It ’s October 14 , 1912 , and Theodore Roosevelt is standing before a gang of10,000 in Wisconsin ’s Milwaukee Auditorium . The 53 - year - older former president is once again crusade for the highest bureau in the land , and he was scheduled to deliver what was supposed to be a typical campaign address . But the language he ’s about to give is anythingbuttypical .
“ friend , I shall ask you to be as quiet as potential . I do n’t hump whether you full translate that I have just been shoot . ”
At first , the bunch does n’t quite think it . Someone yells “ Fake ! ” But there are gasps and screams as Roosevelt deplume apart his singlet , revealing a snowy shirt marred by a growing parentage stain .
Just instant before , Roosevelt had been stand in an unfastened elevator car outside his hotel , flap to the assembled crew — and a would - be assassin had buck him with a revolver from just 7 pes away .
Roosevelt had dropped momently , but it was n’t long before he was back on his feet . Aides want to induce him to the hospital , and most people would have run , but that is not Theodore Roosevelt ’s mode . Instead , he said , “ You get me to that speech . ”
And now , on level , he assures the shocked crowd , “ It takes more than that to defeat a bull moose … I give you my word , I do not handle a rap about being shot ; not a pat . ”
And then , although the slug isstill inside him , he move to give a nearly 90 - hour - long talking to .
If this sounds like an extraordinary occurrence , it was . Or , it would have been for anyone but Theodore Roosevelt , a man whose aliveness was full of extraordinary natural event . This was a guy wire who charge up Kettle Hill on horseback , bullets whizzing past him , with the Rough Riders ; who , when he usurp office , became the youngest president in account , and is still the youthful president we ’ve ever had ; who helped broker peace between Russia and Japan , and deliver the goods the Nobel Prize for his efforts ; who pave the way for the Panama Canal ; who move off the grid to navigate a antecedently uncharted river in the Amazon ; who was immortalized on Mount Rushmore ; and who is often ranked as one of the greatest presidents of all clip .
But Roosevelt was n’t always solid enough to cease a bullet . In fact , as a child he was afflicted by asthma so terrible that his parents feared he might not live to see his 4th birthday . How did Roosevelt go from puny , sickly kid to a soul capable of consecrate that incredible , out of the question 90 - minute manner of speaking ? We ’re about to find out .
From Mental Floss and iHeartRadio , this isHistory Vs . , a podcast about how your favorite diachronic figures face off against their greatest foes . For the first season of the show , we ’re centre on Theodore Roosevelt ’s incredible animation using a conventionality that he , as a boxer , would have appreciated .
In each episode , we ’ll examine how Roosevelt take on a particular challenge , from conflict within his family and conquering the time of day of the daytime to his tussles with other presidents and preserving the world for the next genesis . This episode is " TR vs. Weakness . "
But before we get started , I require to differentiate you a lilliputian turn about how I became concerned in Theodore Roosevelt . Yes , I ’m the editor - in - chief of Mental Floss , so account is kind of my affair . But I didn’tfullyappreciate all thing TR until I tweak Edmund Morris ’s splendid Good Book , Colonel Roosevelt , out of the stacks at The Strand Bookstore . I did n’t recognize at the time that it was the third Word of God in a trilogy , so then I had to go back and register the others . But anyway , I came out of it with a huge admiration for TR , and , if I ’m being honest , a little spot of an obsession .
OK , a big obsession . My desk at study has more TR hooey on it than it does picture of my cats , husband , and best friend combine . I even have a Theodore Roosevelt activity fig ! At home plate , I have an overrun shelf commit to books about Roosevelt . When I got wed , I tried to convert my married man to go on a TR term of enlistment of the Dakotas for our honeymoon , which he did not go for , and you lie with , fair enough . Also , as a wedding gift , the Mental Floss staff got me some first edition playscript of TR ’s roll up speeches , which iswaybetter than a KitchenAid mixer … no offense to KitchenAid . And last class I dressed up as Roosevelt for a Halloween costume competition … and won .
So suffice to say , once you get me started talking about Theodore Roosevelt ’s incredible accomplishments , I ca n’t stop talking about them . Hence this podcast . Which finally allowed me take that TR tour of the Dakotas … but more on that afterwards .
The wonderful mass at Sagamore Hill call TR enthusiasts like me TedHeads , and I ’m extend to borrow that nickname for this podcast . So , just a note to all of the TedHeads out there : This isnotan exhaustive , A to zee look at TR ’s life . If we endeavor to do that , well , there would be a million episodes in this podcast , because Roosevelt did a staggering amount of material in his 60 years . We ’re going to be dipping in and out of his life and we are go to miss some thing . But we ’re get going to be chitchat some authoritative Roosevelt sites and blab out to really smart Roosevelt experts , so hopefully , you ’ll still learn some things along the way .
OK , ready to get started ?
Bully .
Today , East 20th Street between Park Avenue South and Broadway on the island of Manhattan is a premix of stores , occupation , and eating place , and it ’s busy with taxi and trucks and cars .
But when Theodore Roosevelt was born in 1858 , it was a much more residential region that featured the cartridge clip - clop of horses hooves and the rale of carriage wheel . Behind the brownstones was a garden , and around the quoin , the Goelet folk built a mansion in the middle of three lots , which they populate with cow and peacocks and exotic bird .
Theodore Roosevelt , Junior came into the world on the evening of October 27 , in a bedchamber on the second floor of the brownstone at 28 E. 20th Street . He was the second shaver of Martha Bulloch Roosevelt , or Mittie , and Theodore Roosevelt Senior , or Thee ; their first child , Anna , or Bamie , had been born three years earlier . after would come brother Elliott and sister Corinne .
Today , the elder Roosevelt ’ elbow room iscoveredwith emollient - colored wallpaper adorned with flower and filled with original cerise - stained walnut article of furniture ; a portrayal of Mittie hangs over the hearth . But we do n’t know for certain if that ’s what the elbow room looked like when the Roosevelt tike were born there . The family possess the home until 1899 , and then sold it , and soon after , it was either all tear down or had the top two story rupture down — sources are a spot undecipherable on that point .
In 1919 , after TR ’s dying , The Women ’s Roosevelt Memorial Association repurchase that building , and the one next to it — which had belong to TR ’s uncle — andreconstructedthe home as Bamie and Corinne remembered it . It ’s now the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site .
briefly after he was born , MittiedescribedTR as a “ horrific ” infant who looked like a “ terrapin , ” but Teedie , as he was called as a boy , rapidly became the center of his family line ’s world .
As a child , he had atonof vigour , but from the age of 3 he was , inhis own countersign , “ a seedy , delicate boy ” who “ suffer much from asthma . ” He also had what the family called cholera morbus , a type of nervous diarrhea .
As a result of his malady , he was largely home schooled by his Aunt Annie . When out and about in the metropolis , his unseasoned brother , Elliot , had to defend him against bullies . TR spend a heap of time indoors , and passed the time by reading voraciously .
grant to historiographer Kathleen Dalton , source ofTheodore Roosevelt : A Strenuous Life , when he was sick of — and he often was — the adults “ put the penury of the other tiddler second because Theodore ’s life was at post . ”
That ’s Alyssa Parker - Geisman , the lead ranger at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site .
She says that the menage taste almost everything to deal TR ’s bronchial asthma . Roosevelt indite in his autobiography that one of his memories was “ of my founder walk up and down the room with me in his arm at dark when I was a very small someone , and of sitting up in bed gasping , with my sire and female parent trying to aid me . ” Sometimes , in an attempt to force air into his son ’s lungs , Thee would take young Teedie in the family buggy and race up and down Broadway .
But they also try many remedies that , although criterion at the time , would evoke eyebrows today .
TR ’s parent were n’t on the dot feeding him rat poison , though — supposedly , the vinegar and processing wouldmitigatesome of the plant ’ side outcome . Later , TR would think let to fume cigars and drink black coffee to keep his asthma at embayment .
The Roosevelts were an flush household , and that fact is fundamental : Theodore Roosevelt ’s story may have been very different if he had n’t been born into a spirit of privilege . It not only ensured he could get the maintenance he needed when he was ominous , but it also meant that his parents could show him the world . The Roosevelts spent summers outside of the city , and they took kinsperson trip to Europe , where Mittie and Teedie would chat health recourse .
This is probably a in effect place for a fault . We ’ll be right back .
Afterward , Thee issued his son a challenge : “ You have the mind but not the consistence , ” hetoldhis son , “ and without the supporter of the body the thinker can not go as far as it should . You mustmakeyour dead body . ” Through gritted tooth , TR reply that he would do just that .
It was not a hope that he took thinly — TR worshipped his father , whom he called “ the best Isle of Man I ever knew . ” Thee ’s children called him Great Heart , and he was a vast influence on Roosevelt , who would , after in life , secern a diary keeper , “ The opinion of him now and always has been a common sense of comfort . I could breathe , I could log Z’s when he had me in his implements of war . My father — he got me breath , he engender me lungs , strength — sprightliness . ”
accord to Dalton , when his father was away during the Civil War , TR ’s health would crater . It ’s important to remark that Thee was not forth fighting — he paid a substitute to fight for him , at least in part because Mittie , a Southerner , could n’t stand the intellection of her married man fighting her brothers . Instead , Thee was on a commission to get troops at the front tosign upfor what author Deborah Davis describes as a “ paysheet savings program ” that would allow soldier to “ put aside money for their families while they were off fight back the war . ”
It was just one more facial expression of Thee ’s lifelong commitment to philanthropic gift . He would take his son with him on trips to inspect missions like the Newsboys ’ Lodging House , giving TR , in Dalton ’s words , “ a loving object lesson of how one valet can apply his privilege to make bon ton better . ”
A proponent of what was known as Muscular Christianity — which has been defined as “ a Christian animation of brave and cheerful physical activity”—Theetoldhis son , “ nausea is always a shame , and often a sin . ”
And so Teedie began to progress his body . Corinne would laterwriteof often meet him work out on the piazza leave out the back garden , “ between horizontal bar , broaden his chest by regular , monotone movement . ”
But two years into his efforts , he teach that he was n’t progressing as rapidly as he would have liked .
In 1872 , when Teedie was almost 14 , he had a uncollectible asthma onslaught , and his father station him off — by himself for the first metre — to Maine ’s Moosehead Lake . It was a living - changing experience .
In his autobiography , Roosevelt wrote that , on the stage coach ride to the lake , he met two boys his own age , and rather than making ally , they feel him to be an easy victim — and quickly made his life miserable :
And so , with his father ’s boost , Teedie began to read how to package , with ex-wife - prime combatant John Long as his coach . Much to their surprise , Teedie wastough — he could take reach after hit andkeep combat .
Later that yr , the Roosevelts took off on another Grand Tour . There , Mittie and Thee deposited Teedie , Elliott , and Corinne with a home in Dresden , Germany . And though TR was much healthier than he had been , he still never quite conquered his illnesses .
During one attack of the mumps , he wrote to his mother that he resemble “ an antiquated Marmota monax with his cheeks filled with nuts ” and that “ your unhappy boy had his third attack of asthma , accompanied by a vehement head ache . ” To his Padre , he tell that an asthma attack render him unable to verbalize “ without blowing up like an abridged version of a hippo . ”
accord to Edmund Morris , Roosevelt ’s tutors “ openly admired his ability to reduce on his books and his specimens to the riddance of forcible hurt . ” ( One of those tutors was the first to predict that he ’d be president , by the manner . )
The Roosevelts returned to the states in1873 , and the next summertime , they headed out to a place that would issue forth to confine a huge significance for Roosevelt : Oyster Bay , New York , where his grandfather and other Roosevelt families vacationed .
That ’s Tyler Kuliberda , education technician at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site on Long Island .
There might have been another benefit as well : The air may have been cleaner than the air in the city , which would have been better for TR ’s asthma .
Roosevelt screw Oyster Bay so much that he would eventually bribe land to establish a house on — the house that would make out to be named Sagamore Hill . There ’s a news report behind that name , by the manner .
But we ’re produce in advance of ourselves .
Before any of that could materialise , Roosevelt had to go to college . He entered Harvard in 1876 , where he chose to analyse thenatural sciences .
When he was n’t in class , or study , or in his clubs , TR kept up with his boxing and row , and he bring up hand-to-hand struggle , too . Every spare bit was filled with some form of activity .
That was in two ways true when Roosevelt was experiencing some variety of trauma . In his sophomore twelvemonth , Thee passed aside , and when Roosevelt went back to school , he threw himself into his workplace , a frenzy of activity , as if to dull his pain .
harmonise to historiographer Douglas Brinkley , TR was n’t scared of overhear pneumonia and seemed to savor spending 60 minutes in the cold : Instead of bring a tramcar , TR would walk three or four naut mi , and he ’d still be chalk skating in frigid temperatures long after everyone else went home . A friend from Harvard , Richard Welling , believed that TR was cover for his weakness : " Roosevelt … had neither health nor muscle , ” he would afterwards write . “ But he had a superabundance of a third timbre , energy , and he seemed to realize that this anxious elan vital had been given in decree to facilitate him get the other two things . "
In between years at Harvard , Roosevelt would spend as much meter as possible outdoors , often in Oyster Bay and in Maine . There he lived with backwoodsman Bill Sewall , who would become a womb-to-tomb acquaintance . But his initial popular opinion of Roosevelt was n’t glowing : He called him a “ flimsy , pale youngster with regretful eyes and a weak pump ” and say he was “ mighty pindlin ’ . ”
But Roosevelt speedily changed Bill ’s idea . One Clarence Day that summer , they walk 25 miles , and Bill would laterrecallthat “ I do not think that I ever think of him being ‘ out of variety . ’ He did not feel well sometimes , but he would never admit it . ”
On later trip to Maine , Roosevelt would pursue caribou in the C without tent or blanket for 36 minute . With Sewall and his nephew , Wilmot Dow , he ’d summit the 5268 - foot - marvelous Mount Katahdin , the tallest peak in the province , making the head trip partially in moccasin after he lost one brake shoe in a current — after which TRwrotein his diary , “ I can last fatigue duty and hardship moderately most as well as these lumbermen . ”
That was n’t the end of the excursions : He , Sewall , and Dow also submit a six - solar day stumble up a river in a dugout canoe through a bit of rapids , and then march 100 miles in pour rain for three day .
Back at Harvard for his senior year , Roosevelt became engaged to his first wife , Alice Hathaway Lee , and finally determine on a life history in political relation .
That class he also had an date with a medico at the university , and the newsworthiness was not undecomposed : The doctorinformed himthat his heart was hazardously strained . The only way to live a long life , the Dr. said , was to live a quiet , sedentary living .
Roosevelt ’s response was definitive . “ Doctor , I ’m going to do all the things you tell me not to do . If I ’ve get to go the sort of life you ’ve described , I do n’t manage how short it is . ”
For decennium , he kept quiet about the doctor ’s advice , and continued to be as if he ’d never heard it . The only understanding we know about it is that the doctor wrote about the encounter , which is confirm by Harvard ’s track record .
Later that year , he married Alice on his natal day . And on their honeymoon , he climbed Pilatus , the Rigi - Grindelwald , and the Jungfrau in the span of 10 twenty-four hour period . After that , TR — an amateur — summited the Matterhorn , a mint so deadly that many skilled mountain climber have died in the attempt . Why ’d he do it ? He tell Sewell that it was to prove to some snobby English climbers he ’d met in the lobby of his hotel that “ a Yankee could climb just as well as they could . ”
Roosevelt never fully conquered his asthma — in fact , his sis Corinne once say that he “ suffered from it all his living , though in later class only at longsighted separated intervals . ” But his alive lifestyle , what he would come to call the strenuous life , build his stamina and helped him manage his illness .
And he never quit being participating : When he was governor of New York , he had a hand-to-hand struggle mat installed in the regulator ’s mansion . ( Rooseveltwrotein his autobiography that the comptroller put up a trouble about the leverage : “ [ He ] refuse to audit a account I put in for a grappling - mat , explaining that I could have a billiard - mesa , billiards being recognized as a proper Gubernatorial amusement , but that a wrestling - mat symbolize something strange and unheard of and could not be permit . ” ) When he got word that President William McKinley was dying , Roosevelt , then frailty chair , had just summited Mount Marcy , the high eyeshade in New York state .
In the White House , he continued to package , at least until a intemperate hit took the vision in his remaining eye … after that , he pick up jiu jitsu . And then he had a lawn tennis court set up , though his performing dash was … unconventional .
concord to Michael Cullinane , generator ofTheodore Roosevelt ’s Ghost : The History and Memory of an American Icon , TR was n’t in reality all that good at lawn tennis … or sports in oecumenical .
He ’d also operate in other strong-arm pursuits — which his girl Alice call endurance trial — at Sagamore Hill .
Let ’s take a quick interruption , and we ’ll be right back .
For Roosevelt , work up a sudor was n’t just a way to stay sizeable — it was also a central part of his life philosophy , “ of bodily vigor as a method of come that zip of soul without which vigor of the body count for nothing , ” as he described it in his autobiography .
He credited his hard body of work for his achiever , write that , “ I never win anything without hard toil and the exercise of my best judgment and careful preparation and work long in approach . Having been a rather sickly and awkward male child , I was as a young man at first both queasy and distrustful of my own prowess , I had to train myself painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my consistency but as regards my soul and spirit . ”
But again , the fact that he was born into wealthiness and prerogative also had a lot to do with his success .
Roosevelt did n’t just preach the arduous life for himself , but for others . At the end of his second condition , he grade that military officers be able to walk 50 miles or bait around 100 international mile on hogback in three days , laterdeclaring it“a test which many a goodish middle - cured woman would be able to meet . ” When the policeman and the press balked at the essential , he demonstrated how comfortable it was by doing it himself .
And in his autobiography , TR advised that “ A man whose business organization is sedentary should get some kind of practice if he wishes to keep himself in as unspoilt strong-arm clipping as his brethren who do manual labor . When I work on a spread , I needed no form of exercise except my work , but when I worked in an office the case was different . ”
He also expected his children to dwell the straining life-time . Especiallyhis fry . “ I would rather one of them should die than have them develop up doormat , ” heonce said .
He was peculiarly tough on his Old son , Ted , who , like his father , had asthma , and afterward would endure from head ache and depression . Eventually he had what TR called “ variety of a nervous crack-up . ”
TR was contrite , telling the medico “ I ’ll never tug Ted again . ” He said he had been so hard on the male child because Ted could have been “ all the things I would like to have been and was n’t , and it has been a keen enticement to fight him . ”
But Dalton writes that he never could quite permit up as he promise . subsequently , Edithwould writeto Ted , “ As I look back you do worst , because Father tried to ‘ toughen ’ you , but happily was too interfering to maintain the same force per unit area on the others ! ”
harmonise to Dalton , the wuss TR had been as a child made him uncomfortable and ashamed : Because “ he detest the shut-in he had been , ” Daltonwrites , he look back on his childhood “ with a gumption of detachment . ” Roosevelthatedweakness .
It ’s not concentrated to draw a line from this back to his sire , whom Roosevelt adore and who put so much accent on being substantial and manly ; Roosevelt would always feel subscript to Great Heart . And he never wanted his children to be the form of weakling he had been .
Both Roosevelt and his founding father had worry about American gild becoming weaker due to “ over - civilisation . ” The idea was that world were so used to modern comforts that they lose touch with some of the matter that made them manful . In an 1899 words , delivered at the Hamilton Club when he was governor of New York , Roosevelt laid out his plan for making his country , and its people , as hard as it could be .
He used the address , which he would afterwards call “ The Strenuous Life , ” to argue for U.S. militarism and imperial expansion — which we ’ll embrace in another instalment — and to argue against a life of “ ignoble informality . ”
“ I wish to prophesy , not the ism of untitled ease , but the ism of the strenuous biography , the sprightliness of labour and feat , of labor and strife , ” Roosevelt said .
He urged the flush Father at the event to encourage their boy to pay time to non - remunerative oeuvre , as his father had done with him , and noted that , “ In this life we get nothing save by attempt . Freedom from try in the present merely think of that there has been stash away up effort in the past tense . ”
adult male should use that freedom to explore different sort of work , whether it be in politics or geographic expedition . But if a human used that freedom just for delectation , “ he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the globe ’s surface … A bare sprightliness of ease is not in the end a very acceptable life story , and , above all , it is a life which in the end unfits those who follow it for serious oeuvre in the globe . … As it is with the individual , so it is with the nation . ”
He polish off by saying that living that life of ease , and seek peace when war was called for , would doom America to be leave behind :
Accordingto one of Roosevelt ’s friends , he had a “ policy of forcing the flavor to ignore the weakness of the material body , ” and I think there ’s no better example of that than when he was shot in 1912 .
Schrank would later say that he was against a third - term United States President , but that was n’t his only reason for pulling the trigger as TR stood outside the Gilpatrick Hotel .
Later , Schrank would be examined and deem harebrained ; hespentthe rest of his life story in a mental hospital and give way there in 1943 .
After Schrank was hauled away , Roosevelt go on to give his speech .
Accordingto Morris , the whole right side of Roosevelt ’s eubstance had turned dark , but the wound was bleeding slowly . So TR slapped a handkerchief over the bullet kettle of fish and went out on stage . He did n’t actualise until after he pulled out his delivery , unfold it , and began to read that the bullet had go through it , at which point he joke , “ You see , I was lead to make quite a long address . ”
And make a long speech he did .
But it was n’t as though Roosevelt was insensible . He verbalize in a voice Morris writes was “ no longer husky but weak … a lancinating pain in his ribs forced him to suspire in myopic gasps . Two or three times , he appeared to totter . ” Party Aidoneus stood below the footlights in caseful he fell .
But Roosevelt did n’t fall . Still , by the time he was finished mouth , he had lost a lot of blood , and was taken to Milwaukee ’s Emergency Hospital .
MD there did an X - ray and come up that the bullet had hit his fourth rib on the right side . It had been headed straight for the heart , but had been slowed by Roosevelt ’s speech and his eyeglasses sheath before it hit , and crack , his costa .
Today , you could see the speech , eyeglasses case , and shirt TR get into on the day he was shot on display at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site .
Even more incredibly , Roosevelt collapse his next spoken language at Madison Square Garden a mere 16 day later . in the end , weakness was no match for TR .
CREDITS
History Vs . is host by Erin McCarthy .
This episode was written by Erin McCarthy , with extra research by Michael Salgarolo and fact checking by Austin Thompson .
Field recording by Jon Mayer .
Joe Weigand play Theodore Roosevelt in this installment .
The Executive Producers are Erin McCarthy , Julie Douglas , and Tyler Klang .
The Supervising Producer is Dylan Fagan .
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Lowell Brillante .
particular thanks to Alyssa Parker - Geisman , Tyler Kuliberda , and Michael Cullinane .
To learn more about this episode hold back out our website atmentalfloss.com/historyvs
History Vs . Is a production of iHeart Radio and Mental Floss .
