After a bitter confrontation at the Republican Convention, Taft won renomination. The 1912 presidential election campaign was characterized by a serious split in the Republican Party between the conservative wing under President William Howard Taft and the liberal/reform wing under ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. Schrank was found not guilty by reason of insanity by the jury and was sentenced to indefinite institutionalization. The shooter, John Schrank, initially pleaded guilty to the charge of attempted murder, but the trial judge, unconvinced of Schrank's sanity, declined his plea and the case was brought to trial. He later wrote a friend about the bullet inside him, 'I do not mind it any more than if it were in my waistcoat pocket.' He spent two weeks recuperating before returning to the campaign trail. When asked if the shooting would affect his election campaign, he said to the reporter 'I'm fit as a bull moose.' The bull moose became a symbol of both Roosevelt and the Progressive Party it often was referred to as simply the Bull Moose Party. Both President William Howard Taft and Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson suspended their own campaigning until Roosevelt recovered and resumed his. As doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to attempt to remove it, Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.

His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, 'Ladies and gentlemen, 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.' Īfterwards, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech. Īs an experienced hunter and anatomist, Roosevelt correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Roosevelt did not believe in police harming civilians.

Roosevelt assured the crowd he was all right, then ordered police to take charge of Schrank and to make sure no violence was done to him. Schrank was immediately disarmed (by Czech immigrant Frank Bukovsky) and captured he might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed. Schrank's bullet lodged in Roosevelt's chest after penetrating Roosevelt's steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech titled 'Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual', which he was carrying in his jacket. President Theodore Roosevelt while he was campaigning for the presidency in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On October 14, 1912, former saloonkeeper John Flammang Schrank (1876–1943) attempted to assassinate former U.S.

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