Shadow of infamous 1912 assassination attempt still looms over Milwaukee

As delegates from 56 states and territories descend on Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention July 15-18, they will gather just a few blocks from the site of the attempted assassination of former President Theodore Roosevelt on October 14, 1912.

The shadow of the July 13 attempted murder of former President Donald J. Trump in Pennsylvania will loom large over the 2024 GOP convention, so Milwaukee’s historical ties to another attempted assassination plot take on added significance nearly 112 years later.

One of the 2024 GOP convention hotels — the Hyatt Regency on West Kilbourn Avenue — is built right over the site where Roosevelt was shot just after 8 p.m. on that fateful October Monday.

Roosevelt, who assumed the presidency in 1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley and served until 1909, was on a campaign swing seeking a third term in office under the banner of the Progressive Party, nicknamed the Bull Moose Party.

Roosevelt founded the Bull Moose Party when he failed to garner the Republican nomination for president in 1912. He arrived in Milwaukee by train from Chicago after a campaign stop in Racine, Wisconsin, scheduled to give a stump speech at the downtown Milwaukee Auditorium.

Roosevelt had dinner at the Hotel Gilpatrick just blocks from the Milwaukee Auditorium. He emerged about 8 p.m., and after walking to his car, Roosevelt stood in the tonneau of the open car, planning to acknowledge the gathered crowd.

'Looks as though I have been hit, but I don’t think it is serious.'

What Roosevelt didn’t know is that John Flammang Schrank, a deranged unemployed bartender from New York, stood in the crowd with an aim to kill Roosevelt in a delusional idea of revenge for the assassination of President McKinley more than a decade earlier.

Schrank — who later told police he had a vision of McKinley’s ghost, who said he blamed Roosevelt for his murder and wanted Schrank to shoot him — had been following Roosevelt across eight states, looking for his opportunity.

As Roosevelt entered the open back seat and lifted his hat, Schrank stepped forth, armed with a .38-caliber Colt Police Positive Special revolver, according to the Milwaukee Police Historical Society. He fired a single shot into Roosevelt’s right chest.

Then-Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley. He served until 1909 and ran unsuccessfully in 1912 as the Bull Moose Party candidate.Library of Congress

“The colonel’s life in all human probability was saved by the manuscript of the speech intended to deliver at the Auditorium, a bulky package of letters and his heavy spectacle case,” the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote.

“The bullet passed through these various objects, they absorbing its dangerous force and velocity, deflecting its course and preventing a much more dangerous wound.”

Roosevelt had a folded copy of his 50-page speech in the breast pocket of his Army coat, along with a steel case for his pince-nez spectacles. Those objects slowed the bullet before it tore through his shirt and punctured the chest just below the right nipple. The slug lodged near two ribs.

Albert Martin, one of Roosevelt’s secretaries, “leaped over the car a second after the bullet sped on its way” and “landed squarely on the assassin’s shoulders and bore him to the ground,” the Associated Press reported. “The colonel was not dismayed. ‘Looks as though I have been hit,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think it is serious.’”

'I do not care a rap about being shot, not a rap.'

“From papers found on the prisoner at the station it appears he was a fanatic who believed it was his mission to prevent a third term in the presidency,” Wisconsin’s Dunn County News reported, “that Roosevelt was responsible for the murder of McKinley and that he was McKinley’s avenger.”

Roosevelt and his aides did not realize the former president had been hit until they were en route to the Milwaukee Auditorium.

“… While the automobile was on its way to the Auditorium one of his escorts saw a bullet hole in his army overcoat,” the Chicago Daily Tribune reported. “The colonel immediately placed his hand inside and a second later drew forth his fingers dripping with blood.”

Even though Roosevelt was bleeding profusely, he insisted on being driven to the Milwaukee Auditorium to give his speech.

“His outer garments were removed in the dressing room and an examination made by the doctors who insisted he go to a hospital, but the colonel declared his intention of speaking if it killed him,” an AP dispatch read.

When Roosevelt reached the speaking platform, a hush fell over the crowd.

Roosevelt “opened his coat and pulled out the perforated manuscript, pointing to the hole made by the bullet,” the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote. “For a moment all eyes were focused on the sheets of paper but a second later the glance of spectators strayed to the colonel’s white shirt, the right side of which was crimsoned with his blood.”

News headlines across America carried word of the assassination attempt on former President Theodore Roosevelt.Oct. 15, 1912 Chicago Daily Tribune

“I do not care a rap about being shot, not a rap,” Roosevelt told the crowd.

“I am going to ask you to be very quiet,” he said, “and please excuse me from making a long speech. I’ll do the best I can, but you see there’s a bullet in my body. But it’s nothing. I’m not hurt badly.”

At one point, referring to the assassination attempt, the former president said, “It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose.”

Despite the trauma, Roosevelt delivered an 80-minute oration. Even when two doctors sought to intervene and stop the speech, a somewhat unsteady Roosevelt refused. “I am going to finish this speech,” Roosevelt said, according to AP. “Let me alone.”

After the speech, Roosevelt was taken to the city-owned Johnston Emergency Hospital for X-rays, which showed the bullet lodged between two ribs. Doctors decided not to operate, and Roosevelt was sent by train to Chicago.

A team of four surgeons who examined Roosevelt at Mercy Hospital also decided to leave the bullet where it came to rest. It took a four-inch inward-upward track on the chest wall but stopped shy of puncturing Roosevelt’s lung. Roosevelt carried the bullet in his body until his death in 1919 at age 60.

Schrank was examined by a team of psychiatrists and adjudged to be insane. He was first sent to the Northern State Hospital for the Insane near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but later moved to a new mental hospital near the large state prison at Waupun, Wisconsin. He lived a peaceful existence at the asylum until his death on Sept. 15, 1943.

A Spanish-American war veterans group placed a historical marker outside the Hotel Gilpatrick in 1926. The hotel was razed to a single story in the early 1940s and torn down completely in the 1970s to make way for the Hyatt Regency. A lobby display at the Hyatt memorializes the day a would-be assassin became a prominent figure in Milwaukee history.