Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [148]
By 1 P.M., Room 308 of Mercy Hospital was so mobbed with personal and political visitors, oblivious of the pain it cost Roosevelt to talk, that Murphy issued another bulletin emphasizing that the wound was “serious,” and that his patient needed complete quiet to recover. The surgeon was closemouthed about his decision not to probe for the bullet, but three consulting doctors concurred in a later statement that sent encouraging signals around the country:
The records show that Colonel Roosevelt’s pulse is 86; his temperature 99.2 and respiration 18; that he has less pain in breathing than he did in the forenoon; that he has practically no cough; that there has been no bloody expectoration.
We find him in magnificent physical condition due to his regular physical exercise and his habitual abstinence from tobacco and liquor. As a precautionary measure he has been given tonight a prophylactic dose of antitetanic serum to guard against the development or occurrence of lockjaw. Leukocyte count 8800, lymphocytes 11.5.
Perhaps the best news for the patient was that his wife, undeterred by his repeated assurances that he had suffered worse accidents while riding, was on her way to see him and stand guard over his bed.
DR. MURPHY’S POINTED reference to Roosevelt’s abstemiousness spoke to one of the thousands of telegrams pouring into the LaSalle Hotel headquarters of the Progressive Party. It was from the supporter in Detroit whom O. K. Davis had authorized to start a libel suit against George Newett, of the Ishpeming Iron Ore. He assumed that the Colonel still wished to proceed with the case. “I have retained Judge James H. Pound, one of the best men in Michigan, for such purposes, to represent him.”
Among the other telegrams was one from William Howard Taft: “I am greatly shocked to hear of the outrageous and deplorable assault made upon you.” Woodrow Wilson also wired a message of sympathy. He announced that he would suspend his campaign, bar a few unavoidable engagements, until Roosevelt was well again. “My thought is constantly of that gallant gentleman lying in the hospital at Chicago.” Similar messages came in from Robert La Follette and William Jennings Bryan. A number of European crowned heads—some of whom had their own reasons to fear assassination attempts—sent get-well cablegrams. Vincent Curtis Baldwin of Chicago wrote enclosing a campaign donation of ten dollars that he said he had made selling flowers. “For I want you to be our President. If I was a man I’d help you, and work hard for you, and tell people how good you are, but I am only 10 years old.”
AMONG THE MILLIONS of people wondering what effect the attack on Roosevelt would have on the election was Milwaukee’s district attorney, charged with the prosecution of John F. Schrank. He informed the judge presiding at the arraignment that his prisoner would plead guilty, and asked for a postponement of trial proceedings until mid-November, so that politics would not interfere with justice. His request was approved. Senator Dixon and his committee gave public thanks for the Colonel’s deliverance, but had to recognize, if only in some furtive recess of the heart, that Schrank had done the Progressive Party an enormous favor. All the hate that various political factions held for Roosevelt was subsumed in a surge of protective admiration. Mercy Hospital’s bulletins indicated a slow but steady recovery, with no sepsis and no aftereffect of shock. The bullet in his ribs was apparently sterile, and he was resigned to carrying it for the rest of his days.
After a week in the hospital he was well enough to return to Sagamore Hill for his fifty-fourth birthday on 27 October. His