Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. This buckle was produced during his 1904 Republican campaign to be elected to a full term in his own right. It plays on the association of Roosevelt and bears that began after he refused to shoot a restrained bear on a 1902 hunting trip to Mississippi. President Roosevelt defeated his Democratic challenger Alton Parker in a landslide with Socialist Eugene V. Debs a distant third.
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