![]() If you go out and make this speech in Chicago, I am certain that they will adopt the resolution and that will be one step toward the return to gold.Īfter the convention, in November 1933, MacGuire approached Butler again, this time to lead a “ great big super organization to maintain the democracy,” which he described later as a “French organization of super soldiers.” MacGuire reportedly told Butler the soldiers would “support the President. When asked where the money to transport the soldiers to Chicago would come from, Butler says MacGuire told him: “Oh, we have friends” that include Grayson Murphy.īutler demurred, but then was later approached by Robert Clark, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, who explained that the speech was important to their plan to return America to the gold standard: The beginning of the plot required Butler to “plant” 200-300 regular legionnaires in the audience at the annual convention, encourage them to make a fuss, and then emerge and make a speech – written for him by Doyle and MacGuire. He claims that in 1933, he was approached by Doyle and MacGuire under the guise of helping reform the American Legion. Most of the record of the plot comes from General Butler’s testimony before the House’s Special Committee (McCormack-Dickstein Committee). īutler remained an advocate for soldier’s rights and continued to lecture against war profiteering, and his fear that fascism was rising in the U.S. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. purify Nicaragua for the international banking house. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In an address to a convention of the American Legion in 1931, Butler said: ![]() In 1932, he defended the Bonus Marchers, a protest of 20,000 impoverished World War I veterans camped out in Washington, DC trying to obtain benefits.īutler was very popular with the veterans, and was frequently asked to speak to veterans groups. No lapdog to the establishment, Butler frequently came afoul of the powers that be. was awarded his first of two Medals of Honor in Mexico commandant of the Haitian native police. performed acts of death-defying heroism in the Boxer Rebellion while still in his teens. ![]() He served first in Cuba as an under-aged lieutenant in 1898. Without a doubt, Smedley Butler was an American hero. The impoverished but well-trained veterans of the First World War were the ideal candidates for a fascist militia through the American Legion, they were already organized and uniformed. In fact, advocates of the right wing style government believed they had a ready militia just waiting for them in the posts of the American Legion: In fact, one historian has noted: “The success of Huey Long seemed evidence that fascism could come from within. Two members of this Wall Street Putsch were Gerald MacGuire, a well-connected bond salesman and commander of the Connecticut American Legion, and William Doyle, also a former American Legion commander.Īt this time in the U.S., in the midst of the Great Depression, fascism was not seen as an entirely bad thing by a number of Americans. The plotters included a du Pont, a former presidential candidate, a former governor of New York, Wall Street bankers and a director of Bethlehem Steel. ![]() Īccording to those who believe there was a plot, several members of the league, fearful of the socialistic and communistic (in their mind) reforms FDR intended, planned to overthrow his administration. Morgan, Alfred Sloan of General Motors Al Smith. Davis, former presidential candidate and lawyer to J.P. Ireneé, Pierre and Lammot du Pont, John W. Some joined together to form the American Liberty League, with the intent of showing “ the value of encouraging people to work encouraging people to get rich.” Members included some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country at the time: The president has not merely signed the death warrant of capitalism, but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty.
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