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Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34 year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. By the end of his career he had received 16 medals, five of which were for heroism. He is one of 19 people to twice receive the Medal of Honor, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. In
addition to his military achievements, he served as the Director of
Public Safety in Philadelphia for two years and was an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism. In his 1935 book War is a Racket, he described the workings of the military - industrial complex and, after retiring from service, became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s. In 1934 he was involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists had approached him to lead a military coup to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The individuals that were involved denied the existence of a plot, and
the media ridiculed the allegations. The final report of the committee
claimed that there was evidence that such a plot existed, but no
charges were ever filed. The opinion of most historians is that while
planning for a coup was not very advanced, wild schemes were discussed. Butler
continued his speaking engagements in an extended tour but in June 1940
checked himself into a naval hospital, dying a few weeks later from
what was believed to be cancer. He was buried at Oaklands Cemetery in West Chester, Pennsylvania; his home has been maintained as a memorial and contains memorabilia collected during his various careers. Smedley Butler was born July 30, 1881, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the eldest of three sons. His parents Thomas Stalker Butler and Maud (Darlington) Butler were descended from local Quaker families.
His father was a lawyer, a judge and, for 31 years, a Congressman and chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee during the Harding and Coolidge administrations. His maternal grandfather was Smedley Darlington, a Republican Congressman from 1887 - 1891. Butler attended the West Chester Friends Graded High School, followed by The Haverford School, a secondary school popular with sons of upper class Philadelphia families. A Haverford athlete, he became captain of its baseball team and quarterback of its football team. Against
the wishes of his father, he left school 38 days before his
seventeenth birthday to enlist in the Marine Corps during the Spanish – American War. Regardless,
Haverford awarded him his high school diploma on June 6, 1898, before
the end of his final year; his transcript stated he completed the
Scientific Course "with Credit".
In the anti-Spanish war fever of 1898, Butler lied about his age to receive a direct commission as a Marine second lieutenant. He trained in Washington D.C. at the Marine Barracks on the corner of 8th and I Streets. In July 1898, he went to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, arriving after the invasion and capture. His unit returned to the U.S. After a short break, he was assigned to the armored cruiser USS New York and deployed for four months. He came home to be mustered out of service in February 1899, but in April 1899, he accepted a commission as a first lieutenant in the Marine Corps. The Marines next sent him to the Manila, Philippines. On
garrison duty, with little to occupy him, he engaged in bouts of
drinking to alleviate the tedium. On one occasion he became drunk, and
was temporarily demoted from command after an unspecified incident in
his room. In October 1899, he saw his first combat action when leading 300 Marines to take the town of Noveleta, against Filipino rebels known as Insurrectos. In the initial moments of the engagement, the first sergeant in Butler's unit was wounded. Butler panicked, but regained his composure and led the Marines in pursuit of the enemy forces. By
noon the Marines had dispersed the rebels and taken the town. In the
fighting, one Marine was killed and ten were wounded. Another 50
Marines were incapacitated by the tropical Philippine heat. After the excitement of his first combat action, garrison duty again became routine. To pass the time, Butler had a very large Eagle, Globe, and Anchor tattoo that started at his throat and extended to his waist. He also met another Marine, Littleton Waller with whom he subsequently maintained a life long friendship. When Waller received command of a unit in Guam,
he was allowed to select five officers to take with him; he chose
Butler, but before they could depart, their orders were changed and
they were instead sent to China aboard the USS Solace. During the Boxer Rebellion, Butler was initially deployed at Tientsin. At the Battle of Tientsin on
July 13, 1900, he saw another officer fall with wounds and, while
climbing out of a trench to rescue him, Butler was himself shot in the
thigh. Another Marine noticed that Butler had been wounded and helped
him get to safety; in doing so that Marine was shot. Despite his
injury, Butler assisted the first officer to the rear. Four enlisted men received
the Medal of Honor in the battle. His commanding officer, Major
Littleton W.T. Waller, personally commended him in his report and
recommended that "for such reward as you may deem proper the following
officers: Lieutenant Smedley D. Butler, for the admirable control of
his men in all the fights of the week, for saving a wounded man at the
risk of his own life, and under a very severe fire." Although officers
were not then eligible to receive the Medal of Honor, Butler received a
promotion to captain by brevet while recovering in the hospital, two weeks before his nineteenth birthday. Butler was shot in the chest, at Battle of San Tan Pating, the bullet reportedly clipping part of Central America out of his tattoo. Because of his experience in China, he was eligible for the Marine Corps Brevet Medal when it was created in 1921; he was one of only 20 Marines to receive the medal. His citation reads: Between
the Honduran campaign and his next assignment, he returned to
Philadelphia. He married Ethel Conway Peters of Philadelphia in Bay Head, New Jersey, on June 30, 1905. His best man at the wedding was his former commanding officer in China, Lieutenant Colonel Littleton W.T. Waller. The couple would have three children: a daughter, Ethel Peters Butler, and two sons, Smedley Darlington, Jr. and Thomas Richard. After the Honduras campaign, Butler was assigned to garrison duty in the Philippines, where he once launched a resupply mission across the stormy waters of Subic Bay after
his isolated outpost ran out of rations. He was diagnosed as having a
nervous breakdown in 1908, and received nine months sick leave for
which he returned home. He found work as a coal miner in West Virginia, but did not find mining to his taste, and returned to active duty in the Marine Corps.
From 1909 to 1912, he served in Nicaragua, enforcing U.S. policy, and once again led his battalion to the relief of a rebel besieged city, this time Granada, and again, with a 104 degree fever. In December 1909, he commanded the 3d Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, on the Isthmus of Panama.
On August 11, 1912, he was temporarily detached to command an
expeditionary battalion with which he participated in the bombardment,
assault and capture of Coyotepe Hill, Nicaragua, in October 1912. He remained in Nicaragua until November 1912, when he rejoined the Marines of 3d Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, at Camp Elliott, Panama. Butler and his family were living in Panama in January 1914 when he was ordered to report as the Marine officer of a battleship squadron massing off the coast of Mexico, near Veracruz,
to monitor a revolutionary movement. He did not like leaving his family
and the home they had established in Panama and he intended to request
orders home as soon as he determined he was not needed. On March 1, 1914, Butler and Admiral Frank Fletcher went ashore in Veracruz and made their way to Jalapa, Mexico, and
back. A purpose of the trip was to allow Butler and Fletcher to discuss
the details of a future expedition into Mexico. Fletcher's plan
required Butler to make his way into the country and develop a more
detailed invasion plan while inside its borders. It was a spy mission
and Butler was enthusiastic to get started. When Admiral Fletcher
explained the plan to the commanders in Washington, D.C., they agreed
to it. Butler was given the go-ahead. He entered Mexico and made his
way to the U.S. Consulate in Mexico City,
posing as a railroad official named "Mr. Johnson". He and the chief
railroad inspector scoured the city, claiming to be searching for a
lost railroad employee; there was no lost employee, in fact the
employee they claimed was lost never existed. The ruse gave Butler
access to various areas of the city. In the process of the so-called
search, they located weapons in use by the Mexican army, and determined
the sizes of units and states of readiness. They updated maps and
verified the railroad lines for use in an impending US invasion. On
March 7, 1914, he returned to Veracruz with the information he had
gathered and presented it to his commanders. The invasion plan was eventually scrapped when authorities loyal to Victoriano Huerta detained a small American naval landing party in Tampico, Mexico, which became known as the Tampico Affair. When President Woodrow Wilson discovered
that an arms shipment was about to arrive in Mexico, he sent a
contingent of Marines and sailors to Veracruz to intercept it on April
21, 1914. Over the next few days, street fighting and sniper fire posed
a threat to Butler's force, but a door-to-door search routed out most
of the resistance. By April 26, the landing force of 5,800 Marines and
sailors secured the city, which they held for the next six months. By
the end of the conflict, the Americans reported 17 dead and 63 wounded
and the Mexican forces had 126 dead and 195 wounded. After the actions
at Veracruz, the United States decided to minimize the bloodshed and
changed their plans from a full invasion of Mexico to simply maintaining the city of Veracruz. For his actions on April 22, Butler was awarded his first Medal of Honor. The citation reads: After
the occupation of Veracruz, many military personnel received the Medal
of Honor, an unusually high number that diminished somewhat the
prestige of the award. The Army presented one, nine went to Marines and
46 were bestowed upon Navy personnel. During World War I, Butler, then a major,
attempted to return his Medal, explaining he had done nothing to
deserve it. The medal was returned with orders to keep it and to wear
it as well. In 1915, rebel Haitians known as Cacos killed the Haitian dictator Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. In response, the United States ordered the USS Connecticut to Haiti with Major Butler and a group of Marines on board. On October 24, 1915, 400 Cacos ambushed Butler's patrol of 44 mounted Marines when they approached Fort Dipitie.
The Marines maintained their perimeter throughout the night. The next
morning, they charged the much larger enemy force from three
directions. The startled Haitians fled, thinking that the Marines had a
much larger force. By mid November 1915, most of the Cacos had been captured or killed and the insurgency generally suppressed, except for a small force of 200 Cacos at Fort Rivière, an old French built stronghold deep in the country. Fort Rivière sat atop Montagne Noire,
with its front reachable only by a steep, rocky slope; the other three
sides fell away so sharply that an approach from those directions was
considered to be impossible. Some Marine officers argued that it should
be assaulted by a regiment supported by artillery, but Butler convinced his colonel to allow him to attack with just four companies of 24 men each, plus two machine gun detachments. For the operation, Butler was given only three companies of Marines and some sailors from the USS Connecticut.
They encircled the fort, and gradually closed in on it. Butler reached
the fort from the southern side with the 15th Company and found a small
opening in the wall. The Marines entered through the opening and
engaged the Cacos in
hand-to-hand combat. He and the Marines took the rebel stronghold on
November 17, 1915, an action for which he received his second Medal of
Honor, as well as the Haitian Medal of Honor. Only one Marine was injured in the assault when he was struck by a rock and lost two teeth. Butler's exploits impressed then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, who recommended the award based upon Butler's performance during the engagement in which all 200 Cacos were killed. Once the medal was approved and presented in 1917, Butler achieved the distinction, shared with Dan Daly, of being the only Marines to receive the Medal of Honor twice for separate actions. The citation reads: Subsequently, as the initial organizer and commanding officer of the Haitian Gendarmerie,
the native police force, Butler established a record as a capable
administrator. Under his supervision, social order, administered by the
dictatorship, was largely restored and many vital public works projects
were successfully completed. He recalled later that, during his time in Haiti, he and his troops "hunted the Cacos like pigs." During World War I, to his disappointment, Butler was not assigned to a combat command on the Western Front. He made several requests for a posting in France, writing letters to his personal friend, Major General Wendell Cushing Neville, who was at the time assistant to the then Commandant of the Marine Corps, Lieutenant General John A. Lejeune. While Butler's superiors considered him brave and brilliant, they described him as "unreliable." In October 1918, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general at the age of 37 and placed in command of Camp Pontanezen at Brest, France, a debarkation depot that funneled troops of the American Expeditionary Force to the battlefields. The camp had been plagued by horribly unsanitary, overcrowded and disorganized conditions. U.S. Secretary of War Newton Baker sent novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart to
report on the camp. She later described how Butler tackled the
sanitation issues. Butler began by solving the mud problem: "[T]he
ground under the tents was nothing but mud, [so] he had raided the
wharf at Brest of the duckboards no
longer needed for the trenches, carted the first one himself up that
four mile hill to the camp, and thus provided something in the way of
protection for the men to sleep on." General John J. Pershing authorized
a duckboard shoulder patch for the units. This earned Butler another
nickname, "Old Duckboard." For his exemplary service he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal of both the United States Army and Navy and the French Order of the Black Star. The citation for the Army Distinguished Service Medal states: The citation for the Navy Distinguished Service Medal states: Following the war, he became Commanding General of the Marine Barracks at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.
At Quantico, he transformed the wartime training camp into a permanent
Marine post. During a training exercise in western Virginia in 1921, he
was told by a local farmer that Stonewall Jackson's arm was buried nearby, to which he replied, "Bosh! I will take a squad of Marines and dig up that spot to prove you wrong!" Butler
found the arm in a box. He later replaced the wooden box with a metal
one, and reburied the arm. He left a plaque on the granite monument
marking the burial place of Jackson's arm; the plaque is no longer on
the marker but can be viewed at the Chancellorsville Battlefield
visitor's center. From 1927 to 1929, Butler was commander of the Marine Expeditionary Force in China and,
while there, cleverly parlayed his influence among various generals and
warlords to the protection of U.S. interests, ultimately winning the
public acclaim of contending Chinese leaders. When Butler returned to
the United States in 1929 he was promoted to major general,
becoming, at age 48, the youngest major general of the Marine Corps. He
directed the Quantico camp's growth until it became the "showplace" of
the Corps. Butler won national attention by taking thousands of his men on long field marches, many of which he led from the front, to Gettysburg and other Civil Warbattle sites, where they conducted large scale re-enactments before crowds of distinguished spectators. In 1931, he publicly recounted gossip about Benito Mussolini in which the dictator allegedly struck a child with his automobile in a hit-and-run accident. The Italian government protested and President Hoover, who strongly disliked Butler, forced Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams III to court-martial him.
Butler became the first general officer to be placed under arrest since
the Civil War. He apologized to Secretary Adams and the court martial
was canceled with only a reprimand. At the urging of Butler's father, in 1924, the newly elected mayor of Philadelphia W. Freeland Kendrick asked
him to leave the Marines to become the Director of Public Safety, the
official in charge of running the city's police and fire departments. Philadelphia's municipal government was notoriously corrupt and Butler initially refused. Kendrick asked President Calvin Coolidge to
intervene. Coolidge contacted Butler and authorized him to take the
necessary leave from the Corps. At the request of the President, Butler
served in the post from January 1924 until December 1925. He
began his new job by assembling all 4,000 of the city police into the
Metropolitan Opera House in shifts to introduce himself and inform them
that things would change while he was in charge. He replaced corrupt
police officers and, in some cases, switched entire units from one part
of the city to another, undermining local protection rackets and
profiteering. Within 48 hours of taking over, Butler organized raids on more than 900 speakeasies,
ordering them padlocked and, in many cases, destroyed. In addition to
raiding the speakeasies, he also attempted to eliminate other illegal
activities: bootlegging, prostitution, gambling and police corruption.
More zealous than he was political, he ordered crackdowns on the social
elite's favorite hangouts, such as the Ritz - Carlton and the Union League, as well as on drinking establishments that served the working class. Although
he was effective in reducing crime and police corruption, he was a
controversial leader. In one instance he made a statement that he would
promote the first officer to kill a bandit and stated, "I don't believe
there is a single bandit notch on a policeman's guns [sic] in this city, go out and get some." Although many of the local citizens and police felt that the raids were just a show, the raids continued for several weeks. He
implemented programs to improve city safety and security. He
established policies and guidelines of administration, and developed a
Philadelphia police uniform that resembled that of the Marine Corps. Other changes included military style checkpoints into the city, bandit chasing squads armed with sawed-off shotguns, and armored police cars. The
press began reporting on the good and the bad aspects of Butler's
personal war on crime. The reports praised the new uniforms, the new
programs and the reductions in crime but they also reflected the
public's negative opinion of their new Public Safety director. Many
felt that he was being too aggressive in his tactics and resented the
reductions in their civil rights, such as the stopping of citizens at
the city checkpoints. Butler frequently swore in his radio addresses,
causing many citizens to suggest his behavior, particularly his
language, was inappropriate for someone of his rank and stature. Some
even suggested Butler acted like a military dictator, even claiming
that he inappropriately used active duty Marines in some of his raids. Major
R.A. Haynes, the federal Prohibition commissioner, visited the city in
1924, six months after Butler was appointed. He announced that "great
progress" had been made in the city and attributed that success to Butler. Eventually
Butler's leadership style and the directness of actions undermined his
support within the community. His departure seemed imminent. Mayor
Kendrick reported to the press, "I had the guts to bring General Butler
to Philadelphia and I have the guts to fire him." Feeling that his duties in Philadelphia were coming to an end, Butler contacted
General Lejeune to prepare for his return to the Marine Corps. Not all
of the city felt he was doing a bad job though and when the news
started to break that he would be leaving, people began to gather at the Academy of Music.
A group of 4,000 supporters assembled and negotiated a truce between
him and the mayor to keep him in Philadelphia for a while longer, and
the President authorized a one year extension for him. His
second year focused on executing arrest warrants, cracking down on
crooked police and enforcing prohibition. On January 1, 1926, his leave
from the Marine Corps ended and the President declined a request for a
third extension. Butler received orders to report to San Diego and he prepared his family and his belongings for the new assignment. In
light of his pending departure, Butler began to defy the Mayor and
other key city officials. On the eve of his departure, he had an
article printed in the paper stating his intention to stay and "finish
the job". The mayor was surprised and furious when he read the press release the next morning and demanded his resignation. After
almost two years in office, Butler resigned under pressure, stating
later that "cleaning up Philadelphia was worse than any battle I was
ever in."
Even
before retiring from the Corps, Butler began developing his post-Corps
career. In May 1931, he took part in a commission established by Oregon Governor Julius L. Meier. The commission laid the foundations for the Oregon State Police. He
began lecturing at events and conferences and after his retirement from
the Marines in 1931, he took this up full time. He donated much of his
earnings from his lucrative lecture circuits to the Philadelphia
unemployment relief. He toured the western United States, making 60
speeches before returning for his daughter's marriage to Marine aviator
Lieutenant John Wehle. Her wedding was the only time that he wore his
dress blue uniform after he left the Marines. He became widely known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering, U.S. military adventurism, and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States. In December 1933, Butler toured the country with James E. Van Zandt to recruit members for the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). He described their effort as "trying to educate the soldiers out of the sucker class." In his speeches he denounced the Economy Act of
1933, called on veterans to organize politically to win their benefits,
and condemned the FDR administration for its ties to big business. The
VFW reprinted one of his speeches with the title "You Got to Get Mad"
in its magazine Foreign Service. He said: "I believe in... taking Wall St. by the throat and shaking it up." He believed the American Legion was
controlled by banking interests. On December 8, 1933, explaining why he
believed veterans' interests were better served by the VFW than the
American Legion, he said: "I said I have never known one leader of the
American Legion who had never sold them out – and I mean it." In addition to his speeches to pacifist groups, he served from 1935 to 1937 as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism. In 1935 he wrote the exposé War Is a Racket, a trenchant condemnation of the profit motive
behind warfare. His views on the subject are summarized in the
following passage from a 1935 issue of the socialist magazine Common Sense: I
spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during
that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big
Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer,
a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico
safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I
helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International
Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 – 1912. I brought light to the
Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped
make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China
in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way
unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few
hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three
districts. I operated on three continents. In November 1934, Butler alleged the existence of a political conspiracy of Wall Street interests to overthrow President Roosevelt, a series of allegations that came to be known in the media as the Business Plot. A special committee of the House of Representatives headed by Representatives John W. McCormack of Massachusetts and Samuel Dickstein of New York, who was later revealed to have been a paid agent of the NKVD, heard his testimony in secret. The McCormack - Dickstein committee was a precursor to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In
November 1934, Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen,
claiming to be backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and
others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been
asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with
Grayson M–P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was
backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably
to be assembled in Washington, D.C., the following year. All the parties
alleged to be involved, including Johnson, said there was no truth in
the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy. In
its report, the committee stated that it was unable to confirm Butler's
statements other than the proposal from MacGuire, which it considered more or less confirmed by MacGuire's European reports. No prosecutions or further investigations followed, and historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, although most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed. The news media initially dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax". When the committee's final report was released, the Times said
the committee "purported to report that a two month investigation had
convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on
Washington was alarmingly true" and "... also alleged that definite
proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on
Washington, which was to have been led by Major. Gen. Smedley D.
Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually
contemplated". The
McCormack-Dickstein Committee confirmed some of Butler's accusations in
its final report. "In the last few weeks of the committee's official
life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an
attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country... There is
no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might
have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed
it expedient." In
June 1940, Butler checked himself into the hospital after becoming sick
a few weeks earlier. His doctor described his illness as an incurable
condition of the upper gastro-intestinal tract that was probably
cancer. His family remained by his side, even bringing his new car so
he could see it from the window. He never had a chance to drive it. On
June 21, 1940, Smedley Butler died in the Naval Hospital in
Philadelphia. The
funeral was held at his home, attended by friends and family as well as
several politicians, members of the Philadelphia police force and
officers of the Marine Corps. He was buried at Oaklands Cemetery in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Since
his death in 1940, his family has maintained his home as it was when he
died, including a large amount of memorabilia he had collected
throughout his varied career. |