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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

1. A Deranged Assassin

Tough - The glass case and speech that saved Teddy Roosevelt's life — The glass case and speech that saved Teddy Roosevelt’s life. Pinterest

Teddy Roosevelt reached inside his shirt and felt around. He encountered a dime-sized hole, and told an aide “He pinked me “. The former president then coughed into his hand a few times, saw no blood, and determined that his lung had not been pierced. He then directed that he be driven to the Milwaukee Auditorium, to address the waiting audience. The hefty speech, squeezed into his jacket pocket, had combined with a glass case and a dense overcoat to slow the bullet. It was later recovered lodged against his fourth rib, on a trajectory to his heart. As to the shooter, Schrank acted because of a dream, in which the assassinated president William McKinley had urged him to avenge him by killing his vice president and successor, TR. Schrank was found legally insane, and institutionalized until his death in 1943.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Davis, Burke – Old Hickory: A Life of Andrew Jackson (1977)

History Collection – 25 Reasons Why George Washington Was the Most Fascinating President in America’s History

Live Journal – Andrew Jackson, Man of Honor

Miller, Nathan – Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (1992)

National Park Service – Roosevelt’s Bar Fight

Smithsonian Magazine, November 2012 – The Speech That Saved Teddy Roosevelt’s Life

Thayer, William Roscoe – Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography (1919)

Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Summer, 1970) – The Attempted Assassination of Teddy Roosevelt

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.