The Everything Theodore Roosevelt Book (38 page)

TR recorded four speeches for the Edison Company in 1912 and five for the Victor Talking Machine Company. Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft also recorded some of their speeches. The speeches TR recorded were the only sound recordings he ever made for commercial release.

Right from the Bull Moose Playbook

TR became the champion of a variety of constituents during the campaign. In one speech, “The Farmer and the Business Man,” he solicited support for farmers and suggested that one of his old commissions be resurrected:

There is no body of our people whose interests are more inextricably interwoven with the interests of all the people than is the case with the farmers. The Country Life Commission should be revived with greatly increased powers; its abandonment was a severe blow to the interests of our people
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He hammered at old themes. In his “Social and Industrial Justice” speech, he railed against the courts and their interference with the advancement of social reform:

We do not question the general honesty of the courts. But in applying to present-day social conditions the general prohibitions that were intended originally as safeguards to the citizen against the arbitrary power of government in the hands of caste and privilege, these prohibitions have been turned by the courts from safeguards against political and social privilege into barriers against political and social justice and advancement
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The campaign speeches that TR gave leading up to the election of 1912 were taken out of the Bull Moose Party’s original playbook. They contained excerpts from his keynote address at the party’s national convention on August 6, 1912, titled “A Confession of Faith.” They were old ideas, but TR was hoping they would gain a new audience.

TR made it clear to the nation that the Republican Party of old was a mere shadow of what it had been when he was at its head. He went so far as to call some of them dishonest. He said:

Six weeks ago, here in Chicago, I spoke to the honest representatives of a convention which was not dominated by honest men; a convention wherein sat, alas! a majority of men who, with sneering indifference to every principle of right, so acted as to bring to a shameful end a party which had been founded over half a century ago by men in whose souls burned the fire of lofty endeavor
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TR was in fine fettle—even after he was shot.

Attempted Assassination

TR had always believed in going right after a challenger. Even though LaFollette had dropped out of the presidential race, TR went right into his backyard to try to win Wisconsin. He scheduled a speech in Milwaukee three weeks before the election.

On the night of his Milwaukee speech, a deranged man named John Schrank shot TR. Roosevelt’s response was terse—and typical. He said that he did not really care if he was shot and continued with his speech.

TR was dining at the Hotel Gilpatrick in Milwaukee on the eve of October 14. He left the hotel at about 8
P.M
. to head via automobile for the Milwaukee Auditorium, the site of his scheduled oration. TR stood on the floorboard of the vehicle, waving to the crowd, as he headed for the auditorium.

Events moved fast and in a confused fashion. Schrank, who was merely carrying out his duty as he told the police later, raised his pistol and aimed it at TR. A bystander, Adam Bittner, saw what was happening. He hit Schrank’s arm as the gun went off. The deflected bullet tore into TR. The crowd tore into Schrank.

The Bavarian-born John Schrank was an itinerant ex-tavern keeper from New York City. He allegedly shot TR to deliver a message to U.S. presidents that they should not serve three terms. Schrank was never tried for shooting TR. Doctors pronounced him insane. Schrank was held for thirty years in mental hospitals in Wisconsin until he died in 1943.

Members of the crowd started pummeling Schrank rather brutally, and there were cries to hang him on the spot. Some people even headed for nearby stores to find ropes. TR came to Schrank’s rescue. “Don’t hurt the poor creature,” he implored the crowd. Some of them were stunned that TR was able to talk, let alone stand and speak. But, they acceded to his wishes and let the man alone.

TR did not have much of a comment after the incident. He did say later, “I did not care a rap for being shot.” He added that, “It is a trade risk, which every prominent public man ought to accept as a matter of course.”

The Show Must Go On

TR completed his journey to the auditorium and delivered his scheduled speech to the 10,000 people assembled there. They knew nothing about the assassination attempt.

He mentioned it to them with a terse statement:

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; 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
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Then he spoke for ninety minutes!

The bullet Schrank fired almost point-blank hit TR’s steel eyeglass case, traveled through the fifty-page manuscript of his speech, and entered his chest near the right nipple. Doctors opted not to remove it, since surgery was risky and could cause more damage than the actual shot. It was still in his chest when he died a little over six years later.

TR’s Milwaukee speech effectively ended his campaign. He was admitted to a hospital for treatment, where he stayed for a week. Out of respect, Taft and Wilson stopped campaigning, too.

They resumed when TR was released from the hospital. TR did not. Except for one appearance at Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 30, all he could do was sit back and await the election results, which were disappointing.

Another First in Defeat

TR had established a lot of firsts in his career. He set another one in the 1912 presidential election, but it was not a particularly satisfying first for him. Woodrow Wilson won the election, but TR finished second. As a result, he became the first—and only—third-party candidate in U.S. political history to place second in a presidential election.

It was a dubious distinction, but TR was also the first major third-party candidate to become the victim of an assassination attempt. Schrank told police after he shot TR, “Any man looking for a third term ought to be shot.” At first, that was all he had to say, and he repeated his statement several times before he gave a full confession.

Wilson won the 1912 presidential election in a landslide. He earned 6,296,284 votes (41.84 percent), compared to TR’s 4,122,721 (27.4 percent) and Taft’s 3,486,242 (23.2 percent). In the all-important Electoral College voting, Wilson won 435 votes; TR had eighty-eight. The incumbent, Taft, received the remaining eight. The TR-Taft split gave Wilson the victory. For TR, second place just was not good enough.

Luck may have played a part in TR’s second place finish. Taft’s vice-presidential running mate, James Sherman, had died a week before the election. That may or may not have had a bearing on the outcome. Johnson did give TR a little help, but not enough.

Results

The Roosevelt-Johnson ticket won only six states: Washington, California, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. They won California by the narrowest of margins—174 votes. TR had 283,610 to Wilson’s 283,436. That was due to Johnson’s popularity in the state and possibly the ticket’s support for women’s suffrage, not necessarily because Californians liked TR.

And Wisconsin? Wilson collected 164,230 votes, Taft got 130,596, and TR gathered a paltry 62,448. The people of the state where he had literally been shot figuratively shot him down.

Numbers of votes aside, TR had done quite well for a third-party candidate.

The End of the Progressive Party

Once the 1912 presidential election ended, TR’s version of the Progressive Party disappeared. Progressivism itself did not. TR returned to the Republican Party, but his foray into “Bull Moose” territory was not in vain. Once again, he initiated responses in the political life of the United States with his call for a “New Nationalism.”

Significant outcomes of the Bull Moose Party included a new push for federal regulation in a variety of areas. Another was the birth of the primary system. TR and his progressive cronies had demonstrated that presidential hopefuls who did not adhere to the platforms of the two major parties had access to a new system of choosing candidates—or at least the opportunity to have their voices heard.

One important and long-lasting result of TR’s candidacy was its effect on women. Their participation in the Progressive Party movement gave them a new voice in American politics, and thrust some females into national prominence. Ostensibly, TR’s focus on women’s suffrage helped him carry California and Washington. At least one woman, Helen Scott, of Washington, cast a vote for him in the Electoral College that year.