It has happened again. For the third time in American history, a major party’s presidential aspirant has been shot, and for the second time, lived. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in a Los Angeles Hotel in June 1968, having just delivered a victory speech on the night of a pivotal primary; he died 15 hours later. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, seeking a non-consecutive third term in 1912, was shot as he stood in an open car to wave to the crowd; he was on his way to give a speech, and gave it, with the assassin’s bullet lodged in his chest. Now the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump – also seeking a non-consecutive term – has faced assassination. Speaking at an outdoor campaign rally this June 13th, he was just beginning a sentence made for the moment: “If you want to see something that’s really sad,” he began, when a bullet whizzed so close to his head blood trickled from his ear. He had just turned his head just a fraction, to glance at a chart – and so inadvertently saved himself. Roosevelt, shot at point-blank range, wasn’t quite as lucky.
Assassinations erupt with unhappy regularity in the United States – but only Theodore Roosevelt gained the presidency because of an assassination, and lost re-gaining it because of an attempted one. This painting tells the story of how, in the yellow-white flash of a gunshot, would be shot, laid up, and possibly denied the presidency for the third time, in the very blink of an eye…
Falter’s Famous Painting of the 1912 Attempted Assassination
of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt, having survived asthma in youth; a fusillade, charging up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War; a carriage accident, as President, in which a Secret Service agent was killed – yet again narrowly escaped death, most spectacularly, when shot in the chest from a few feet away, by a would-be assassin, as he campaigned for a third term, at the head of the new “Bull Moose” party ticket.
The ”Colonel”, as Roosevelt took to styling himself post-presidentially, had just exited his hotel on the night of October 14, 191, en route to speak in Milwaukee to 10,000 people when, no sooner settled into an open car, he rose to acknowledge with a wave of his hat the wild acclaim of the crowd.
At that moment, John Schrank – a psychotic who had been stalking Roosevelt for weeks – finally got what he thought a bead on the ex-President, and at point-blank range, raised his pistol to fire. Whether it was as he pulled the trigger, or a second before, or a second after, Roosevelt’s secretary, an ex-football player named Elbert H. Martin, glimpsed the gun and leapt from the car onto the assassin. That, then, is the moment famously captured by noted illustrator John Philip Falter: Roosevelt waving, Schrank firing, Martin leaping – which, all told, was just the beginning of one of the most extraordinary nights in American history.
The rest of that evening was just as dramatic. The bullet, having been slowed and deflected by a metal eyeglass case and the bulky manuscript of Roosevelt’s speech, lodged near Roosevelt’s heart – but he did not know it. “Missed me that time,” he replied when asked if hit, “I’m not hurt a bit.” Then, having first called out that his assailant be treated without violence, he calmly proceeded on to the auditorium where he was to speak. It wasn’t until someone pointed out the hole in his overcoat, in fact, that he realized he was shot, and bleeding. Still, he refused to be persuaded from delivering his speech: “I know I am good now,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know how long I may be. This may be my last talk in this cause to our people, and while I am good I am going to drive to the hall and deliver my speech.” Which he did, announcing at the outset – as he held a handkerchief to his wound – that he had been shot. “I shall have to ask you to be as quiet as possible,” he began. “The bullet is in me now so I cannot make a very long speech… I can tell you with absolute truthfulness,” he continued, “that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not.” Roosevelt spoke, characteristically, for over an hour and only when he was done, allowed himself to be taken to the hospital, where he stayed for eight days.
Shrank’s part in the story was also, in its way, incredibly theatrical. The reason he shot Roosevelt, he said initially, was because he disapproved his seeking a third term – but really, he had known he was supposed to kill Roosevelt since the night McKinley died. He’d had a dream, he said, in 1901, in which he was told by McKinley that it was not assassin Leon Czolgosz who murdered him, but Roosevelt. “This is my murderer,” McKinley said, bolting up in his coffin to point at Roosevelt, “Avenge my death!” The dead president, Schrank explained, told him that his blood was on Roosevelt’s hands, and that Roosevelt had killed him just so that he might become President. McKinley’s ghost, in fact, had come back just a month before, to instruct Shrank again, albeit in the finer points of Presidential tradition. “Let no murderer occupy the presidential chair for a third term,” he ordered, “Avenge my death!” Shrank insisted that not only did he act against Roosevelt for McKinley’s sake, but for God and George Washington. Not surprisingly, Schrank was found to be insane, and committed for life to an asylum.
Roosevelt recovered, and some three weeks later, in a three-way race, lost to the Democrat Wilson, but beat the Republican Taft. Yet what is remembered most about that campaign, perhaps, is how Roosevelt, bleeding from an assassin’s bullet an inch from his heart, insisted that “it takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose” – and so stood before his audience, arguing for an hour the justness of his lost cause.
JOHN PHILIP FALTER. 1910 – 1982. American artist best known for his many cover paintings for The Saturday Evening Post.
Watercolor and Oil, on board, signed, being the Assassination Attempt of T. Roosevelt; approximately 15 by 10. The illustration itself is 10″ x 14″ net. There is approx. 2 inches of canvas in each of the four directions.
