On October 14, 1912, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, crowd eagerly waited to hear Theodore Roosevelt speak. Roosevelt had served as president of the United States several years before, and he was campaigning once again for his old job.
His speech was written on fifty pages of paper that he had folded and stuck in his upper jacket pocket. Outside his hotel, Roosevelt never saw the saloonkeeper who approached him with a gun drawn. Someone in the crowd did see the gun and pushed the would-be assassin’s arm away, just as the trigger was pulled. The shooter fired once and Roosevelt fell to the ground, but quickly rose. He did not know he had been hit until someone noticed a hole in his overcoat. When he reached inside his coat, he realized he had been wounded. The bulky, folded speech in his pocket, along with the steel case for his glasses, saved his life.
Although he was bleeding, Roosevelt insisted that he give the speech. The crowd could not believe that he would continue to speak rather than go to the hospital after being shot. But Roosevelt told them, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”
“Bull Moose” was just one of the nicknames Theodore Roosevelt earned during his long career in politics. Some of the others were Teedie, TR, Teddy (a nickname he hated), and the Trust Buster. But Bull Moose was a good choice for a man who was physically strong and who was always determined to do things his way.
“I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!” he famously said. The Bull Moose was certainly a man of great character.
