From July 15-18, delegates from 56 states and territories will gather in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, just blocks from the site of the October 14, 1912 assassination attempt on former President Theodore Roosevelt.
The shadow of the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump in Pennsylvania will also loom large over the 2024 Republican National Convention, making Milwaukee’s historic connection to another assassination attempt even more meaningful nearly 112 years later.
One of the venue hotels for the 2024 Republican Convention, the Hyatt Regency on West Kilburn Avenue, is built directly over the spot where President Roosevelt was shot just after 8 p.m. on that fateful Monday in October.
Roosevelt, who became president in 1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley and served until 1909, campaigned for a third term under the banner of the Progressive Party, nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.
Roosevelt founded the Bull Moose Party after losing the Republican presidential nomination in 1912. After a campaign stop in Racine, Wisconsin, he arrived in Milwaukee by train from Chicago and was scheduled to give a street speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium downtown.
Roosevelt had dinner at the Gilpatrick Hotel, a few blocks from the Milwaukee Auditorium, and after leaving the hotel around 8:00 pm and walking to his car, he stood in the tonneau of his convertible to greet the assembled crowd.
“It looks like he was hit, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.”
What Roosevelt did not know was that John Flaman Schrank, a psychopathic, unemployed bartender from New York, was standing in the crowd plotting to kill him in an act of revenge for the assassination of President McKinley more than a decade earlier.
Schrank later told police he had seen visions of McKinley’s ghost, who blamed Roosevelt for the murder and asked Schrank to shoot him. Schrank followed Roosevelt across eight states, waiting for an opportunity to do so.
According to the Milwaukee Police Historical Society, as Roosevelt climbed into the back seat and raised his hat, Schrank stepped forward with a .38-caliber Colt Police Positive Special revolver and fired one shot into Roosevelt’s right chest.
Following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, then-Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president. He served as president until 1909, when he ran unsuccessfully as the Bull Moose Party candidate in 1912.Library of Congress
“The colonel’s life was likely saved by the manuscript of a speech he was to deliver in the auditorium, a bulky packet of letters and a heavy case for glasses,” the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote.
“The bullet passed through these various objects, absorbing its dangerous force and velocity and altering its trajectory to prevent a more dangerous wound.”
Roosevelt carried a folded copy of the 50-page speech and a steel case for his pince-nez in the breast pocket of his uniform. These objects slowed the bullet, which penetrated his shirt and struck his chest just below his right nipple. The bullet lodged near two ribs.
One of Roosevelt’s secretaries, Albert Martin, “jumped over the car a second after the bullet came flying” and “hit the assassin squarely in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground,” the Associated Press reported. “The colonel was unfazed. ‘I think I’ve been shot,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s anything serious.'”
“I don’t care about getting shot, I don’t care.”
“Prisoner papers found at the police station indicate he was a fanatic who believed it was his mission to prevent the president from getting a third term,” reported the Dunn County News in Wisconsin. “He believed Roosevelt was responsible for McKinley’s murder and that he was McKinley’s avenger.”
President Roosevelt and his entourage did not realize that the former president had been shot until they were on their way to the Milwaukee Auditorium.
“…as the motorcade made its way to the auditorium, one of the guards noticed a bullet hole in his military coat,” reported the Chicago Daily Tribune. “The colonel quickly reached inside his coat and a second later pulled out the blood-dripping finger.”
Despite being bleeding profusely, Roosevelt insisted on driving to the Milwaukee Auditorium to give a speech.
“In the dressing room, his jacket was removed and doctors examined him and urged him to go to hospital, but the colonel declared he was willing to speak even if it meant dying,” the Associated Press reported.
When Roosevelt arrived at the podium, the crowd quieted.
The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that President Roosevelt “opened his coat, pulled out the perforated manuscript and pointed to the bullet hole. For a moment all eyes were fixed on the paper; the next moment the gaze of the bystanders was fixed on the colonel’s white shirt, the right side of which was red with blood.”
News headlines across America were filled with the news of the attempted assassination of former President Theodore Roosevelt.Chicago Daily Tribune, October 15, 1912
“I don’t care if I get shot, I don’t care if I get a word,” Roosevelt told the crowd.
“I ask you to be quiet,” he said. “I don’t want to go on for too long. I’ll do my best, but I have a bullet in my body. But it’s nothing serious. It’s not a serious injury.”
Regarding the assassination attempt, the former president once said, “It takes more than one bullet to kill a bull moose.”
Despite the trauma, Roosevelt continued speaking for 80 minutes. Two doctors tried to intervene and stop the speech, but a somewhat shaken President Roosevelt refused. According to the Associated Press, Roosevelt said, “I’m going to finish this speech. Leave me alone.”
After the speech, Roosevelt was taken to the city’s Johnston Emergency Hospital, where an X-ray revealed that the bullet was lodged between two ribs. Doctors decided not to operate, and Roosevelt was sent by train to Chicago.
The four-man surgical team who examined Roosevelt at Mercy Hospital also decided to leave the bullet in place. It traveled four inches up through the chest wall, but stopped before piercing Roosevelt’s lung. Roosevelt remained with the bullet until his death in 1919 at age 60.
Schrank was examined by a team of psychiatrists and diagnosed as insane. He was first sent to the Northern State Mental Hospital near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but was later transferred to a new psychiatric hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin, near the large state prison. He lived peacefully in the psychiatric hospital until his death on September 15, 1943.
In 1926, a group of Spanish American veterans erected a historical marker outside the Gilpatrick Hotel, which was demolished by one story in the early 1940s and then completely demolished in the 1970s to make way for the Hyatt Regency. In the Hyatt’s lobby, a display commemorates the day the would-be assassin became a notable figure in Milwaukee history.
