going to be made legal by plenty versus ferguson, the supreme court decision that came down in the 1890's. and it all kind of, that jerry that acquits the position is a mixed-race jury. but whites here and around the country say that is what happens when you let blacks on the jury. we have to get them off. they make a move to strip away all of the rights and opportunities. >> so you mentioned it took you 11 years. how did you come to the story to begin with? >> well, one of my students at the college of charleston many years ago in 1988, wrote a paper about the earthquake. adjustments to the area and they never even known that there was an earthquake. a very good paper.

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one people singing hamlisch outside the encampment and he went out and set i'm going to be ki with my walking cane and the people who were singing said oh well and they were taunting him. people were held in the park saying its judgment day, angry at white people but they were not saying it as directly as to illustrate what they meant. >> i finally told her if she wrote a novel about it and sold ase couple thousand copies and wrote nonfiction about its she could sell we more who because the story of what actually

happened was much more fascinating than anything we could make up about it, and from that point on, we started digging through the libraries in charleston and throughout south carolina and found frank paulson's papers at the university and found many more than we ever expected to find and every time we thought we knew what was going on we uncovered a little more and it got more fascinating and more fascinating and then the story bloomed into the whole story about the upcoming apocalypse that was going to happen september 29th in the merger and it just grew and we had fun. it was amazing that after that amount of work we were fascinated with it, and to get back into libraries.

for more information on booktv's recent trip to charleston south carolina, visit c-span.org/localcontent. coming up next from the booktv archives, paul dickson and thomas allen discuss their book the bonus army and american epic. in the summer of 1932 at the height of the depression some 45,000 world war i veterans descended on washington, d.c. to demand the bonus promised the years earlier for the wartime service.

president eisenhower ordered the u.s.. >> in the summer of 1932 at them height eof the great depressiono some 45,000 world war i veterans from all over the country converged on washington, d.c. ot traveling in box cars, automobiles and on foot.isedh sarte and the bonus promised them for their wartime service. li for two months, the veteransty lived and fully integrated townf and cardboard shacks, the biggest of those on the shore of the river was laid out like a military camp with the streetca names with street names and included an outdoor barber shop, boxing matches and even a piano. the veterans had little to eat, except what was donated through the kindness of strangers, but a lot of passion for their cause. the movement was kept under control by a deal between the leader of the bonus army, and

the sympathetic and practical-minded d.c. police chief, who rode around town on a blue motorcycle. the police, the peaceful demonstrations ended when the bill to give the veterans their bonus was defeated in congress. president hoover moved to evict the veterans and douglas mccarthy's army ran them out of town with tanks and teargas, burning down the camps. in a news reel from the time, a commentator called the veterans' eviction, a spectacle, unparalleled in the history of the country. real drama of the highest rank. the bonus army, is an instructive and revealing book about a turning point in american history. in the way groups lobby congress, in racial integration, and especially in the treatment of homecoming veterans. it's also a fascinating look at washington during the

depression. and the characters behind the headlines. paul dickson is the author of more than 45 nonfiction books and hundreds of magazine articles. recent books include the hidden language of baseball, "and sputnik" the shock of the century. he's a founding member and former president of washington independent writers and a member of the national press club. thomas a. allen is the author of "george washington spiremaster" chosen by the new york public library as one of the 100 best children's books of 2004. and co-author of "spybooks, the book of espionage," the principle sourcebook for the international spy museum. also a member of the press club, he's written extensively for national geographic society and has appeared on television as an authority on military and intelligence subjects. please welcome paul dickson and thomas a. allen. [applause]

>> thanks a lot. we're extremely happy to be here tonight. this has been a long odyssey for tom and myself. and people always said, how did this thing start? how did you get this idea? and i think i was probably the one that first started to think about this. i kept -- the question that came to me was, why was this big event, this -- i thought turning point. why was it always sort of margin liesed? >> and one night, tom and i were at a writer's party in georgetown. and we both lived in montgomery county. so i didn't have a ride home from the party, and i hardly knew tom at that point. so i said, can i get a ride home? and tom said, sure. and by the time the door opened at my house, tom and i were partners on this thing. and that was three, over three years ago. we did three years of rather intense research. and i think the best way to sort

of illustrate sort of a preamable. if you took a map of america and you went from maine, in this corner, to los angeles, in this corner, from portland, oregon in this corner, to the florida keys, those were the extent of the places we went. and we probably hit 25 major research institutions in between. we literally left no stone unturned. and i think the one of the things we had to deal with, and one of the things we had to to come to grips with, is why this has always been an episode, a moment, a little blip. no more significant than the guy sitting on the corner selling apples for a nickel. but why has this always been marginalized, it's really part of a much larger story. and i think that's what we came to grips with. so it started out as a narrow thing, one line in most history books. we kept seeing it get bigor and bigger and bigger. and the parameters, i'm going to hand the football to tom. because it really starts in the battlefields of, of world war i.

>> that's when we were looking, when we started working on the book. one of the issues that appealed to me particularly was just the whole idea of world war i. i didn't know much about it. and i felt that this is what shaped the experience of the veterans. who were the subject of the book. and we went back into world war i, and made a few discoveries. at least i did and passed them on to paul. one of them being that the initial idea about world war i, there was still a hangover from the spanish american warth and for a very short time, the idea was we would have an all-volunteer army, as we did for the spanish american war. we were that naive at the time. and that far away from the real events in europe. and the slaughter that was going on in the trenches. it was a war of attrition. you had to be talking about people in the millions, rather than the hundreds or thousands. and so we had to put together an

army in the millions. and it was that army that became the basis for the bonus army. if you take a look at that arm request, a couple of things snap out. one is that loss the draft boards, and eventually we had to have a draft, that was discovered quickly. the draft boards were sending both black and whites into the army. but the army was segregated. and the black, the black guys who did go overseas, and a large number of them were put into stevedore, truckdriver, working on the docks, they weren't put into combat. it was still an attitude in our country at that time, that you don't put a gun in the hands of a black guy. and so, the men that they had to send into combat, because there were redgements of well-trained infantry and artillery. they put under a french flag. they were, they fought alongside french colonial troops with

french helmets, french weapons. and they got more than their share of french decorations, too. and they fought bravely in world war i and came back. with the expectation that they would be received by our nation as a new kind of black, black citizen, a guy who had fought for his country. and as you will get to see in the book, that didn't really happen. until the onset of the bonus army. and so we, they come back, believing that they are, are going to both black and white, believe that they're going to get something for their services overseas. every veteran group in the united states history, had come back and had to find some way to make up for the loss of time. and blood in many cases, going

back to the revolution. and now, they come back home and the congress starts to talk about what they're going to do. the american legion has been formed, it's going to be the pressure group for them. the veterans of foreign wars is formed. and congress is hearing from the veterans' lobby. as soon as the war ends. and they start coming up with various ideas in congress as to what to do. >> the main idea was, based on the salary or the payment of a soldier in world war i. the basic amount of money you got was $1 a day. out of that you're expected to pay for your uniforms and expected to give money to the liberty bonds. privates were expected to finance the war, in other words. some percentage of the dollar went to the war bonds. it was tremendous pressure. and at the same time, a guy working in a shipyard would get somewhere between $15 and $17 a day to work. and the guys overseas got $1.25.

an extra 25 cents, to go overseas into the trenches. the idea that came out -- there were a lot of ideas that came out. how do we get these guys back up to speed? they didn't get their jobs back, it was a really raw deal. well the idea is we'll give them an extra $1 a day for every day they're here, $1.25 a day for every day they were overseas. so with a little interest, that was basically the bonus. if you were in for 511 days, you got $511. so it was in almost all cases, under $1,000. and it was called a bonus. it was really adjusted compensation. the idea was, we'll try to level the playing field, swharks even though it was way in arears of what they would have gotten in private industry at the time. the other thing that happened to these guys, when they came back, there was a lot of racials problems right off the bat. there was a lot of resistance to any kind of compensation. because we're talking about 800,000 blacks. and every proposal that was

being put up, including the idea of a bonus, immediately ran into the concept, especially in the south, that it would destroy the two-tier system. the system was, that you kept very poor whites at a very low level. but you could keep them under control, because beneath them there were blacks making even less money. they thought if you started throwing these sums of money into the hands of the black veterans, that it would interrupt the system. the system would, would fall apart. and so right off the bat, one of the real motivations to deny the bonus is, is the, is racial. but it does get traction. it starts to get more and more people behind it. and the early presidents, starting with wilson and harding, coolidge, are basically prone to veto it. finally in 1924, there's a version of the bonus. and behind this, andrew melon, one of the great -- he prospered

during the war. very much. and mellon kept saying the country can't afford it. we can't give all of these guys this money. well, finally, in 1924, they get it through, both houses of congress. but to get it through the veto process, coolidge is going to veto it. the only way to get it through is to say, ok, you guys got the bonus. but we won't give it to you until 1945. and they immediately dubbed the bonus, the tombstone bonus. because, a, the only way it can be paid is if you die and your heirs get it. and two, a lot of these guys were really banged up. they had a lot of gas, these guys were not in great shape. and words like "shell-shocked" were entering the vocabulary. they didn't think they with going to make it. it was a horrible pill to swallow. and the guys pretty much swallowed the pill. they weren't happy but then something happened. the bottom fell out of the

market and we had a depression. and -- >> the depression starts. and there are a lot of people now in the country who say there's something in my pocket, if i can get it out, it's called a bonus. and boy, would it come in handy now. one of the ideas of paying the bonus immediately, comes to the front of a popu ve lace, wright patman comes into congress from texas. and he gets the idea of immediate payment of the bonus. that all he's going to have to do is introduce legislation saying, pay the bonus now. and suddenly, an awful lot of money will go off into the economy. and help get us out of the depression. but he can't get it out of committee. it's locked up in committee. it looks like it's going to go down for the count. and out in portland, oregon, there's a veteran named walter waters. he had been a sergeant in overseas. he had seen combat. he's pretty tough guy, he's been

laid off by the cannery he worked for. and he, he reads in the paper about wright patman's idea. and then he also reads in the paper that there's a lot of lobbying going on in washington. one of the, for instance the baltimore and ohio railroad had lobbied a big loan from the united states government, through the u.s. treasury. so he gets about 150 veterans in a meeting in portland. and says, you know, we could go there and lobby, too. we can lobby in person. and so, what he proposes is that they all get on freight cars and head for washington. and petition for the bonus the, the immediate payment. and his first job is to get the great bill by wright patman out of committee. so they hop on frates in portland, oregon. and start heading east.

and radio and newspapers start picking it up. in some ways, it's an interesting news phenomenon, because it's a continuing story. and as they go east, more and more papers and more and more radio stations start to hear about this. and veterans elsewhere in the country start saying, well, we can do the same thing. we can hop freights or jump into lobbies or hitchhike and get to washington ourselves. so streams of veterans start filling up boxcars and hitchhiking on highways, going into washington. the ones who were close to washington, such as the ones in new jersey, are the first to arrive. they actually arrive before the guys from oregon arrive. well, washington at that point, has had a couple of experiences with marches that were put together for various reasons. they also got a new chief of police named allen glassford.

and he's handled a hunger march put on by the communist party. so he's standing there in washington, wondering what's going to happen next. he's the guy with the -- >> the blue motorcycle. >> yes. >> somebody said the other day, if we make a film out of this, that every actor in hollywood wants to play the chief of police who rides around in a blue harley-davidson. glassford was a man of a different stripe. one of the ways he handles the hunger marchers is he trots them off to the mayflower hotel and gets the chefs at the mayflower to feed them. this is a guy, the youngest brigadier general in world war i. he's loved by his men. his troops overseas. he's also an artist. and many people today know him as a painter rather than as a prigder general or a police chief. but but glassford has to go up against the district commissioners. in those days, the city wasn't run by a mayor, but was run by three commissioners appointed by

congress. and glassford -- they don't want these guys in. they don't want them. they think they're riffralph and they don't want them in the city. they're pouring in at a huge rate. they're coming from los angeles and mississippi and texas -- they're coming from everywhere. and of course, glassford says, look, i would rather take care of these guys, make them orderly. i would rather have 10,000 orderly veterans in town than 5,000 guys running around, angry and stealing food and everything else. if you don't at least provide for they will. so glassford goes down to the river and starts talking to waters. and waters again is a very interesting character. because he's sort of naive in the sense that he thinks he can, he becomes, we find later he becomes the appropriateo type for frank capra. he becomes the prototype of the guy who goes to washington and says, i'm going to fix things. he doesn't like violence at all. he brings, he and glassford

immediately get together and they make a deal. and glassford says, we're going to take this huge area in anacostia, which as it is today, a huge meadow, we're going to lay it out like a military camp. we're going to get nails and plywood and all of this stuff. glassford also starts getting them food. he takes $800 out of his own pocket. so the city is building. and the word keeps going owñt. and it's like a huge magnet. because there are tens of millions of homeless wandering the country. this is a pit. this is the absolute bottom of the depression. and finally there are guys wandering -- and their families. they have a purpose. they're lobbyists. and this is the actual word that's waters says. we're just like u.s. steel and dupont. we're going to lobby for our -- what we're owed from the warth and we're lobbyists, we're not protestors, we're lobbyists. and will rogers, one of the first to pick up on this. he said, yes, they are, these

guys are legitimate. what's happening in the course of the summer, very quickly is the huge, sort of almost carnival, almost a world's fair of poverty comes into place. there are 21 camps throughout the city. in anacostia there are guys who get paid, you can give them money and they'll bury themselves alive. you can look down in the coffin. there are flagpole sitters. and it's becoming an attraction. more and more people are pouring in every day. at least 45,000 people were here at that time. and it becomes -- they all start to lobby. one of their main desires to get the bonus, the actual legislation passed. and -- >> their lobbying gets to be sort of sophisticated. one of the things that amazed me in going over the, we accumulated about 400 photographs taken at various

times during the bonus summer. is they're all wearing white shirts. and the white shirts are all clean. and they're all skinny and they've got holes in their shoes. but they all have a neat appearance. it's very important to waters that that be one of the things that they do. and they go into congress, they go into congressional offices. and they say, we want you to vote that bill out of committee. and then we want you to vote for it when it comes down to the house floor. they know about the house and they know about the senate. and one group from illinois goes to their senators and one of the senators says, get the hell out of here, you're a communist and we don't want anything to do with you. and someone on his staff says, why don't you go out to anacostia and take a look at those guys. this is called hooverville. it's the largest hooverville in the united states. at any given time, about 25,000

people are out there, in makeshift -- this is when an old shantytown comes into american song. they, he goes out there and he sees the conditions. and he sees they're decent guys. and he apologizes to them and says, i'm going to get some help. he naively goes to the war department. and the secretary of war is patrick hurley says, we're not giving these guys anything. the other thing that the officials are doing in washington, as paul says, it was a wonderful atmosphere. we interviewed some people who used to be kids, they were kids in 1932, who had the time of their lives out there. because it was such an interesting place to be. but the official washington has made a deal with the newsreel cameramen that the newsreels don't go out there. there's no newsreel coverage of the bonus marches. there's still coverage by the,

by the local papers and by some of the bureaus here. but there's no newsreel coverage. and one, finally somebody in the newsreel hierarchy comes up with an idea which they present to the officials here in washington. and one night they put a great big screen up out there. and there's no electricity, but they get a way to get some electricity out there. and they've got a projector. and they project up on the screen, a news special on panning for gold in california. and the idea is, guys will see it up on the screen, and they'll all head for california and get out of, get out of the hair of the people in washington. but there's no trouble, everything is going pretty well. and low and behold, they do get enough votes to get this bill out of committee. and it does go onto the house floor. and it passes the house. vote is for getting them the

bonus. hoover has said, president hoover has said he will veto it. but it has passed the house. these guys pulled off a miracle in their lobbying. and now the next question is, what's going to happen with the senate. finally it goes to the senate, and on june 16, they started pulling here in may. but june 16, it goes to the senate. and they know it's going to be a tight vote. there are upwards of 10,000 men, women, children, circling the capital. they're sleeping on the grass. this is going into the night. they, it's a very tense moment, there's many of the pictures of this event are extremely, you can see the tension building. and there are newsreels at this event. and what happens is, it is defeated in the senate. and the senate goes out through the tunnels under the building and the word -- waters is literally on the porch of the senate. and he has to announce you know, the word is passed down the line that the senate has defeated the

immediate payment of the bonus. and everybody there, all, there are a lot of news men and women surrounding waters. and they can just feel the tension, they're afraid that there's going to be violence. they don't know that the senate has gone out the back door. and a woman named elcy robinson is one of the first newspaper reporters. and there's so many reporters. we could do the whole evening just on the relationship of these guys like sinclair lewis and earnest hemmingway, etc. but elcy robinson has really befriended them. she whispers something in waters' ear. and waters just shouts out "sing, america! sing, america!" and there's a long pause and a couple voices start. and more voices chime in. and all of a sudden, 10,000 people are singing "america." and they sing it, and they go home, they go to the camps, and there are camps everywhere, all the way over to haynes point,

all over, northeast. and they all go back. and everybody in washington breathes a deep sigh of relief. these guys are going to go home the next day. it's all over. they make a good show. they make a couple of bad assumptions. the leading one is it's assume bid many in the senate and elsewhere in the hierarchy that these people actually have a place to go home to. when in fact many of them are here because there is no home, there's no place they're really from any more. they've lost their possessions, their houses. and waters gets up the next morning. and in a moment of brilliant propaganda, holds a press conference and says, we're not leaving until 1945. or if you pass the bonus. and this sets off this tremendous sort of, you know, secondary reaction to these guys. and whathes going to happen next . >> and what's been going on, there's been a great concern on the part of the white house, because once congress shuts down, then the next target is they see it as the white house

itself. up to that time, the white house had been relatively open. they suddenly the gates are locked on the white house. president hoover doesn't make his traditional appearances. he goes off to a camp he has in, in virginia. he will not meet with anybody who has anything to do with the bonus army. the whiters, who there's a writer's group that comes to him and says, why don't you at least meet with them? he will not do it. and official washington starts to see them as radicals. we came across some military intelligence reports that were declassified in the 1990's, that show that military intelligence put operatives inside some of the camps. trying to get an idea of what these guys are doing. and the reason, the reason the military has an interest is because, in russia and germany and in italy, the veterans had been organized and they were the, they were the shock troops

for the overthrow of three national governments in europe. so the army has a particular knowledge of that. d soame across a document in ..me observers in germany, looking at how the german army handled the street fighting in several cities in germany. they used tanks, they used teargas and weapons, they even used some airplanes. and it's all in an army report. and there's also a secret plan to defend the city of washington against insurrection. and they start to look at that. general mcarthur is very concerned. we know there's one thing about gnhbohole group, that's >> that is bothering both general macarthur and young j. d edgar hoover who is the head off the bureau of investigation and the justice department. probabs that they are probably all communists. if you look at the reports that are coming into the militaryinig intelligence, by the way, there.

are coded in sent by radio, there is a real underground situation going on with the army. and these reports say that we have noticedny many negros and and women would choose features in the -- among these guys. fea so that's an absolute sign that they're radical. so they start riot, anti-riot training in fort mire, across the river. and they know that something is going to have to be done to get rid of these radicals. there are no radicals. i mean, not no, but very few. snd >> the undercover servicemen are saying, there's nothing going on. there's no arges these guys are peaceful. they don't even drink. but there are about 150 men who were following a couple of known communist leadersth and they are

at camp, they're not allowed in anacostia by waters and the leaders of the army. some of them are thrown into the potomac river. anti-communist is the dominant force in anacostia. but official washington, in the person of the white house officials in the white house, and then in the army, say these are dangerous radicals and something is going to be done, has to be done about them if they're going to linger in washington for no good purpose now that the congress is closed down. >> the other thing that's bothering a lot of people, and it's pleasing roy wilkens, is that this is a highly integrated model for the country. the wilkins is working for w.e. bemplet du bois, at "the crisis" a magazine in new york. and he goes on the road to live in the camp for a couple of days. and he's literally shocked. he sees black feet and white feet sticking out from pup

tents, where the mississippi delegation of the bonus is encamped. he'll go by the piano, and there will be a white guy from mississippi playing. and 20 minutes later it will be a black guy playing another song. he sees -- wilkins sees this as the model of the future of america. this to him is what we can become. we can become a fully-integrated nation. of course what's happened to these guys is because, in deng the blacks the bonus, which has always been one of the major -- although seldom stated, you can parse right down to it quickly. one of the reasons for denying the bonus in there was to make sure the black guys don't get the money. for every black guy, there were eight white guys who didn't get it. so they're both in the same boat. so to the powers that be, the mississippi delegation, marching into washington, integrated.

and a favorite character, a black woman who comes all the way from california, from los angeles. she lost her husband and her brother in the war. she, on the trip here she is beaten she's robbed. her wedding ring is stolen. she becomes one of the leaders, black woman, in 1932. becomes one of the leaders, leading black and white men in this thing. so the social fabric has been changed. and this, a lot of people that, some of the people we talked to really believe in their hearts that one of the reasons that mcarthur took such a dim view of this is because there was institutionalized racism in the military. and they didn't want to see this. this was not what the powers that be wanted to see. wilkins, of course, it becomes his model. even when resurrection city is created years later and all of these other things, it influences his whole life. this is something that's bothering him. so just to get set tom up again.

the summer, even though they've got this racial integration. as the summer starts to progress, there's, it's really great heat in the city. a lot of rain. the camps are becoming like the trenches of france and world war i. things as july gets mature, as it gets -- into the 20, 21st, 22, it seems as if the wheels are coming off the cart. there's more worry that the guys have to be driven out of town. >> the real focal point for worry is the white house. president hoover is running for re-election. and he doesn't need to look out the window and see these, this ragtag army wandering around in downtown washington. there are more than 20 camps. the principle camp in downtown washington is at the foot of capitol hill. basically where the federal triangle is now. there are buildings being torn down there for the building of

the federal triangle. and in the half-demolished buildings, thousands of veterans have put up, put themselves up in the kind of, it's like looking at a stage set with one wall down. and you see four stories in the cubicles, are veterans and their families. that is technically owned by the treasury department. and they decide that what they're going to do is get those veterans out of those buildings. they are in there legitimately. they've been put in there by pelleham glass for the chief of police. so the commissioners say, ok, as of a certain date, he wants them out. he negotiates as much time as he can. and finally, he runs out of all of the ways that he can try and talk the commissioners into changing things. and on july 28, he begins an orderly evacuation of the buildings. the idea is he brings a lot of cops in. they put a rope around the area

to hold back the vets. thousands of vets are coming into that area, to show solidarity with their comrades who are being evicted. there's a been factor who is hoping to be able to produce a large campsite somewhere and get them out and put them up. it's pelham glassford's idea to have a permanent camp somewhere in maryland or northeast washington. to keep them, because he's the one who knows these guys don't have any home. he begins an orderly evacuation. there's a scuffle. and in which some veterans who may have been led by some communists, it's not clear. they've got an american flag. a cop grabs the american flag and there's a tug of war over the american flag. there's also a few bricks thrown and there's a nightsticks come out. but no gun comes out of any cop's holster.

glassford has a badge ripped off his shirt but he calms everything down. and everything seems to be going pretty well again for the evacuation. and he takes a break, says, let's cool it and have everybody take a break for about an hour. and then he hearse some noise. and one of the buildings. >> yeah, they broke in for lunch. and there's a bad cop, a rogue cop, a guy who disobeys, gets in a tussle with two of the veterans. and glassford sees him pull out his gun. and glassford yells, "stop, you fool!" and he actual lrks, the cop turns and attempts to fire at glassford. glassford dives behind some rubble. he hearse two shots, one guy is down, one guy is dead, the other will die a couple days later. he lost -- one guy has lost control and the whole thing looks like it's going downhill. glassford at this point is trying to bring it back under control. he tries to bring the situation around. he thinks he's got it turned around.

however there's been an infiltrator in the group, gone back to mcarthur who has got all of these troops amassed across the river at fort mcnair. he's got cavalry, tanks and teargas units. and a thousand guys down the river at fort washington. they run back, mcarthur starts this whole group coming across the memorial bridge. coming to downtown washington. the tanks are coming down, and of course, they relieve grassford. glassford is furious at this point. he says, i've got control of the situation. mcarthur takes over. the teargas starts being fired. the buildings are set on fire. 2,000 teargas cannisters are fired, many of which are c.s. gas, which is the powerful, potent world war i, combat-variety of teargas, tanks roll down pennsylvania avenue. they're driven out of downtown and driven across the 11th

street bridge, which is a drawbridge. they're driven back into the camp. and then mcarthur takes a dinner break. and it gets to be 9:00 at night. and mcarthur is starting across the river. a and he's disobeying somebody's orders. >> the plan, the war plan that mcarthur is choosing has called for the president to declare martial law. which the president hasn't done. but mcarthur is exceeding his orders from the white house. it's one of those situations where if you start trying to find pieces of paper, you don't find them. but general -- general mcarthur's principle aide is young dwight eisenhower, a major. and he's trying to talk mcarthur into cooling things down. mcaurthur will hear none of it and as eisenhower later reports, that when someone comes up from the war department, via the white house and says, you're not to cross the anacostia river,

mcarthur says i'm in the middle of a military operation. and when i'm doing that, i don't bother with pieces of paper. so mcarthur crosses the anacostia river and burns it down. and the site of the flames can be seen for miles. we've got all kinds of eye witness accounts of the horror that people felt. well, the newsreels that were discouraged from going out to see the peaceful assembly of veterans, are in full force and there's plenty of footage of the troops attacking the veterans and also, all of the people who have gathered in downtown washington to see what's going on. and they are, there's full newsreel coverage. so, by this time, hover knows he's got a disaster on his hands. but, he is outwitnessed by mcarthur. mcarthur call as midnight press

conference, in which he praises the president for his swift action in getting rid of the radicals, many of whom are criminals and communists. and he's, there's nothing that hoover can do, except go with that. and so, the justice department and the army start making this into the fight against the radicals. the handling of a potentially dangerous mob. >> the next morning, somebody knocks on franklin d. roosevelt's door, this is a presidential election year. and he's got the democratic nomination. they throw open the doors. you can just see this in the movies. and somebody plunks "the new york times" down on the bed. we've seen the actual thing, a huge picture of the burning of the camp with the flames silhouetting the cap taling and the smoke. and roosevelt takes one look at it and says, i've won the election. this is all i need. and so this is the first half of the book. >> and that's usually where things stop. >> that's usually where it

stops. we're going to fast-forward for just a second and take some questions. the saga gets interesting at this point. you've already heard the lackluster part. the part that everybody knows. but roosevelt is no more friendly to the veterans than hoover. which is very stunning to many liberals. hoover's morals are probably worse. he cuts veterans' benefit the first number of days he's in office. he, three times vetos the bonus. once before it, the only joint session of congress in which a veto is present. presented by the president in the history of the republic. there's never been a joint session to veto something before or since. they come back, they keep coming back. the bonus army comes back in 1933, they come back in 1934, they come back in 1935. roosevelt has really got a problem now. he starts sending them, they're really becoming a newsens in the city. pretty much out of downtown. they're a bad advertisement for the new deal, for progress. and he starts shipping them off

to work camps in florida. and which are not pleasant places. >> they wind up in south carolina, and in northern florida. in the keys. and during the summer of 1935, this is happening. by this time they're down to just a band of ragged guys who are still looking for their bonus. in 1935. and i've got to hand this off to paul, because this is his, he's the one who discovered what happens next. he was up in the j.f.k. library in massachusetts. and came across some papers. >> but basically what happens is the, when these guys are killed, the first guy on the scene is earnest hemmingway. and earnest hemmingway loves these guys. he used them in characters in "to have and have not." he considers himself a vet, too and he just loved these guys. he's the first guy with a pen and a camera to show up on the scene. and he basically takes on the new deal on this. he thinks they've been murdered.

the trucks in which they could have gotten out of there, are locked. everybody knows this hurricane, the most powerful hurricane that's ever hit the united states, or the western hemisphere. it's so powerful, this is labor day, 1935, these guys are sitting ducks, the veterans in the camps. they've been deprived of the trucks, there's no train to get them out of there there's no way for them to get out of there. this hurricane is coming in. at 250-mile-per-hour winds. it's like nothing else that's ever come. the guys who are waiting on the platform to get the train, they're literally, the train doesn't come. the train is blown off the traction. tracks. there's a picture where it's like a kid kicking over his electric train set. the wind is so powerful, it sandblasts the flesh off their bodies. of course, one thing leads to another. hemmingway becomes absolutely incensed. he has, for the first time in his life he starts usingage

ectives to describe how horrible this is. and what happens is, and again there's a lot of detail here. and it's a hell of a yarn. what happens is he becomes -- the american legion and the v.f.w. starts investigating these guys' deaths. and there's a cover-up in the new deal to keep the truth of the incident from ever being heard. it finally, though, the death of the veterans becomes enough in 1936, to get his veto finally is overwritten by congress. >> he's running for re-election in 1936. and roosevelt lets it be known to the congress that he's going to veto it. but it would be ok if his veto is overridden. so that's what happens. and in an amazing example of what you can do if you really want to do it, between the time that the bonus is finally passed, vetoed, overridden by congress and becomes a reality, something like six days pass.

and there are guys with checks walking into banks and cashing them. and $2 billion enters the u.s. economy in this spring of 1936. just in time for the beginning of a presidential campaign. >> and the rest is, the rest is, is really a precursor to what's going to happen with the g.i. bill. what the, what the bonus is taught, and we, we really draw some very strong lines between the bonus, army and what was perceived in congress as -- the absolutely essential business of getting, taking care of the guys in world war ii. the premise becomes, and this is is a a world war i vet named comber. he sits down in the mayflower hotel and write out a g.i. bill of rights. the premise becomes for the first time in history, is instead of returning the soldier and the fighting person to the

proletariat from which they came. you take them out of the working class. they sacrifice in war, they get wounded, they die, they go through the privations of war. the reward for this is you return them to the middle class. and this becomes the basis of the g.i. bill. education, housing, small business loans. these people become the new middle class. and they fuel, they fuel the economy in the second half of the 20th century. and biotech, almost anything else you can mention is fueled by these guys who come out of nowhere. they come out of the battlefields, wherever and end up being the ones who create basically the world we've got now. so, any questions? [applause] >> yeah, the first, the first time it was voted in congress in the senate, i was wondering how

close a vote was it in the senate. and whether it was across party lines or not? >> you mean for the immediate payment? >> yeah, the immediate payment, in 1932, i think? >> yeah, yeah. i -- the numbers in the book, i don't remember the number. it's not close. it's, it's both parties are against it, primarily. >> it cuts -- it also cuts very much north and south as well. there's a lot of it. >> yes, sir? >> hi, wilbur wilson, a local writer. the bonus army wasn't an army in the strict military sense of the term. >> no. >> did you titling the book "the bogus army"? and if not, why? >> they called themselves the bonus army. and they also called themselves, the bonus expeditionary force, a takeoff on the a.e.f. in world war i. >> they were all vets. you couldn't get into this thing, you couldn't walk into a camp and say, i'm joe, i want to be in your camp.

you had to show your discharge papers. so they were legitimate. they were an army of veterans. >> if you want to make a smaller point, that's what they were, yeah. >> thank you. >> yes, sir? >> was it limited to the army? or was it also the marines and the navy? >> absolutely. there were navy guys. one of the big leaders, from a guy, a movie actor from los angeles named royal robertson, who was a real fascinating character. and a lot of fascinating characters. robertson was a navy guy. and he is a major leader from california. >> they were all paid the same, no matter what armed forces they were in? >> yeah, yeah. that was the wage, $1 a day. >> a member of the club. i missed your statement about the origin of the idea. they have the idea, it was promised to them in world war i. who promised them during the war that they would get the bonus? >> it wasn't really a promise during the war. there was, there was president

wilson came up with the idea of some kind of a life insurance policy for the men in the service. and, the idea of, of insurance began while they were overseas. when they come back, that, the talk about what are we going to do, starts to drift toward compensation pretty quickly. >> ok. so it wasn't a condition crete promise at the time of world war i? it was an idea that developed afterwards? >> right. but there were also people like pershing who said, we've got to do something for these guys. they were the working poor. the comparison to everybody else was so dramatic. and of course the other thing going on at the same time, is all the big companies were getting paid. everybody was being compensated. and these guys were really in the dark. and we have one character, who becomes he's wounded, comes back. he comes back to capitol hill. and he's been wounded in the war.

he can't get his job back with the railroads, the pennsylvania railroad. he ends up becoming the bootlegger to congress. congress can't give him his bonus. but they can give him a job selling booze to constituents. so there's a mammoth sort of hypocrisy in it all. at least to us. >> thank you. >> did dwight eisenhower, douglas mcarthur and george patton all support them in a similar way? and did any of these military leaders reveal anything about themselves or their character, that we don't usually think about them? >> the character pretty much is the same. george patton, leads the cavalry down pennsylvania avenue. his saber flashing. he write about it later. he said that half a dozen of those guys are going to have trouble sitting down for a couple of weeks. he's very much blood and guts.

he had been wounded in world war i, and had been saved, his life had been saved by a young private named angelo. angelo gets the distinguished service cross for saving patton's life. angelo is one of the vets that is being thrown out of washington in july, 1932. when angelo comes to the, to look up patton, the day after, patton tells the sergeant who has brought angelo to him, i don't know this man, take him away. patton is patton. eisenhower, right from the beginning says, let's talk about this. let's be cool, to mcarthur. and eisenhower is eisenhower. and of course, mcarthur crosses a bridge against presidential orders, just as he's going to be doing in the 1950's. so, yeah, they were all the same. their character is absolutely forged at that point, i think. >> me, too. >> yes? >> bill roist, a member of the

club. one thing i was going to ask, which fits into the prior question, is it seems to me, looking at history, one of the reasons so little of the story has been told is because of the great heroes of world war ii, and the absolute villains of this story? >> well -- >> what do you think? >> well i can't think of eisenhower as a villain. >> but mcarthur and patton, very much. you know, it just seems to me that -- i won't say it's been suppressed. but it hasn't been -- since you guys have come along. >> one of the things we really struggled with, was why was this marginalized? we're looking at all of the -- we kept grappling with this thing. we said one of the things is people don't behave the way you want them to behave. in other words, we grow up, tom and i grew up as great partisans of franklin d. roosevelt it broke our hearts to find out how they behaved.

another is a moment in the story of the two great opponents of the g.i. bill are the segregationist rank and etc. and harvard and robert maynard hutchens of chicago. the ones who had the great thoughts, they ran the great book programs. these guys fought this thing tooth and nail. hutchens write in "colliers" that if we allow these people into the universities, they'll turn the universities into an educational jungle. they were talking about the among grellization of the universities. they were opposed to it. the great schools were opposed to a g.i. bill. conan finally goes back on this. there's a lot of reasons why they think this way. a lot of people, a lot of bad people behaved well. and a lot of good people behaved bad, or something. it's hard to process if you are a maxist, a neocon. if you come into this thing with a thesis, then it falls apart. because you know -- and i think

the other thing, we had a very early on we found a thesis from a young woman from reed college, who probably wrote the best thesis of any, she was an undergraduate. she addressed this. she said, who out there is the one who decides what's an epic and what is an episode? what do we marginalize and what do we look at? if you look at this story as a bat bele for veteran's rights, then it becomes an epic. >> and then also in your comments, the fascinating thing was the roy wilkins story. that's a beauty. >> well one of the -- >> how this could possibly have affected true believers in the civil rights movement. >> well if you look at the "washington post" or "the new york times" during the coverage, the sbegdwration is never mentioned -- integration is never mentioned. it was toob ooh. it was a sign of -- taboo. and that's part of the, as paul

said, the marginalization process is that this thing is not tracking the way the conventional story goes. and once it doesn't track, then it gets marginalized. >> that's right. now i understand why you've got such good reviews, i really have. >> thank you, sir. >> yes, sir? >> i'm jerry master, member of the club. i just wonder if you sent copies of this book to george w. bush, don rumsfeld and dick cheney? they need to read it. have you sent them a copy? >> no. but -- but if you want to pay for it, we will. >> we did, early in the game, we -- we talked to people at the v.a. and we got use of the v.a. hospital. records and they were very nice to us. and i suppose we want to read it. the, so he's, this is representive of the administration.

and this is anthony j. principi, the outgoing secretary of military affairs. we put this as the opening quote of the book. >> he says that history is littered with governments, destablized by masses of veterans who believe that they have been taken for fools by a society that grew rich and fat at the expense of their hardship and suffering. ok. he says this, in 19 -- i mean in 2001. and we just thought it was a wonderful way to start the book. well, his, a couple of his aides were very upset that, that he did this. and we felt a little bit funny, did he know what he -- this is almost, this is like something out of dickens. and he, he sent us notes, very warm notes, when the book came out, saying he was proud to have set the tone for the book. set the tone for the book. so he's a good guy.