The Last Time a Former President Was Shot at While Seeking a Comeback

Donald J. Trump is not the first former president to survive an assassination attempt while trying to reclaim his old office. More than a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt was shot just before he was scheduled to go onstage at a campaign event — and went ahead to give his speech anyway with a bullet in his chest.

Roosevelt’s gritty response to the attack in 1912 proved to be the stuff of legends and helped cement his reputation for toughness. To that point in American history, three other presidents had been killed by assassins, including William McKinley, whose death elevated Roosevelt, then the vice president, to the presidency. But as of then, no current or former president had been shot without dying.

Roosevelt, like Mr. Trump, was staging a comeback attempt, running again four years after moving out of the White House. Unlike Mr. Trump, Roosevelt had left office voluntarily, declining to run in 1908 after serving nearly two terms. Instead, he had helped elect his protégé, William Howard Taft. But within four years, the two had a falling out and Roosevelt decided to challenge Taft for the presidency.

Although Taft beat him for the Republican nomination at the G.O.P. convention, Roosevelt broke off from his old party to form the Progressive Party, also known as the Bull Moose Party, so that he could compete in the fall contest against Taft and Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic governor of New Jersey.

On Oct. 14, 1912, Roosevelt was in Milwaukee, coincidentally the same city where Mr. Trump is scheduled to be nominated this week. As Roosevelt left the Gilpatrick Hotel to head to a nighttime speaking event, a man named John Schrank approached and opened fire with a Colt revolver. Several men tackled Schrank, but Roosevelt stopped the crowd from killing him on the spot.