It took Mckinley 8 days to die of a gunshot wound with the minimal medical care available at the time…So I don’t think he’d be in the first few down…
Teddy Roosevelt. Always the winner. ALWAYS
See also the contemporaneous humorous discussion of the topic at the politics-snark-and-despair blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money.
I’d put him and Jackson in the finals.
Then again Bush Senior might have a few CIA tricks.
The problem is Abe Lincoln has stupidly insane reach and has actually dueled with swords.
Still. I’d put it at Jackson vs Roosevelt, and Teddy taking it because of his Jujitsu training.
one standard-issue Gerber LHR Combat Knife
Is this something you win by collecting enough baby-food jar tops?
Lightweight. Teddy Roosevelt took a bullet to the chest and DIDN’T LET IT INTERRUPT HIS SPEECH.
(Personally I like to imagine that he followed up the speech by flexing his chest muscles so hard that the bullet popped back out and hit the would-be assassin in the forehead.)
Really? I thought I read his machismo was mostly bluff?
I’ll take Aaron Burr in the Veep undercard.
The last person to insinuate that had a grizzly bear hurled at them.
Please. Andrew Jackson, when someone tried assassinating him, started beating the guy so ferociously with his walking stick his security had to pull HIM off of his assassin.
i instantly thought Jackson and TR just like the author, but i’m not getting his favoritism for Lincoln, which he does not explain at all. i’ve never heard anything about Lincoln’s physical or martial prowess. Lincoln surely had reach over most or even all of the other combatants, but we remember him for his reasoned decision making, his mind, and his heart and soul. that’s not the guy who wins a knife fight against LBJ and Grant, let alone TR and Old Hickory. Am i missing something here? i even re-watched Ken Burns Civil War a few months back. not getting Lincoln.
now this is a game changer. do tell!
Yeah, but the guy who tried to assassinate Jackson didn’t succeed in putting a bullet in him.
I almost feel sorry for the guy who shot Roosevelt. He must have been like “But…but… I hit him! It was a clean shot right to the heart! Why isn’t he dying? WHY IS HE STILL TALKING?”
Bullet lodged in the notebook holding his speech notes.
Also Jackson has had a number of bullets lodged in him over the years, up to and including a duel were he LET the guy shoot him (He was wearing a thick woolen coat which both helped marginally slow the ball, and to obscure where everything was so it was non-fatal.) Managed to keep standing and aim well enough to kill the man.
The bullet was slowed by the speech notes, but it actually ended up in his chest lodged against his fourth rib on a path toward his heart. It remained there for the rest of his life.
BAH. Andrew Jackson would win, because he’d bring a gun. Jackson probably killed more people with his own hands than any other President, and he never let himself be constrained by other people’s rules if he could help it. Roosevelt wouldn’t have a chance, not even if he brought a gun too.
Upon leaving the presidency, Jackson supposedly claimed he had but two regrets, that he “had been unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun.” Calhoun was of course his Vice-President.
Well, off the battlefield anyway. Definitely the most murdery President.
Lincoln swung his sword high above Shields to cut through a nearby tree branch. This act demonstrated the immensity of Lincoln’s reach and strength and was enough to show Shields that he was at a fatal disadvantage. With the encouragement of bystanders, the two men called a truce.
okay, that’s admirable and all, but doesn’t show that he actually knew how to fight, exactly. although accepting the challenge does imply there was at least some fighting spirit. a better picture of him than i had, anyway.
