 The first bullet ricocheted off of one of McKinley's coat buttons, but the second bullet entered his abdomen and lodged in his back. McKinley survived for eight days before infection and gangrene ultimately took his life. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was on a camping trip in the Adirondack Mountains when he was summoned to a friend's house in Buffalo to take the oath of office as the nation's new president. America had its first progressive president.