Teddy Roosevelt survived childhood asthma, a carriage crash, a tropical disease, and even an assassination attempt in 1912 before dying quietly in his sleep at the age of 60.
Theodore Roosevelt Lifting Hat
Topical Press Agency/Getty ImagesThe 26th president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt survived several brushes with death in his life.
In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest by an assassin. Not only did he survive, but he continued on to his speaking engagement as if nothing had happened and famously boasted that the assassin’s bullet lodged in his chest wasn’t enough “to kill a bull moose.”
That failed assassination stands as the most famous moment that Roosevelt cheated death, but it’s hardly the only time that he grappled with the Grim Reaper. Indeed, death had stalked Roosevelt since childhood.
From battling asthma as a boy to nearly losing his life in the Amazon, Theodore Roosevelt faced death more than once during his 60 eventful years on earth. As it turns out, it’s pretty tough to kill a “bull moose.”
Theodore Roosevelt’s Sickly Childhood
Theodore Roosevelt As A Boy
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty ImagesA portrait of Teddy Roosevelt when he was around 10 years old in 1868.
Though Theodore Roosevelt later developed a reputation for being tough — nay, unstoppable — he spent his childhood plagued by health problems. Born on Oct. 27, 1858, Roosevelt suffered from constant ailments like colds, coughs, and fevers. But the worst of all was his asthma.
“I was a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from chronic asthma, and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe,” Roosevelt recalled in his autobiography. His asthma attacks were so bad that his father often bundled him into the family’s carriage and took him for rides in hopes that the fresh air would help.
But Roosevelt’s ill health had an unexpected benefit. Bereft of physical strength, the young boy turned to intellectual pursuits. As HISTORY reports, he devoured books, developed a love for nature, and even used his collection of animal specimens to start the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.”
Theodore Roosevelt Young
Library of CongressTeddy Roosevelt as a young man, circa 1884.
Still, Roosevelt’s father challenged him to develop his brain and his brawn.
“Theodore, you have the mind, but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should,” he counseled his son during Roosevelt’s teenage years. “You must make your body.”
Roosevelt wholeheartedly followed his father’s advice. He began a strenuous exercise regimen, helped by the installation of a new gymnasium in his family’s home, and started to grow stronger. But though Roosevelt had started to strengthen his body, death still lingered nearby.
Shortly before he graduated from Harvard University in 1880, a doctor found that the future president had a dangerously weak heart. He advised Roosevelt to refrain from physical activity, including running up stairs. Roosevelt, however, dismissed the doctor’s dire warnings of early death.
“I am going to do all the things you tell me not to do,” Roosevelt replied. “If I’ve got to live the sort of life you have described, I don’t care how short it is.”
As history knows, Theodore Roosevelt stayed true to his word. Despite the danger of a weak heart hanging over him, the future president would charge forward into life — and beat death again and again.
Chasing Boat Thieves Down The Little Missouri River In North Dakota
Theodore Roosevelt In Hunting Gear
Public DomainTheodore Roosevelt dressed as a hunter. 1885.
Teddy Roosevelt showed his fearlessness in the face of danger just a few years after his doctor’s warning, but not without suffering from another devastating heart problem: heartbreak.
In 1884, Roosevelt lost both his mother and wife in quick succession. His mother, Martha, died of typhoid fever on Feb. 14. Just hours later, Roosevelt’s wife, Alice, died of kidney disease two days after giving birth to their daughter. “The light has gone out of my life,” the grieving Roosevelt wrote.
Wracked with despair, Roosevelt decided to go west. In the spring of 1886, as the National Park Service reports, Roosevelt established himself as the Billings County Deputy Sheriff. And on one cold day in March, the future president plunged into danger — almost literally — in pursuit of boat thieves.
Pursuing The Boat Thieves
Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library/Dickinson State UniversityA photo taken by Roosevelt during the pursuit of three boat thieves in the Dakota Territory.
Then, three boat thieves cut Roosevelt’s boat from its mooring at Elkhorn Ranch in the Dakota Territory and slipped away down the frigid Little Missouri River. Rather than let them go — as Roosevelt’s college doctor might have recommended — Roosevelt roused his ranch hands, who built a second boat for the pursuit.
For three days, he and his men pursued the thieves down the ice-packed river. The temperature plunged to zero degrees, and Roosevelt worried about the possibility of a shootout. But on the third day, they caught up with the thieves and were able to capture them without a struggle.
On the return journey — through temperatures so cold that Roosevelt could not bind his captives’ hands or feet, lest they get frostbite — Roosevelt led his men through “Indian country” and hoped that they didn’t run into any aggressive warriors. They didn’t, and Roosevelt was able to hand his captives to the sheriff. He even earned a $50 reward for capturing the three thieves.
“In any wild country where the power of law is little felt or heeded, and where everyone has to rely upon himself for protection, men soon get to feel that it is in the highest degree unwise to submit to any wrong,” he later wrote, “no matter what cost of risk or trouble.”
Teddy Roosevelt In The Spanish-American War
Theodore Roosevelt And Rough Riders
Smith Collection/Gado/Getty ImagesColonel Theodore Roosevelt and Officers of the Rough Riders. 1898.
In 1886, Teddy Roosevelt decided to return to the “thick of the battle of New York.” He planned on making it as a politician. Instead, he’d see actual battle in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
After spending more than a decade rising through the political ranks, Roosevelt decided to leave his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy when the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898. He went to Cuba to lead a volunteer cavalry regiment called the Rough Riders.
There, the future president faced death on multiple occasions. During the Battle of Las Guasimas on June 24, bullets whizzed past Roosevelt’s head, hitting trees so close to him that splinters flew in his face, according to the National Park Service. Seven Rough Riders died; 34 were wounded.
Theodore Roosevelt On Horseback
Bettmann/Getty ImagesTeddy Roosevelt on horseback with the Rough Riders. Undated.
A week later, Roosevelt looked death in the eye once again. On July 1, which Roosevelt would later call “the greatest day” of his life, the future president led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill. Riding his horse, Little Texas, and wielding a revolver recovered from the USS Maine, Roosevelt rode up and down the hill, barking out orders. The Americans won the battle, and Roosevelt emerged from the fray as a national hero.
“Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, in total disregard for his personal safety, and accompanied by only four or five men, led a desperate and gallant charge up San Juan Hill, encouraging his troops to continue the assault through withering enemy fire over open countryside,” Roosevelt’s Medal of Honor commendation, rewarded posthumously in 2001, read.
“Facing the enemy’s heavy fire, he displayed extraordinary bravery throughout the charge, and was the first to reach the enemy trenches, where he quickly killed one of the enemy with his pistol, allowing his men to continue the assault.”
Roosevelt’s newfound popularity propelled him into the governor’s mansion in New York and brought him into the upper echelons of politics as William McKinley’s vice president. And when McKinley was felled by an assassin’s bullet in 1901, 42-year-old Roosevelt took power.
How The President Almost Died In A Carriage Accident
Theodore Roosevelt Streetcar Accident
Harvard University LibraryThe overturned presidential carriage following the 1902 collision.
The presidency can be a dangerous business. And almost exactly one year after William McKinley was killed, Teddy Roosevelt nearly lost his life in a carriage accident in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
On Sept. 3, Roosevelt delivered a speech in a city park, then climbed into a carriage with several others, including Secret Service agent William Craig. But as they rode through town, the presidential carriage suddenly crossed the path of an electric trolley.
“Look out! Hold fast,” Craig shouted as he tried to shield the president, according to the New England Historical Society.
William Craig
New England Historical SocietyRoosevelt and Craig five days before the streetcar accident. Roosevelt is in the center of the frame; Craig is on the far right wearing a hat.
All four passengers were flung into the air. Craig, who tumbled beneath the carriage, was killed instantly, “his entire skull being crushed, and his body terribly mangled,” as The New York Times reported. Roosevelt landed on a pile of soft dirt and was “on his feet in a flash.”
“Who is in charge of this car?” the president demanded, “deeply overcome” by the sight of Craig’s body. When the driver identified himself, Roosevelt cried: “This is the most damnable outrage I ever knew!”
At the time, The New York Times reported that Roosevelt was not badly injured. “The left side of his lip was bleeding from contact with woodwork in the carriage, and the right side of his face was bruised,” the paper wrote. “His glasses were thrown off but not broken. His frock coat was ripped at the elbow, and his silk hat was ruffed by the toss in the sand.”
But the president hadn’t entirely escaped his brush with death unscathed. He’d fallen hard on his shin, and he soon developed a painful abscess “large as a baby’s fist, perhaps a little larger.” A few weeks after the carriage accident, Roosevelt had to undergo emergency surgery and use a wheelchair until his leg had healed.
The next time Theodore Roosevelt faced death, however, he would not be staring down a speeding electric trolley — but an angry African rhinoceros.
Teddy Roosevelt And The Rhinoceros
Theodore Roosevelt With A Rhino
Smithsonian Institution ArchivesTeddy Roosevelt with one of the rhinoceroses he shot during his African safari. 1909-1911.
After winning reelection in 1904, Theodore Roosevelt announced that he would respect the time-honored tradition of the American presidency and not run for a third term. As his presidency drew to a close, the famously active president directed his energy elsewhere — to a safari in Africa.
The stated purpose of the safari was to collect rare specimens for the National Museum. Roosevelt wanted to shoot and collect everything from lions and elephants to giraffes and buffalo.
During the safari, Roosevelt would face plenty of danger — just as he liked it. But his brush with death came in the form of a charging rhino.
Roosevelt Rhinos At Smithsonian
Smithsonian Institution ArchivesThe “Roosevelt rhinos” at the Natural History Museum. 1959.
As Roosevelt later wrote, he and a fellow member of his team were alerted to the presence of a rhino nearby. “In five minutes we had reached the opposite hillcrest, where the watcher stood, and he at once pointed out the rhino… The big beast stood like an uncouth statue, his hide black in the sunlight; he seemed what he was, a monster surviving over from the world’s past.”
The rhino noticed Roosevelt just as the former president took his shot. “At the same moment he wheeled, the blood spouting from his nostrils, and galloped full on,” Roosevelt remembered. As the rhino charged at them, Roosevelt and the other man continued to fire.
“Ploughing up the ground with horn and feet, the great bull rhino, still head toward us, dropped just thirteen paces from where we stood,” Roosevelt recalled. “This was a wicked charge, for the rhino meant mischief and came on with the utmost determination.”
Just three years later, Theodore Roosevelt would face death yet again. But this time, he’d be the one facing a man with a gun.
How Roosevelt’s Long Speech Saved Him From Assassination
Theodore Roosevelt Campaigning In 1912
Bettmann/Getty ImagesTeddy Roosevelt speaking to a crowd during his presidential campaign in 1912.
Though he had promised in 1904 not to run for a third term, Theodore Roosevelt later changed his mind. In 1912, he ran for president as a candidate of the Progressive Party, also called the “Bull Moose Party.”
But while campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Oct. 14, 1912, Roosevelt met death head-on — in the form of a 36-year-old mentally disturbed man named John Schrank. Schrank, tormented by dreams that Roosevelt had murdered William McKinley, shot at the former president as he greeted a mass of people waiting outside the Gilpatrick Hotel.
His bullet hit Roosevelt in the chest. But after Schrank was hauled away, Roosevelt refused to be taken to the hospital. Instead, he insisted on giving his speech. “You get me to that speech,” Roosevelt told his driver.
Speech That Saved Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt CollectionSeveral items in Theodore Roosevelt’s breast pocket, including his 50-page speech, helped save his life.
There, Roosevelt told the stunned crowd that he’d been shot, and he shocked them even further by displaying his bloodstained shirt. But he assured them that he was fine, noting: “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”
Lifting his 50-page speech, marked with bullet holes, the former president added: “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet — there is where the bullet went through — and it probably saved me from it going into my heart.”
As his anxious aides watched, Roosevelt gave his speech as planned. He spoke for 84 minutes and refused to go to the hospital until he’d said every word. Doctors later found that the bullet — slowed by Roosevelt’s coat, glasses, and speech — had lodged itself into one of his ribs.
But Theodore Roosevelt seemed unruffled by his brush with death. In a telegram to his wife, he called the wound “trivial” and assured her that he was in “excellent shape.”