When the Army Fought Against Veterans in Washington
“The president has just informed me that the civil government of the District of Columbia has reported to him that it is unable to maintain law and order,” read the order from the Secretary of War in July 1932. “Surround the affected area and clear it without delay. . . . Use all humanity consistent with the due execution of this order.” Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army, cannot have been surprised to receive these instructions. The situation in Washington had been tense all through the summer of 1932. Demonstrators had been pouring into the city from around the country beginning on May 29—75 years ago today—and MacArthur had been preparing for strife for months.
Between May and June, Washington had become the site of a volatile mass protest. The demonstrators were there to demand a bonus promised to them by Congress as veterans of World War I. The organizer of the protest, W. W. Waters, brought only a thousand men with him, but thousands more arrived by hopping freight trains. At the height of their protest, close to 20,000 veterans were camped out as close to the White House as Pennsylvania Avenue.
The veterans’ grievance had a lengthy history. Right back to the Revolution, it had been customary to grant bonuses to soldiers at the end of their term of service, and World War I was no exception. When Congress had passed the Selective Service Act, in 1917, which increased military pay by 50 percent, Newton D. Baker, the secretary of war, had proposed that soldiers also be given an extra month’s pay after leaving the military. And as one historian has written, “Once a $60 payment was decided upon for each discharged soldier, Congress started piling on.” Politicians began to play for votes by offering increased bonuses, reduced insurance rates, and other perks for veterans. These measures brought Congress into conflict with a series of Presidents, starting with Warren G. Harding, who vetoed a bill to revise soldiers’ compensation. Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge, decried another bonus proposal as “a pure gratuity,” and issued a veto of his own. By 1932 Herbert Hoover had become the third President to veto special financial privileges for soldiers.
Some of the vetoes were overridden, and a bonus proposal successfully passed Congress. But constant bickering between Congress and the President helped create a confrontational atmosphere. Activists such as the Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith began building political popularity by speaking out for veterans’ benefits. And veterans, hoping to push their allies in Congress to spend a little more political capital, headed to Washington to demonstrate for an immediate payout of the bonus, which the government wanted to delay. With the Depression now crippling the country, though, such a massive release of funds was a tall order.
Congress, as has often been its wont, tried to defuse the situation with palliative half-measures. Some members wanted to provide blankets and tents for the protestors. At the beginning of July, money was appropriated to pay for veterans to leave the city and return home. None of this was enough. On July 28, police evicted veterans from several condemned government buildings they had occupied on Pennsylvania Avenue. During the eviction a fight started that left one veteran dead and another mortally wounded. And two months of pent-up tension began to explode.
It was at this point that General MacArthur was ordered into action. He responded swiftly, throwing into motion the plans he had been developing. Working under him were two other future heroes of World War II, Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, then majors. By 1:40 p.m. on July 28, 600 troops had assembled in front of the White House. Drawing sabers, federal cavalry began clearing the bonus marchers out of the soon-to-be-demolished structures. Once their eviction was complete, however, MacArthur exceeded his orders and followed the marchers over the Anacostia Bridge to their main camp. His men used tear gas against the veterans, who quickly gave up the fight. Had they offered more resistance, they might have provoked far graver violence.
At the end of the day, the bonus marchers were scattered and demoralized. But they had won a significant political victory. When the newspapers ran photographs of veterans being beaten and gassed, they made Hoover administration’s deployment of federal troops look like a massive overreaction. Less than half a century earlier, Grover Cleveland had won national applause for his military response to the Pullman strike. In 1932 Hoover’s similarly harsh tactics made him look panicked and weak. The Democratic candidate for President that year, New York’s governor, Franklin Roosevelt, quickly realized that Hoover had irreversibly lost the sympathy of the country. He reflected privately that on July 28, rather than calling out the troops, Hoover “should have sent out coffee and sandwiches and asked a delegation in.” Lacking Roosevelt’s political instincts, the President had given himself a political mortal wound.
When the bonus marchers began arriving in Washington three quarters of a century ago, they hoped to win a political victory in Congress. Instead, they helped pick the next President.