Why Are There Nine Supreme Court Justices?

For absolutely no reason at all I thought we'd spend a little time talking about the Justices of the Supreme Court, specifically, why are there nine of them? 

The Constitution...well, the Constitution isn't a foolproof document. It's not, you know, the Bible. The Constitution doesn't address the rights of people of color, or women. As it relates to the function of the Supreme Court the Constitution doesn't even outline what the exact power of the Supreme Court would be, nor does it explain how the Judicial Branch should be organized, nor does it even set out how many justices should sit on the Supreme Court, their qualifications, age, experience, or even citizenship. The only reason there's a Chief Justice at all comes from Article 1 Section 3 in which it says, in reference to impeachment proceedings:

When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no person shall be convicted without the concurrent of two thirds of the members present. 

Like a lot of issues the United States would encounter - be it slavery or women's rights - if you look to the Constitution for guidance, you're likely to find that the Founding Fathers (in all their infinite wisdom) kicked the can down the road for someone else to deal with. The Constitution of the United States was ratified so as to replace the Articles of Confederation because, buddy, the Articles of Confederation sucked.

So when the Washington administration and the 1st Congress took office, figuring out the judiciary system was fairly important - the first bill to come before the Senate was "An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States," or Judiciary Act of 1789. It established the "structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system," as well as creating the office of the Attorney General. The basic system established with the Judiciary Act of 1789 is basically the same today, with a few changes here and there. We'll get into those in a minute.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 divided the country into 13 judicial districts (one for each state) which were then organized into an Eastern, Middle, and Southern District. Initially there was a Chief Justice and five Associate Justices. That makes six - two for each District. Until 1890 the Justices of the Supreme Court were obligated to "ride circuit" and hold court twice a year in each judicial district. What about 3-3 ties? Maeva Marcus, a research professor at George Washington University and the director of GWU's Institute for Constitutional History, said they weren't worried about that because they were all Federalists, anyway.

After declining Washington's offer to become his first Secretary of State, New York's John Jay accepted the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court hoping that the judicial branch would be on equal footing with the executive and legislative branches. The first real test was 1793's Chisholm v. Georgia. The State of Georgia had purchased supplies from South Carolina merchant Captain Robert Farquhar during the Revolutionary War, but later refused to pay because Farquhar was a British loyalist. After Farquhar died, Alexander Chisholm became executor of Farquhar's estate, and promptly sued the State of Georgia in the Supreme Court for the unpaid amount (this was A Thing at the time). Upon notice of the lawsuit, Georgia said it was immune from lawsuits because it was a sovereign state, and just...didn't show up. 

On its face, Georgia's was a preposterous argument. Article III Section 2 of the Constitution says federal courts can decided cases "between a State and citizens of another State." They ruled in Chisholm's favor, ordering Georgia to pay up. Remember that - at the time - there were two political parties: Federalists (like Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) and Anti-Federalists (like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison), whose entire platform was to support the opposite of whatever the Federalists wanted. As soon as the Supreme Court ruled against Georgia, it led to an outcry against the overreach of the federal government - precisely what the Anti-Federalists feared. Georgia still said they wouldn't pay. John Jay quit the Supreme Court to be the governor of New York, angry over the lack of respect for the judiciary as well as the demands of riding the circuit, given the transportation quality of late-18th century American roads. By 1795 Congress had passed and the states had ratified the 11th Amendment, which said the judicial branch's power doesn't extend to lawsuits brought against a State by a citizen of another state or foreign country. Congress neutered the Supreme Court...for a while.

There were three Chief Justices in the first eleven years of the Supreme Court from 1789-1800: Jay, John Rutledge (who lasted just over four months because he served in an interim capacity during a Congressional recess. When Congress returned from recess, the Senate didn't confirm him and his nomination was withdrawn. Nevertheless his four months count) and Oliver Ellsworth (who wrote the Judiciary Act of 1789). Ellsworth's term lasted the duration of the Adams administration, and retired because of "the gravel and the gout" in his kidneys.

This is where things get a little weird with the executive branch and the judiciary. Over the course of the campaign for the presidency in 1800, the incumbent Federalist John Adams and Secretary of State/OG Anti-Federalist (who by this point went by the Republicans) Thomas Jefferson waged a bitter war more reminiscent of recent political campaign history than what you would expect. 

The Federalists called Jefferson an "atheist in religion, and a fanatic in politics" (history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme). Yale President Timothy Dwight said a Jefferson presidency would result in the Bible being "cast into a bonfire, our holy worship changed in a dance of Jacobin [frenzy], our wives and daughters dishonored, and our sons converted into the disciples of Voltaire...Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, the nation black with crimes."

Federalist newspapers warned prospective voters (i.e., White Dudes) with excessive use of All-Caps:

Shall I continue in allegiance to GOD - AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT; or impiously declare for JEFFERSON - AND NO GOD!

Thomas Jefferson - or, rather, James Callender (who is responsible for spilling the beans about Jefferson and Sally Hemings), a friendly newspaper editor, fired back by saying that Adams had a "hideous hermaphroditical character which as neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Devastating. The election of 1800 is deserving of a separate post. Basically, Jefferson and his proposed vice president Aaron Burr tied in the electoral college. After some shenanigans from Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton convinced his fellow Federalists that it was better to give their vote to a Jefferson, who at least was somewhat consistent and seemed to believe in something, rather than Burr, the guy who (wait for it) "would do anything to get his hands on power." 

By December 1800 Adams didn't know who would be president, but he knew it wouldn't be him. he was trying to find a new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to replace Ellsworth. Congress was soon to debate reducing the number of Supreme Court Justices from the six that Washington had set to five, in order to avoid ties, and Adams thought it improper to nominate a sixth member of the Supreme Court while Congress was debating such a bill. He nominated Secretary of State John Marshall, mainly so that Jefferson wouldn't get to do it. The Senate wasn't happy, as it was a surprise nomination, but they didn't have much time before the Jefferson Administration was running the show, and figured that even a bad Federalist was still better than a Jeffersonian Republican. John Marshall was confirmed as Chief Justice on February 4, 1801. They still did not know who would be president, but for a month (the inauguration was then on March 4) Marshall served both as Adams' Secretary of State and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

On February 17, 1801 Jefferson prevailed over Burr on the 36th ballot. Burr would be Jefferson's vice president for the next four years which was likely extremely awkward. John Adams finished 3rd. He and his son John Quincy Adams would be the only one-term presidents until 1840. 

While Adams peacefully left office after such a bitter campaign, he and the Federalists did do one thing that would eventually give the Supreme Court the power John Jay so desperately desired: they installed as many Federalist judges as they could until the day of Jefferson's inauguration, which Adams did not stay to attend, so as to place a check on the Jefferson Administration.

On March 2, 1801 - two days before Jefferson's inauguration - Adams submitted 42 judicial appointments to the Senate, which they confirmed on March 3, with Jefferson's inauguration on March 4. When Jefferson saw the commissions for these "Midnight Judges" (or Midnight Appointments) he told his Secretary of State (and future president) James Madison to simply not deliver the commissions to four of the intended judges. Later that month Jefferson wrote Henry Knox [edited for clarity]:

This outrage on decency shall not have its effect, except in the life appointments which are irremovable, but as to the others I consider the nominations as nullities & will not view the persons appointed as even candidates for their office, much less as possessing it by any title meriting respect.

One of these commission-rich but appointment-poor judges was named Stephon William Marbury, appointed to be the Justice of the Peace in Washington, D.C. When Marbury did not receive his commission, he appealed to the Supreme Court, led by...Chief Justice - and Adams' Secretary of State - John Marshall. Marbury v. Madison, which was handed down on February 24, 1803, is the first truly landmark case in Supreme Court history. 

Marshall decided, through some actually brilliant legal analysis, that the Supreme Court's power was too narrow under the powers vested by the Constitution to decide the fate of Marbury's appointment. I'll turn it over to Kent State:

The Constitution, [Marshall] concluded, allowed the Supreme Court 'original jurisdiction' in only a limited number of specified situations, and they did not include the kind of order Marbury asked for. Since Marbury was only following the guidelines of a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789, Marshall concluded that this provision was unconstitutional. 

Jefferson was pissed, but Marshall's ruling didn't give anything for Jefferson to punch at, since the Court itself was refusing to grant the power under the Judiciary Act. Marbury v. Madison also established the precedent of Judicial Review - in which the Supreme Court now had the power to rule laws passed by Congress as unconstitutional. 

In a clap-back by Jefferson's Republicans, they impeached Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1805 for politicizing his seat on the bench, "tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan," having continually referred to Jefferson and the Republicans as atheists. The Senate, which consisted of 25 Jeffersonian Republicans and nine Federalists, acquitted Chase - because being combative isn't necessarily treason - and he remained on the Supreme Court until his death in 1811. Regular reminder that successfully impeaching anyone is hard, and that's on purpose. 

After Marbury v. Madison and the acquittal of Samuel Chase, finally the Supreme Court was on equal footing with the other branches of government. That was a very long aside, but it's important to know how the Supreme Court was elevated from a branch that Georgia could just drop like 3rd Period French to being the Scissors in Governmental Rock, Paper, Scissors. 

Anyhow, the number of Supreme Court justices changed six times before 1869. One of those times was another lame-duck Adams/Federalist attempt to reduce the power of Jefferson with the Judiciary Act of 1801, which reduced the number of Supreme Court justices from six to five...beginning with the next vacancy meaning that Jefferson would have to wait for two vacancies before he could nominate a Republican. Petty af. That act was repealed almost immediately, returning the number of justices to six. 

As the United States expanded west, however, it increased the number of circuit courts. In 1837 the number of district circuit courts were expanded, which resulted in Andrew Jackson nominating two additional Justices. By 1857 there were nine circuit courts, meaning there were nine Supreme Court Justices. Who establishes the number of these particular courts? Congress. In 1863 a 10th court was added to cover California/Oregon and, frustrated over Dred Scott v. Sandford, Lincoln added a 10th Supreme Court justice to ensure an anti-slavery majority. After Lincoln was assassinated and the extremely problematic Andrew Johnson had already vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress reduced the number of Supreme Court justices to seven in an effort to make sure he couldn't fill a vacant seat. With the passage of the Judiciary Act of 1869, the number of Supreme Court justices was increased from Johnson's seven back to nine, including one Chief Justice, as a gift to President Ulysses S. Grant. Nine Supreme Court Justices has been the number ever since, though there were some challenges.

By the 1930s the Supreme Court was extremely Republican, which wasn't exactly what President Franklin D. Roosevelt was looking for when he was trying to get New Deal legislation passed. Four of the nine members of the Supreme Court: Pierce Butler (confirmed 1922), James McReynolds (confirmed 1914), George Sutherland (confirmed 1922), and Willis Van Deventer (confirmed 1903) - straight-up hated the New Deal. Known as the Four Horsemen, they gained a majority when the Herbert Hoover-appointed Owen Roberts, in his Age 60 season was the youngest of that particular iteration of the Supreme Court, started to vote with the elder statesmen to make a conservative majority on the Court, started to invalidate key pieces of FDR's New Deal. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes was the Secretary of State for Republican presidents Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover, struck down an impressive amount of New Deal legislation - including a minimum wage for women and children, for God's sake. 

Roosevelt was tired of it. Thanks to the vagaries of the Constitution he didn't need an amendment to change the composition of the Supreme Court but he did need Congress. The 75th Congress (1937-1939) enjoyed a Democratic super-majority thanks to the popularity of FDR and the New Deal. In February 1937, emboldened at the outset of a 2nd term as president, FDR proposed adding an additional Justice for any Supreme Court justice over the age of 70. That number, at the time, would bring six additional Justices to the Supreme Court - of his choosing - resulting in a Supreme Court of 15 members. This was FDR's infamous Court-Packing Scheme. Eventually FDR backed down after two justices upheld the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act, but that was the last major effort to change the very structure of the Supreme Court. 

I know we all like to think that this country is based on hallowed traditions, but one of those traditions is the petty tinkering with institutions based on how it benefits the party in power in that particular instance. That said, the precedent for an equal number of Supreme Court Justices for every district court has long been established. And right now? There are 12 regional circuits.

The Adjustment Compensation Act of 1924, the Bonus Army, and a Hurricane

Five years after the Treaty of Versailles, Congress approved the Adjustment Compensation Act of 1924, in which World War 1 veterans would get a financial bonus for their service. This was a far-too-late effort by the government to thank the American Expeditionary Force, seeing as how the government did almost nothing to support returning veterans. World War I killed more people than all European wars from 1790-1914 combined. This bonus for veterans was years in the making. Congress had attempted to give veterans a bonus in 1922, but President Warren G. Harding vetoed it, saying a balanced budget took precedence over compensating veterans. This capped off a year that saw Harding's administration rocked by the Teapot Dome Scandal, the creation of the Federal Narcotics Control Board - a forerunner to the DEA - and the United Mine Workers v. Colorado Coal Co. Supreme Court case that held striking workers liable for damage inflicted (an effort to get labor unions under control). Anyway, Harding was a terrible president, and a worse husband.

Harding died of a heart attack just over two years into his term, succeeded by his vice president Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge came to national prominence in 1919 when, as governor of Massachusetts, he stamped out a police strike as they tried to unionize. "Silent Cal" was sworn in to the office of the presidency in the middle of the night by his father, a justice of the peace, and then went back to bed. This is the most Calvin Coolidge thing ever. He then proceeded to try to say and do as little as possible to get in the way of the growing post-WW1 recession economy. His most famous quote is "the business of America is business," but the actual wording isn't quite right, though the sentiment is probably spot-on.

The bill to compensate WW1 veterans with a bonus was introduced by Rep. Wright Patman (D-TX, who represented an area just southwest of Texarkana), himself a WW1 veteran. With Harding out of the way, millions of people signed a petition to compensate the WW1 veterans - since their regular wages were far less than military wages, if they were able to get their jobs back - for their service. Even Congressmen who supported the bonus dismissed the petition. Rep. Walter Lineberger (R-CA) said the petition was "pageant" to "commercialize or politicize patriotism," and would require a sales tax to pay it. Coolidge vetoed it, saying, "Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism." The Republican-controlled House of Representatives overrode Silent Cal's veto.

The bonus, $1 for each day of domestic service in the military and $1.25 for each day of overseas service (on average it would be about $500 - maybe half of the average annual income), was scheduled to be payable in 1945. If the total owed was less than $50, the bonus was to be paid immediately. Veterans referred to this as the "Tombstone Bonus," as the easiest way to collect the reward for "shell-shock" (the 1920s definition of PTSD) was to simply die and let your family reap the benefits.

Fast forward five more years to October 1929 and the stock market crash. Herbert Hoover had been in office for not even eight months yet. Unfortunately for Hoover, he gave a campaign speech in which he declared:
We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. We shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

That quote aged...poorly. The unemployment rate in 1929 was about 3.2%, then the stock market crashed. In 1930 it was 8.7%. By 1931 it was 15.9%. In 1932 it was 23.6%, and would peak in 1933 at an astonishing 24.9%. Part of Hoover's issue was that he was orphaned by Age 9 and had grown up in poverty, but overcame those obstacles to graduate from the newly-established Stanford University. Hoover became a geologist, earning a fortune in mining and consulting. He proposed by telegraph (his wife, the only female geology major at Stanford, accepted in a return cable). In World War I, Hoover oversaw the evacuation of 120,000 Americans in Europe and privately helped raise millions of dollars for Belgium. He ran the U.S. Food Administration, convincing millions of Americans to ration for the war effort. Hoover was a contender for the Republican nomination for President in 1920, but was blocked because of his support for Wilson's League of Nations. Instead he became Harding - and Coolidge's - Secretary of Commerce.

Hoover believed in what he referred to as "Rugged Individualism." In a 1928 campaign speech, Hoover:
When [WW1] closed, the most vital issues both in our country and around the world was whether government should continue their wartime ownership and operation of many [instruments] of production and distribution. We were challenged with a...choice between the American system of rugged individualism and a European philosophy of a diametrically opposed doctrines - doctrines of paternalism and state socialism. The acceptance of these ideas would have meant the destruction of self-government through centralization...[and] the undermining of the individual initiative and enterprise through which our people have grown to unparalleled greatness.

Essentially, the more the government is involved, the worse it is. Rugged Individualism, or a fancy way of saying "self-reliance" was what Hoover knew. What separated Europe from America, according to Hoover, was that Americans weren't coddled by their government. Relying on government programs to get by was one thing in a war, but anything else? That's a conversation-ender, for Hoover.

So when the stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression, and then the double-whammy of the Dust Bowl, Hoover wasn't psychologically prepared to lead a government response worthy of the crisis. If the government intervened too much, so Hoover's philosophy went, it would impede capitalism and the will of the people to incentivize work. As banks foreclosed on homes, American citizens built make-shift homes out of scrap metal and cardboard and called their neighborhoods "Hoovervilles," quite a departure from just 10 years earlier when to "Hooverize" something meant a valiant, patriotic effort to conserve goods for the greater national interest.

In his 1930 State of the Union address, given in December - a full 14 months after the stock market crash - Hoover doubled-down:
No matter how devised, an increase in taxes in the end falls upon the workers and farmers, or alternately deprives industry of that much ability to give employment and defeats the very purpose of these schemes...Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the Public Treasury...Many of these measures are being promoted by organizations and agencies outside of Congress and being pushed upon Members of Congress. Some of them are mistaken as to the results they will accomplish and they are all mistaken as to the ability of the Federal Government to undertake such burdens. Some of these outside agencies are also engaged in promoting political purposes. The American people will not be misled by such tactics. 

Hoover believed that most of the relief should come from volunteer efforts of churches and other charitable organizations, and anyone who still might be rich. But what he wanted in regards was far too voluntary.

Anyhow, back to the wave of veterans marching towards Washington in May 1932 wanting their Congressionally-approved bonus to be paid in the middle of the Great Depression: "This country is not broke," said Will Rogers of the Tombstone Bonus, "If we owed it to some Foreign Nation you would talk about honor and then pay it."

Rep. Patman's bill caught the attention of former U.S. Army sergeant Walter W. Waters of Portland, Oregon, who found himself unemployed. As Patman's bill didn't...really gain any traction in Congress, Waters got frustrated with the realization that various special interests were getting taken care of financially, while WW1 veterans and pretty much every other group of Regular People languished.

To be fair, Hoover tried to do a few things, but it was literally too little and way too late. In early 1932 - an election year - Hoover signed into effect the Reconstruction Finance Corporation "to provide emergency financing facilities for financial institutions, to aid in financing agriculture, commerce, and industry," as well as the Banking Act of 1932 "to improve the facilities of the Federal Reserve system for the service of commerce, industry, and agriculture, to provide means for meeting the needs of member banks in exceptional circumstances."

Waters met with other unemployed Portland veterans and started to discuss the idea of meeting in person with Congress. When Patman's bill got shelved around May 11, Waters' mind was already made up. He started giving speeches in support of the early payment of the bonus, transcripts of those speeches made their way into the West Coast newspapers. On May 17, 1932 the Bonus Expeditionary Force (a nod to the American Expeditionary Force) - counting members from all over the west coast, the majority of them wearing their old khaki shirts - departed from Portland on a train bound for Washington. Rail officials loaned a freight train to the "Bonus Army." People met the trains with foodArriving in Iowa the following day, the Bonus Army hitched rides or walked the rest of the way to Washington. By June 1, there were over 1,500 men (and some families) were in Washington.

World War I veteran and novelist John Dos Passos said, "The March was a spontaneous movement of protest, arising in virtually every one of the forty-eight states."

The Bonus Army set up Hoovervilles in three major places in and around Washington: 12th Street & B Street NW (less than a mile from the White House), 3rd Street & Pennsylvania Avenue NW (less than half a mile from the U.S. Capitol building), and the largest camp was in the Anacostia Flats, and called their new home "Camp Bartlett" in honor of the former assistant postmaster general and former governor of New Hampshire John H. Bartlett, who let them stay there.

Hoover's press secretary, Theodore Joslin, said "The marchers have rapidly turned from bonus seekers to communists or bums." Over at the Bureau of Investigation, a young J. Edgar Hoover began efforts to coordinate evidence of communist activity within the Bonus Army.

Brigadier General Pelham D. Glassford was the police superintendent for Washington, D.C. He asked Congress for $75,000 to provide food for the Bonus Army. Congress said no. On June 15, the day after Rep. Edward Eslick (D-TN) died of a heart attack while speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives in favor of the bill, with the Bonus Army's numbers in Washington numbering 20,000, the Democratic-led House of Representatives voted to approve immediate payment of the bonus. The Republican-controlled Senate rejected it on June 17 (by a 62-18 vote, and the majority wasn't *that* large) and Hoover had already said he would veto the bill were it to have passed the Senate.

Glassford provided almost $800 of his own money for supplies. The camp quickly became a local attraction. Washingtonians brought sleeping bags, food, and cigarettes to the veterans. Evalyn Walsh McLean, a Washington socialite and the wife of Washington Post owner Edward McLean (and the last private owner of the Hope Diamond), went with Glassford to a diner in the middle of the night and ordered one thousand sandwiches and a thousand packs of cigarettes to give to the Bonus Army. The camp was led by Waters, who ran it like a military outpost. They had named streets, a post office, a library, a barber shop. There were educational classes for the children, a newspaper for the residents, as well as Vaudeville acts and boxing matches. Alcohol was prohibited, as were weapons, fighting, and begging. Communists weren't allowed to join in at all, so their motives couldn't be misconstrued by Congress, or Hoover, or anyone who was following along with the newspapers that their goal was simply a handout. The camps were integrated, as well, with one black Bonus Army member saying it was "the first massive integrated effort I can remember." Civil rights activist Roy Wilkins wrote, "There was one absentee [in the Bonus Army]: James Crow."

By July 1932, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was approved to loan money to state and local governments for infrastructure projects which would look remarkably like Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. Vice President Charles Curtis was reportedly "unnerved" at the sight of the Bonus Army near his office on July 14 - the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Later that month, as the temperature soared, so did the tensions. On July 28, 1932 Hoover sent in the troops to clear out the Bonus Army from Washington. You may wonder about the recently-referred to 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the military from enforcing the law. Washington DC was exempt from this law, as DC was under direct Congressional control.

Among those getting a taste of military action were George O. Patton and Douglas MacArthur. The Army used tear gas and bayonets to clear out the camps. Tanks with machine guns attempted to clear out the 3rd Street camp. Patton beat the piss out of a veteran named Joe Angelo, who had actually saved Patton's life when he was but a Colonel in World War I. Asked about this, Patton said, "Undoubtedly this man saved my life, but his several accounts of the incident vary from the true facts." Fire from detonating grenades set shanties on fire, tear gas mixing with black smoke.

Active duty military tasked with clearing the vets out said, "We hate this more than they do, but they brought it on themselves." Two veterans were killed by gunfire. Douglas MacArthur burned the camp at Anacostia Flats. A 16-year old named Fred Blancher said:
Those guys got in there and they start waving their sabers, chasing these veterans out, and they sart shooting tear gas. There was just so much noise and confusion, hollering and there was smoke and haze. People couldn't breathe. 

A bystander yelled at Douglas MacArthur, "The American flag means nothing to me after this!" and only piped down when MacArthur threatened him with arrest. Hoover gave a statement that read, "An examination of a large number of names discloses the fact that a considerable part of those remaining are not veterans, many are Communists and persons with criminal records." This, obviously, flew in the face of Waters' rules, regulations, and efforts to legitimize the Bonus Army from the jump. Future Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, and president, Dwight D. Eisenhower told Stephen Ambrose of MacArthur, "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch he had no business going down there."

At 11pm that night (July 28) MacArthur gave a press conference:
Had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for twenty-four hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle. Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our Government would have been severely threatened. 

Hecklers disrupted Vice President Curtis' speech in Las Vegas the next day, to which Curtis replied, "You cowards! I'm not afraid of any of you!" These were the optics they chose. The Associated Press released a list of editorial reactions and found that 21 out of 30 newspapers generally supported the government's response. The Chicago Herald and Examiner dissented, referring to Hoover's actions as "Sheer stupidity...without parallel in American annals." Hoover biographer David Burner:
In the minds of most analysts, whatever doubt had remained about the outcome of the presidential election was now gone: Hoover was going to lose. The Bonus Army was his final failure, his symbolic end.

The 1932 election was a rout. Combining Hoover's lack of response to the Great Depression with that summer's tear-gassing and bayoneting of veterans that was showing in newsreels across the country, Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-NY) handily won the Electoral College 472-59.

Now what was left of the Bonus Army - about 3,000 - was FDR's issue. Eleanor Roosevelt went out to a camp that FDR had repurposed to house them, and participated in a sing-along, in the mud and rain. FDR's New Deal legislation was hiring people to go to work. Almost 2,600 Bonus Army members accepted an offer to join the Civilian Conservation Corps for $1 a day plus room & board. A number were sent to Florida, where they were put to work in the Upper Keys building bridges for a highway from Miami to Key West.

On September 2, 1935 a hurricane slammed into the Upper Keys, a direct hit on the camp, with estimated winds of 200mph. The barometer near the eye of the storm fell to almost 26.00. September 2 was Labor Day Weekend, and so trucks that could have been used to evacuate the area were locked up. The government sent a train to rescue the veterans. At first the train was delayed. The storm surge then derailed the train when it was just a couple of miles from the camp. At least 256 Bonus Army members plus a number of locals were killed for a death toll of at least 408. Key West resident Ernest Hemingway wrote, "the veterans in those camps were practically murdered."

In 1936, the House and Senate finally passed a bill to pay World War I veterans early. President Roosevelt vetoed it, twice. Roosevelt said, of the Bonus Army:
The veteran who is disabled owes his condition to the war. The healthy veteran who is unemployed owes his troubles to the Depression.

Congress overrode FDR's vetoes and the payments were distributed. $2 billion was eventually given to three million World War I veterans. By this time Walter W. Waters of Oregon had become inspired by the images of the fascist black- and brown-shirt movements in Europe, and tried to become the head of a "Khaki Shirt Movement" to deal with the emergency of the Great Depression. The newspaper published by the Bonus Army had this to say:
Inevitably such an organization brings up comparisons with the Facisti (sic) of Italy and the NAZI (sic) of Germany...for five years Hitler was lampooned and derided, but today he controls Germany. Mussolini, before the war was a tramp printer driven from Italy because of his political views. But today he is a world figure. The Khaki Shirts, however, would be essentially American.

You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Hitler and Mussolini. Waters, referred to as "Hot Waters" and rejected by various veterans groups, enlisted in the Navy in World War 2 and died in 1959.

Determined to take better care of veterans, Congress passed (and FDR signed) the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill. Almost eight million veterans of World War II took advantage of the GI Bill to go to school, begin paid on-the-job training, buy a house or a farm, or start a business. This program did more to fuel the rise of the postwar American economy than any other.

A Short-ish History of Breckinridge Long and the Issue of Allowing Immigrants into the United States

Samuel Miller Breckinridge Long was born in St. Louis, Missouri on May 16, 1881, a member of the storied Breckinridge family (who earlier spelled it "Breckenridge," but that's neither here nor there). Notable Breckinridges include:

-Robert Breckinridge: Virginia militia captain during the French & Indian War.
-Alexander Breckinridge: Son (John Floyd) was the 25th governor of Virginia.
-Robert Breckinridge, Jr.: Ratifier of the Constitution and later Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives.
-John Breckinridge: Senator from Kentucky and later Thomas Jefferson's Attorney General (1805-1806).
-James Breckinridge: Virginia House delegate (1789-1802, 1806-1808), member of the House of Representatives (1809-1817), Virginia House delegate (1819-1821, 1823-1824).
-Letitia Breckinridge: Second husband was Peter B. Porter, twice New York representative to the House and U.S. Secretary of War (1828-1829).
-John Cabell Breckinridge: U.S. Army Major, U.S. Representative from Kentucky (1851-1855), Vice-President under James Buchanan (the youngest ever VP), Candidate for President in the 1860 Election.*

*Breckinridge, a native Kentuckian, had the support of the Southern Democrats thanks to his stance on preserving slavery. He split the Democratic vote with Stephen Douglas (see previous "When did Republicans/Democrats switch platforms?" post), who favored Popular Sovereignty, or letting each state make their own decision on slavery. This split paved the way for Lincoln to take 180 electoral votes and the presidency, and for the South to secede from the Union.

-William Campbell Preston Breckinridge: U.S. Representative from Kentucky (1885-1895). Married Lucretia Hart Clay, granddaughter of Henry Clay.
-Ethelbert Dudley Warfield: President of Miami University, Lafayette College, and the director of Princeton Theological Seminary.
-John Cabell Breckinridge II: New York attorney, married Isabella Goodrich, daughter of B.F. Goodrich, founder of the B.F. Goodrich Company.
-Henry Skillman Breckinridge: One of Charles Lindbergh's lawyers during the Lindbergh kidnapping trial. Henry S. Breckinridge was the only serious (though not, like serious serious) challenger to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 Republican primaries, running against the New Deal.

That's a lot of family history, but the Breckinridges are a storied family in American political history.

Charles Lindbergh's involvement with the family is somewhat notable, as Lindbergh would go on to be the face of the America First movement, advocating for the U.S. foreign policy of "leave Nazi Germany alone." Henry Breckinridge, a longtime friend of Lindbergh and his personal attorney, was the first person Lindbergh called when he discovered that his son had been kidnapped. Lindbergh would later write Breckinridge after touring Germany, in regards to Nazi Germany:
(There is) a spirit in Germany which I have not seen in any other country. There is certainly great ability, and I am inclined to think more intelligent leadership than is generally recognized. A person would have to be blind not to realize that they have already built up tremendous strength.

It's hard to determine how close Henry Breckinridge was with Breckinridge Long, but they were only five years apart in age, and both involved in government affairs.

Anyhow, to Breckinridge Long. Long graduated from Princeton in 1904, Washington University School of Law, and got a Master's from Princeton in 1909. Long was admitted to the Missouri bar and opened a law office in St. Louis. Long supported Woodrow Wilson (and is credited with coining Wilson's successful 1916 re-election campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war," which Wilson did...for about another year). Shortly after Wilson won re-election, Long joined the State Department as Third Assistant Secretary of State but left in 1920 to unsuccessfully run for Senate (and took another L in 1922). While working for Wilson, Long became familiar with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy (it was not lost on FDR that his 5th cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, was also Assistant Secretary of the Navy in McKinley's administration.).

Long supported FDR's candidacy for president in 1932 and was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Italy in 1933. While in Rome, Long wrote back to Washington praising Mussolini and his regime for their "well-paved streets," the "dapper" black-shirted stormtroopers, and their seemingly always on-time trains.

He returned to private life in 1936, but still had some Opinions. Long said of the Anschluss (the German annexation of Austria in 1938), that it was cool because "the Germans were the only people with the intelligence and courage to bring peace between the Rhine and Black Sea."

Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book "No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" that Long kept a diary "filled with invectives against Jews, Catholics, New Yorkers, liberals, and, in fact, anyone who was not of his own particular background."

In 1939 FDR asked Long to return to the State Department. Long oversaw the Immigrant Visa Division, essentially formulating the policy of allowing immigrants into the United States as well as transfer visas in foreign consulates. This is where Long's history becomes problematic.

Long basically promoted U.S. National Security over humanitarian concerns. After the Anschluss, and then Kristallnacht in 1939, over 300,000 Germans (mostly Jews) applied for an immigration visa to the United States. Even as Hitler ramped up his efforts to dominate Europe throughout the 1930s, the United States - still reeling from the Great Depression - maintained the immigration quotas established by the Johnson-Reed Act.

The Johnson-Reed Act (passed in 1924) was an extremely restrictive immigration policy that targeted immigrants of specific "undesirable" countries or origins. Visas were limited to 2% of the total population of a given country according to their population in the United States as of the 1890 census.

Oh and wouldn't you know it, on January 10, 1921 a fire in the Commerce Building destroyed 25% of the 1890 census, with another 50% "destroyed by water, smoke, and fire." So...there wasn't exactly a back-up on a floppy disk. Census Bureau Clerk T.J. Fitzgerald:
(The records were) certain to be absolutely ruined. There is no method of restoring the legibility of a water-soaked volume.

What records did remain were destroyed in 1935.

The Johnson-Reed Act excluded all Asian countries as well as significantly limiting visas for prospective immigrants from Southern & Eastern European countries while increasing available visas for Northern & Western Europe. As a result, only 27,370 visas from Germany would be approved each year. There was about an 11-year waiting list to get into the United States in 1939 from Germany. A Hungarian applying for an immigrant visa faced a 40-year wait.

Eleanor Roosevelt once remarked of Long to FDR: "Franklin, you know he's a fascist." To which FDR responded, "I've told you, Eleanor, you must not say that."

Emanuel Celler, a Democratic representative from Brooklyn from 1923-1973, described Long as
Cold and austere, stiff as a poker, highly diplomatic in dress and in speech...and anti-Semitic.

Long reviewed Hitler's terrible book Mein Kampf as "eloquent in opposition to Jewry and Jews as exponents of Communism and chaos." In a 1940 diary entry, Long said that those sympathetic to the plight of those targeted by the Nazis were "largely concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard, and principally around New York" who had "joined up with the small element in this country which wants to push us into this war."

Long's views on Jews and basically all non-Americans reflected what was actually a popular opinion in the United States at the time. Two weeks after Kristallnacht, 72% of respondents to a Gallup Poll said the United States should not allow larger numbers of German Jews into the United States. 54% of respondents said the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis was their own fault. 67% of Americans opposed a bill proposed in Congress to admit child refugees from Germany, and the bill never made it to the floor for a vote. A lot of Americans thought Germany and the Soviet Union were using Jewish refugees as spies. Let's not forget that there was another recession in the Great Depression. Unemployment hit 20%. "Economic Anxiety" has been around for a while.

A June 26, 1940 memorandum from Breckinridge Long detailed the following regarding potential immigrants from the United States:
We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone the granting of the visas. However, this could only be temporary. In order to make it more definite, it would have to be done by suspension of the rules under the law by the issuance of a proclamation of emergency - which I take it we are not yet ready to proclaim.

The State Department - remember this is Long's doing - "cautioned consular officials to exercise particular care" in screening applicants for visas. In June 1941, the State Department issued a "relatives rule," which denied visas to immigrants with close family still in Nazi territory which, by June 1941, was pretty much all of Western Europe. And by that point, most American consulates in German-occupied territories were closed (under German orders, to which the United States complied). On June 22, 1941 the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa - the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

On July 1, 1941 the State Department centralized all alien visa control in Washington. All applicants needed to be approved by a review committee in Washington, and then were required to submit additional paperwork, including a second affidavit proving their finances were in order. Basically after July 1941 it was virtually impossible to leave Nazi-occupied Europe for the United States.

This was Long's goal, as he was terrified of "radicals" and "the Jewish press" for his efforts to prevent immigration to the United States. He saw himself besieged by "communists, extreme radicals, Jewish professional agitators, and refugee enthusiasts...all woven together in the barrage of opposition against the State Department which makes me the bull's eye."

Emanuel Celler, on Long:
Long said that he refused to grant visas for security reasons. Well, what is meant by security reasons - he felt that if he granted a visa to a refugee, the relative of the refugee might be held as a hostage in Germany and...they might force him to behave in a way that involved the security of the United States and therefore he would not grant him a visa. Which was a lot of hooey.

Eleanor Roosevelt found Long "not only unsympathetic but also opposed to the policies she supported and, as much as possible, she tried to work around Long."

For many applicants trying to escape the Nazis, many of the documents the State Department required were simply impossible to acquire. One of these applicants was Otto Frank, who wrote to his old college buddy Nathan Straus, Jr. asking him to put up $5,000 (just over $87,000 in today's dollars). It was a good ask: Straus was the son of a Macy's co-owner, head of the U.S. Housing Authority, and a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. Otto Frank and his family, including his daughter Anne, would never make it to the United States.

FDR could have removed Long. He didn't. Ultimately, only 10% of the immigration quota from Germany was filled under Long. Most of those who didn't receive visas died during World War II.

Emanuel Celler said of the State Department's division under Long:
There unquestionably were a number of anti-Semites in the State Department, and I know that personally...The normal attitude of the State Department in those days, and I suspect it still exists, that you don't do anything to rock the boat. You keep things calm. And the fact that the millions of Jews were being murdered while they were delaying, I don't think that troubled most of them, frankly.

Breckinridge Long came from a rich, political family with a history of turning its back on pretty much anyone who didn't look like them. In that way, they represented most of America. Breckinridge Long is a wide-angle view on how things don't change all that much.