Federal Triangle and The Bonus Army
In June 1932, thousands of homeless World War I veterans, their families, and their supporters occupied the recently-condemned assemblage of buildings at the Federal Triangle site as part of the Bonus March on the capital to win better veterans' benefits.
On July 28, 1932, President Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to remove the "Bonus Army" from the site. At 4:45 p.m., MacArthur led 1,200 infantry, 1,200 cavalry, and six battle tanks (commanded by Major George S. Patton) to Federal Triangle to remove the Bonus Army. More than 20,000 civil service workers (leaving their offices for the day) watched as the U.S. Army attacked its own veterans. Patton personally led a cavalry charge (with sabers drawn) into the mass of homeless people, and several hundred rounds of vomit gas were launched at the marchers. A Bonus marcher was killed on the site of the Apex Building. The Federal Triangle site was cleared and these members of the Bonus Army marched to Anacostia—where, at 10:14 p.m., MacArthur led a second attack on the 43,000 protesters and burned their camp to the ground.
Read more about this topic: Federal Triangle
Famous quotes containing the words federal and/or army:
“Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)