When the Bonus Army Marched on DC (July/August 2020 | Volume: 65, Issue: 4)

When the Bonus Army Marched on DC

AH article image

Authors: Paul Dickson

Historic Era: Era 8: The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)

Historic Theme:

Subject:

July/August 2020 | Volume 65, Issue 4

Editor’s Note: We asked historian Paul Dickson to give us some perspective on the recent demonstrations in the nation’s capital. He pointed to the effort by thousands of veterans to get help during the Depression — protests that were met with violence, but eventually led to profound changes. Mr. Dickson coauthored The Bonus Army: An American Epic with Thomas B. Allen, and is the author of over 60 other books. 

bonus marchers
In 1932, 17,000 veterans of World War I descended on Washington, D.C., to demand payment of the "bonus" promised to them. They were later nicknamed the "Bonus Army." Courtesy of Paul Dickson

President Donald Trump’s threat to bring 10,000 Federal troops to the Capital to enforce the law after recent demonstrations is hardly the first time that the U.S. Army has been called upon to move against civilians. In 1932, an estimated 17,000 veterans and their families headed to Washington from across the country to protest and were set upon by cavalry, infantry, tanks and machine guns.

The marchers demanded payment of the “bonus” promised in 1924 to soldiers who had served in the Great War, but deferred until 1945 because of wrangling over the federal budget. Now, deep in the Depression, the vets had dubbed the delayed payment the Tombstone Bonus, for the only way to get the cash before 1945 was to die, in which case the payment would be made to the next of kin as a death benefit.

The march of the Bonus Army was not a mere Depression-era incident — it was a great American epic lost in the margins of history.
In 1932, a year in which unemployment had soared to almost 25 percent, leaving roughly one family out of every four without a breadwinner, two million people wandered the country in a futile quest for work. But unlike most of the men, women, and children on the move, the veterans knew where they were going and why they were going there. Washington was a goal, a place to stay while they lobbied Congress for immediate payment of their bonus.
 
Pelham Glassford, the police chief of Washington, D.C., had become the Army’s youngest field grade brigadier general in 1918 during the Great War, had been chief for only six months. Hired to put a professional shine on a force tarnished by corruption and the lawlessness fostered by Prohibition, he had already twice dealt with angry demonstrators — in the Communist-led Hunger March in December 1931 and, a month later, during a march against unemployment by about ten thousand jobless men and women led by a Pittsburgh priest. But the veterans’ march was different. They were going to Washington to lobby for what they — and many in Congress — felt was their due.

Victorious war veterans have vexed politicians since the days of Caesar’s legions. Returning warriors were both a potential power bloc and a threat — men who marched off to serve the state in war and then