The Speech That Saved Teddy Roosevelts Life,” Smithsonian.com. November 01, 2012, (Accessed February 22), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-speech-that-saved-teddy-roosevelts-life-83479091/.
  8. Christopher Klein, “When Teddy Roosevelt Was Shot in 1912, a Speech May Have Saved His Life,” History.com, October 12, 2012, (Accessed February 22, http://www.history.com/news/shot-in-the-chest-100-years-ago-teddy-roosevelt-kept-on-talking.
  9. Henry Blodget, “Heres The Famous Populist Speech Teddy Roosevelt Gave Right After Getting Shot,” Business Insider, October 14, 2011, (Accessed February 28, 2018), http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-famous-populist-speech-teddy-roosevelt-gave-right-after-getting-shot-2011-10.
  10. Patricia O’Toole, 2012, “Assassination foiled: 100 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt was saved from a bullet by 50 pieces of paper,” Smithsonian, (2012): 64.

Tags from the story

Assassination attempt on Teddy Roosevelt

Bull Moose Party

Theodore Roosevelt

Recent Comments

Clarissa Liscano

Teddy Roosevelt accomplished a staggering amount during his career, from almost losing his life and choosing to keep the bullet inside him to giving speeches. This article did an amazing job describing Roosevelt, and I was able to learn so much about him. He went from being vice president to being the actual president of the United States, and he very much deserved that. He’s done so much from being in tons of wars and leading them to getting shot then giving a speech not long after.

reply

09/02/2023

8:22 am

Danielle Rangel

The author did an amazing job describing how Roosevelt did not give up when it came to campaigning. The images were also very interesting because it gives the audience a picture of what the bullet could have done. I think this article is a fascinating read and I found it interesting how, despite being shot at, Roosevelt told the crowd to leave the shooter alone. Overall this was a great article on the assassination attempt on Roosevelt as he went throughout the country to campaign.

reply

11/02/2023

8:22 am

Isabel Soto

This article had some interesting events that I just learned about President Theodore Roosevelt. It was one of the craziest moments in history. this article in my opinion did a great job conveying his personality in their article. one interesting fact that I learn from this article is that i didn’t know he was shot and survive before giving his speech. I love that he still gave his speech even after he got shot.

reply

12/02/2023

8:22 am

Maria Luevano

This was such an interesting article, and I have never heard of this story oddly enough! I feel like with Teddy Roosevelt being such an iconic figure in history, this would be more well-known! It is crazy for me to think that Roosevelt would actually call the crowd off the attempted assassin and not hurt him, so Roosevelt could try and reason with him. I think this shows just how dedicated he was to listen to the people’s voices, even if they did not agree with him.

reply

12/02/2023

8:22 am

Laurel Cox

This was an incredibly well-written article; the story made me feel like I was really there awaiting his great speech. Also, I had heard this story before, but not with the political context in mind of Roosevelt wanting to run for a third term only after seeing what Taft was doing to the presidency, disregarding his policies and undermining everything that Roosevelt had done during his time. Also, it seems so crazy to me that it was not only his 50 paged speech, but also his glasses cases, and his rib that saved his life and his most influential speech.

reply

12/02/2023

8:22 am

Nnamdi Onwuzurike

This story sounds like it’s coming straight out of a superhero novel. It’s very impressive to be shot and then go on to give a 90-minute speech. If I were in that crowd I would be immensely moved by his determination. Even though he didn’t win in the end, it was a major victory for Roosevelt. He made history!

reply

12/02/2023

8:22 am

Jacob Anthony Ayala

Hi, Natalie, this was a really nice written paper, fun and interesting. Teddy Roosevelt is definitely one of the most influential figures in all of US history. He is connected to so many things and this has got to be one of the biggest ones. That “Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual” speech was awesome to read about. The fact he was shot and went on give a 90-minute speech is just a testament to his character and what he stood for as a man.

reply

12/02/2023

8:22 am

Iris Reyna

Wow! Good job on the article Natalie. The article was very informative and educational and you hooked me with a strong intro. The article did a very good job of showing who Roosevelt was. Of course, everyone knows about or has learned who Roosevelt was but a major thing didn’t know about him was the speech where he got shot. Not only did he get shot, but he continued to give a 90-minute speech. While reading your article it felt like I was back in history presently witnessing this for myself. You did a really good job at making it such an eventful experience for the reader.

reply

12/02/2023

8:22 am

Griffin Palmer

This article did really well with explaining how Roosevelt became presidents and the many sides and views of the situation. It helps to show those who supported him and those who as well as the results of what happened while he was president and when he stepped out of office. It also does good at adding special details to Roosevelt like the fact that he had done a 50 paged speech.

reply

19/02/2023

8:22 am

Griffin Palmer

This article did really well with explaining how Roosevelt became presidents and the many sides and views of the situation. It helps to show those who supported him and those who as well as the results of what happened while he was president and when he stepped out of office. It also does good at adding special details to Roosevelt like that he had done a 50 paged speech.

reply

19/02/2023

8:22 am

1 2 3 4

Leave a Reply