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Tough Teddy and Old Hickory: America’s Most Badass Presidents

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2024 14 min

Tough - An 1828 woodcut of the Andrew Jackson vs Charles Dickinson duel — An 1828 woodcut of the Andrew Jackson vs Charles Dickinson duel. Wikimedia

2. TR Saved His Would-Be Assassin

Contemporary coverage of the attempt to assassinate Teddy Roosevelt. Library of Congress

An aide grappled with the would-be assassin and prevented him from firing another shot, before the crowd joined in to subdue the miscreant. The culprit, a mentally troubled Bavarian immigrant named John Flammang Schrank, would have been lynched on the spot if Teddy Roosevelt had not intervened: “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here. I want to see him. Roosevelt then asked Schrank “What did you do it for?” When Schrank stayed mum, TR instructed the crowd to turn him over to the police.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.