Roosevelt Usually Carried A Revolver.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 15, 1912:
Considered McKinley's Assassination Bore a Peculiar Application to Himself.
READY TO RETURN ANY SHOT
"I'll Bet Czolgosz Wouldn't Have Shot Me Twice," He Told Newspaper Correspondents at the Time.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, Oct. 14,— Col. Roosevelt, while he was President, was always on the alert for any possible assault by a would-be assassin. The lesson of President McKinley's death was regarded by Col. Roosevelt as having a peculiar and particular application to himself, and he protected himself accordingly.
    Shortly after he succeeded Mr. McKinley, Col. Roosevelt sent for some Washington newspaper correspondents to discuss with them the matter of covering important news affecting the White House. In the course of their conversation reference was made to Mr. McKinley's assassination, and Col. Roosevelt made this remark concerning the assassin Czolgosz: "I'll bet he would not have shot me twice." The inference from this remark, taken in connection with other remarks made by Col. Roosevelt, was that he would have returned an assailant's fire. It was plain from what he said then that he went armed constantly, and presumably had made it a practice previously to carry a revolver.
    That Col. Roosevelt, during his seven and a half years as President, never went on the streets without a revolver in his pocket was shown by incidents known to several of those who saw him frequently. On the blustery Winter day that Elihu Root quit the Cabinet of President Roosevelt to return to the practice of law in New York Col. Roosevelt walked over from the White House to the Root residence to say good-bye to his Secretary of State, upon whom he had depended constantly for advice and assistance and in whose ability and commonsense he had such faith. Mr. Root's house was in Jackson Place, the street forming the western boundary of Lafayette Square, the park opposite the White House. The residence which Mr. Root occupied was associated with Washington's most noted tragedy, with the exception of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, for it was here that Gen. Daniel Sickles was living with his wife when Sickles killed Philip Barton Key. Gen. Sickles was said to have seen Mrs. Sickles signal to Key from a window of their home, Key being then in the Washington Clubhouse across Lafayette Square, a building that also has its tragic associations. It was there that William H. Seward was confined in a sick bed, when Payne, the associate of John Wilkes Booth, tried to stab him to death on the night that Lincoln was shot down by Booth, and it was in this house that James G. Blaine died twenty-eight years later.
    In spite of the cold wind Col. Roosevelt wore no overcoat. As he sprinted across from the White. House to the Root residence, a hundred yards away, the .tails of his frock coat fluttered in the breeze, exposing to the view of the cavalrymen assembled to escort Mr. Root to the railway station the butt of a good-sized revolver. But if the then President knew that the weapon was showing he gave no sign that he was bothered about it. In those days Col. Roosevelt was getting portly, and the strain on the waist line of his frock coats had a tendency to make his coat tails spread apart.
    An occasion that brought to the notice of the public that President Roosevelt carried a revolver, was his visit to St. Paul, Minn., on a trip to the Pacific Coast. Through an error, President Roosevelt and Samuel R. Van Sant, Governor of Minnesota, exchanged overcoats. It came out the next day, after President Roosevelt's departure, that when Gov. Van Sant put his hands into the deep pockets of the overcoat he was wearing, and supposed was his own, he found in one of them a new, large calibre weapon. An inspection of the tailor's-label in the coat proved to the startled Governor that both the coat and the revolver belonged to the President of the United States.
    Many people who attended the ceremonies of the laying of the cornerstone of the Masonic Temple in Washington in President Roosevelt's administration had the proof of their own eyes that the stories that the President always went armed were true. While delivering the oration on that occasion, Roosevelt pushed back the skirt of his coat presumably to reach for a handkerchief, and those who were behind him saw the inevitable revolver peeping from the right-hand hip pocket of his trousers.
    Still another incident of the same sort marked a visit of Col. Roosevelt, when President, to the Epiphany Episcopal Church, in G Street, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets, in this city. He went there to deliver an address before the Congress of Mothers, which was being held in the church. Divesting himself of his overcoat in an ante-room, the President went forward to the chancel. While he was addressing the audience one of the young women serving as ushers put on the President's overcoat and placed her hands into the deep pockets. A scream from her startled her companions. The desire of the young woman at that moment was to get out of the overcoat. When she had done this and her nerves had been quieted she explained that in one of the pockets of the President's overcoat was a revolver. An inspection of the pocket proved her assertion. The revolver was loaded.
    These incidents, taken in connection with Col. Roosevelt's frank statements to his intimates that he believed in being prepared for emergencies, showed that he fully realized the danger to which a public man of his prominence was exposed, particularly at times of popular excitement when cranks and Anarchists were likely to seek notoriety by attempting assassination. No President was ever guarded more closely by Secret Service men than Col. Roosevelt He regarded the constant companionship of these guards as a necessity.
    When the Congress enacted the railway rate legislation of 1906 a provision was inserted in the new law prohibiting any public officer, and this included the President from traveling free on interstate railway trains. In order that the President might not feel the burden of this provision the Congress subsequently passed a bill appropriating $25,000 annually for his traveling expenses. When that legislation was suggested some opposition to it was manifested, and President Roosevelt showed some fear that the amount to be appropriated might not be sufficient. In explanation of this attitude, President Roosevelt told those with whom he discussed the subject that an amount smaller than $25,000 would not be sufficient, for it was necessary for him, when he went traveling to take not only some members of the White House clerical staff, but two or more secret service men. He said that these secret service men were absolutely requisite to save him from annoyance, and it was inferred that Col. Roosevelt had in mind also the danger to which he was subjected from cranks of the Guiteau and Czolgosz type.
    The bill was introduced in the Senate in December, 1901, three months after the death of President McKinley, and was passed by that body. It provided the death penalty for the assassination of a President, or for aiding in the escape of an assassin of a President, twenty years imprisonment for conspiracy to assassinate the President, and ten years for threatening to kill the President. The bill was also passed by the House, but was so amended to meet constitutional objections raised that the Senate deemed to accept it with these changes, and it failed of enactment. In August, 1910, when the attempt to assassinate Mayor Gaynor was made, there was an effort to revive agitation for a Federal law that would provide much more severe punishment than was authorized in the regular laws for attempts to assassinate public officers, but the agitation brought no results.