SCHRANK'S DEFENSE.
John Flammang Schrank expected to conduct his own defense before a
jury, if tried for his assault upon ex-President Roosevelt.
This is demonstrated by the fact that he had prepared a defense to be
read to the jury. In this defense he alluded to the fact that he "is
not represented by counsel."
This defense is remarkable in that it shows clearly the thought which
overcame his mental strength.
Schrank's defense is presented as he wrote it, with the exception of
two or three corrections to enable readers to realize what Schrank is
trying to say. The defense was prepared by Schrank in the county jail.
He was writing it when it was reported that he was writing verse. The
defense follows:
Gentlemen of the jury: I appeal to you as men of honor. I greet you
Americans and countrymen and fathers of sons and daughters. I wish to
apologize to the community of Milwaukee for having caused on October 14
last great excitement, most bitter feeling and expenses. I wish to
apologize to you honorable men of the jury that I am causing to you
this day unpleasantness in asking you to pass a verdict in a matter
which should have better been tried by a higher than earthly court.
Gentlemen of the jury, when on September 14 last during a vision I
looked into the dying eyes of the late President McKinley, when a voice
called me to avenge his death, I was convinced that my life was coming
soon to an end, and I was at once happy to know that my real mission on
this earth was to die for my country and the cause of Republicanism.
Gentlemen of the jury, you see that I have appeared here today without
the assistance of a counsellor at law, without any assistance save that
of God the Almighty, who is ever with him who is deserted, because I am
not here to defend myself nor my actions. I am here today to defend the
spirit of forefathers with words what I have defended with the weapon
in my hand, that is the tradition of the four unwritten laws of this
country. Tradition is above written statute, amended and ineffective.
Tradition is sacred and inviolable, irrevocable. Tradition makes us a
distinct nation. Order of tradition. The law I have violated for which
you will punish me is not in any statute book. Gentlemen of the jury,
the shot at Milwaukee, which created an echo in all parts of the world,
was not a shot fired at the citizen Roosevelt, not a shot at an
ex-President, not a shot at the candidate of a so-called Progressive
party, not a shot to influence the pending election, not a shot to gain
for me notoriety. No, it was simply to once and forever establish the
fact that any man who hereafter aspires to a third presidential term,
will do so at the risk of his life. If I cannot defend tradition I
cannot defend the country in case of war. You may as well send every
patriot to prison. It was to establish a precedent for the third term
tradition, which for the first time in the history of the United States
one man dared to challenge and to violate.
Gentlemen of the jury, the third term tradition is the most sacred,
because it has been established by the greatest champion of liberty in
all ages past and to come by our first President, George Washington,
when he modestly declined a third term nomination by saying that two
terms are enough for the best of Presidents. The two great American
political parties have since guarded this tradition most jealously,
have regarded it as a safeguard against the ambitions of probable
adventurers. The great Republican party, the party of an Abe Lincoln,
the party of the new U. S., that party as a medium between government
and the people, the party to which we are greatly indebted for our
achievements and our greatness among the family of nations, it was that
party that was destined to give birth to and to nurse the first
offender of that tradition, who gradually proved to be the evil spirit
of the country, and that great party which was born during a national
crisis and which had bravely faced and overcome many a grave trial,
nobly faced the coming storm and survived it with its honor unimpaired.
Gentlemen of the jury, when we inquire into the past of that man, we
will find that his ambitious plans have all been filed and laid down
long before he has been President. All doubt that these plans were
towards establishing at the least a perpetual presidency in these
United States have been removed during last summer, when a certain
senator unearthed from within the library of the white house a written
document deposited there during the third termer's presidency. This
document was an order for repairing to be done in the white house, and
this order closed with the following words: "These alterations should
be done, to last during my lifetime." When the third termer was
informed of the finding of this document, he admitted and absorbed the
all-important matter by simply saying: "Some people have no more brains
than guinea pigs."
Gentlemen of the jury, his rough rider masquerade during the
Spanish-American war was his first important step towards his goal, it
gained for him the governorship of the Empire state and that important
office made him an influential factor in the councils of the Republican
party. During his term as secretary of the navy he gained the
popularity among the men in that branch of the mailed fist of the
country by increasing the salaries of those men, who might some day be
of vital benefit to his cause. The Republican leaders of those days
were soon aware of the dangerous ambitions of this man and also knew
that this man would never be safe enough to fill the highest office of
the nation, for this reason these men thought it wise to make him
vice-Presidential candidate on the same ticket with McKinley, for it
must not be new to you that the office of a vice-President has always
been regarded as the suicide to a man's political ambitions. But,
gentlemen of the jury, now came the time when a man's ambitions
blindfolded him to all reason. The desire to overcome the obstacle
robbed him of his sane judgment, and in such a case the spoiler invites
himself, political murders have occurred quite often, committed by some
power that works in the dark and only too frequently of late the
assassin was classed as an anarchist, but the real instigators could
never be brought before justice. Whoever the direct murderer of
McKinley has been it could never be proven that he has ever been
affiliated with any anarchistic or similar society, but we may well
conclude that the man who in years after so willingly violated the
first unwritten law, which is the third term tradition, may have
readily promised to violate the third unwritten law of the country
whenever he thought it profitable to change his creed while president,
perhaps to the mother of monarchies.
Gentlemen of the jury, a man's first presidential term begins when he
takes the oath of office and constitutes a full term if it will only
last twenty-four hours after oath and a man's third term is his third
when he seeks it or is given to him twenty years or more after his
second. When Roosevelt took the oath of office at McKinley's departure,
he had ceased to be a Republican. He at once began to build a political
machine of his own. It was then in fact that his one man party
so-called Progressive party was born, parts of which we find later in
the insurgents, handicapping Mr. Taft wherever they could. Later in
August at the convention of treason he took the material where and as
he found we see him trying hard to bring the money power of the union
into his service, we find him extorting large sums for his political
campaigns from the so-called despisable trusts, since then we became
accustomed to look upon every man of wealth and the great industrials
corporations who have been and are today of incalculable value and
benefit to our national welfare, as nothing more or less than
contemptible criminals, whom he offended in the most profane language
during his crusade against them, if they refused to become a part of
his machine. At the decline of his second term the remainder of the
Republican party, those who had not been absorbed by "my policies"
could no longer be in doubt as to the third termer's real intentions,
and for the first time the third termer realized the magnitude and
importance of the third term tradition and most men of influence in
those used their power to scare him out of office at the same time
comforting him with the fairy tale that if not succeeded by two
consecutive terms another term would not be a third term but such was
his fear that his machine built up in seven and a half years would be
destroyed over night, that he threatened not to leave the chair unless
he were allowed to nominate his successor.
Gentlemen of the jury, now comes the time when the third termer
committed his second crime against friends, party, nation and republic.
With his innermost conviction that his successor would be incompetent,
incapable and that he would commit so many blunders while in office
that at the expiration of his term the people would unanimously demand
the renomination of the third termer, he thought to remove that
obstacle of the third termer and to make it appear that he was not
ambitious and that a renomination would have to be forced upon him, he
solemnly declared, "Never again will I run for president," but again
ambition had blindfolded him and robbed him of his judgment of men in
selecting William H. Taft as his successor although his most intimate
friend Mr. Taft was aware of his oath of office and his duties toward
the nation, there never was a whiter man in the white house and no one
ever more deserved a re-election as an honor for his services to the
country against the revolutionary machine of the third termer in the
house and senate than William H. Taft.
Gentlemen of the jury, the third term, "never again will I run for
president," has a parallel in the history of Rome. Whoever read the
history of Julius Caesar, knows that this smart politician, while
elected dictator, managed to become so popular with the people that
they offered him the kingly crown, but Julius Caesar knew that he had
to bide his time, that the rest of senators knew of his ambition, and
after refusing three times, he knew they would offer it to him a fourth
time, and when then he accepted it, he was murdered for ambition sake.
Never again will I run for president and under no circumstances, said
this man, and four years later we find him eagerly seeking renomination
at Chicago, to his friends, who advise him to run, he didn't have the
heart to tell that if he were not a man of word he could never be a man
of honor, but what shame lies in between his never again and his
profane declaration that the crooks, thieves, scoundrels and liars had
stolen the nomination from him, although he knew that the party could
not give him what they had a third term not to give for the great
Republican party determined to sooner go down to defeat than to violate
the third term yet.
Gentlemen of the jury, the third termer had license to create a new
party and be the power behind the throne and perhaps lead his party to
victory. But having been deceived by the selection of his successor and
having removed the mask he determined to insist on a third term. Had we
lived in a time of panic, general disorder, strikes with armies of
unemployed, most likely the third termer would have an easy walkin. He
was anxious waiting for the government at Washington to start military
intervention in Mexico, but the leaders of the Republican party feared
that the third termer would muster an army of volunteer rough riders
and return at election as the conquering hero.
Gentlemen of the jury, the danger of the third termer was less in his
probable election than in his sure but close defeat. The man who cried
of the theft at Chicago would never submit to the verdict on November
5, however honest it may be; he would again yell robbery, and if he
carried a solid west as was then expected, he would give way to his
fighting nature and try to take the presidency on the battlefield and
so invite civil war, yet, Ab. Lincoln said that war is hell, and that
he who wilfully invites war deserves death. Do we realize the horrors
of civil war; are we willing to wash out the sin of violating the third
term with the blood of our sons imagine torn from home, family and
parents, from prosperity to dire want in order to place a man to the
presidency he is legitimately not entitled to? Yet, gentlemen of the
jury, the United States may still be able to subdue the rebels the
danger the more grave than even civil war is the possibility of
intervention by foreign powers, who may help the third termer in order
to keep the union disunited and separated for we must know that our
strength is not in our army and navy, money power, our strength is in
our union, we would at once realize that we are surrounded by a pack of
hungry wolves ready to destroy this hated republic, ready to destroy
Monroe doctrine, ready to annex the Panama canal and the great land of
the brave and free, the home many millions free people, the dream of
all heroes and martyrs for political freedom to 1848 would have ceased
to be owing to the ambitions of one man and one man's rule.
I hope that the shot at Milwaukee has awakened the patriotism of the
American nation, that it has opened their eyes to the real danger and
shown them the only safe way out of it as is proven by election returns
in the great Democratic party the north, south, east and west is once
more and more solidly united and proudly can we prove to the nations of
the world that the spirit of 1776 is still alive and shall never die,
and that self-government is an established fact and a success.
I have been accused of having selected a state where capital punishment
is abolished. I would say that I did not know the laws of any state I
traveled through, it would be ridiculous for me to fear death after the
act, as I expected to die during the act and not live to tell the story
and if I knew that my death would have made the third term tradition
more sacred, I am sorry I could not die for my country.
Now, honorable men of the jury, I wish to say no more, in the name of
God, go and do your duty, and only countries who ask admission by
popular vote and accept the popular vote never wage a war of conquest,
murder for to steal abolishes opportunity for ambitious adventurers,
for all political adventurers and military leaders have adopted the
career of conquering heroes, wholesale murder, wholesale robbers called
national aggrandizement. Prison for me is like martyrdom to me, like
going to war.
Before me is the spirit of George Washington, behind me that of
McKinley.