Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt succeeds McKinley and takes the presidential oath
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗He reached Buffalo about half past one, in formal clothes borrowed from other guests, and was president under oath roughly two hours later.
14 September 1901: a house on Delaware Avenue
William McKinley died in Buffalo on 14 September 1901 of gangrene caused by the bullet wounds Leon Czolgosz had inflicted eight days earlier at the Pan-American Exposition. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, then 42, became the 26th president by succession at that moment.
Roosevelt arrived in Buffalo at about 1:30 p.m., having hurried back from the Adirondacks without suitable clothes; what he wore was borrowed from other guests. At roughly 3:30 p.m. he took the oath in the library of Ansley Wilcox's Delaware Avenue home.
No Bible, and no photograph
John R. Hazel, U.S. district judge for the Western District of New York, administered the oath before a small gathering. No Bible was used.
Photographers were excluded from the library, so there is no photograph of the oath itself. The ceremony formalized publicly what McKinley's death had already done constitutionally.
Governing by late afternoon
Immediately afterward Roosevelt held a brief cabinet meeting and promised continuity. He kept McKinley's cabinet rather than replacing it.
The same day he issued his first presidential proclamation, declaring national mourning for McKinley.
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Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes
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