The Anatomy of an American Contradiction; Smedley Butler and Deed vs. Belief

by Matthew Neiman

Smedley Butler, Marine veteran of over 33 years and soldier of American Imperialism in the early twentieth century, eventually became a stringent voice against offensive wars and interventionalism, and went so far as to define his entire career in the military in hindsight as “a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”[1] His heroism, as defined by the U.S. Government, in the Philippines, Panama, Haiti, and beyond led him to be one of the most decorated soldiers in American history, including two separate Medals of Honor, one of which was not completely bogus as defined by Butler himself.[2] These ornate decorations and popular laud are part of what led Smedley, after a handful of decades working for the American Empire, to slowly begin to look at the machine behind all the orders he so dutifully followed and see that he was not fighting to “free little Cuba,” the thought which led him into the Marines at the age of 16, but rather “for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”[3] [4] A myth has developed around Smedley, some hailing him as one of the greatest soldiers in history, some quote him championing a solely defensive military as a necessary course for the future, some see his implementation of a militarized police force in Philadelphia as part of the issues with modern policing, and some see his cries against capitalism and action against fascism in the United States as heroic. The truth about Smedley Butler’s life is a contradiction. The man who invaded half a dozen nations and supplanted near as many democracies is the same man who would decry imperialism. Why his life is so fascinating is because he at least notices this thread, and despite his history, follows conscience and acknowledges his life’s contradiction, when so many others in a similar lot have either not realized or continued to live into the lie. Looking into his notes and correspondence throughout his decades of military service, a proverbial journey can be charted of his experiences and shifting temperament, and pivotal moments can be construed that led to Smedley Butler’s rather radical change of heart. The belief that “War is a Racket,” began to be formulated from his military beginnings in Cuba, and was finally voiced a decade later in Nicaragua and Haiti as his temperament transitioned out of Imperialistic Jingoism into an ardent Socialist voice for his fellow veterans and against the fascist movement of the 1930s.

Smedley Butler was born to an influential family that, though Quaker in belief, was certainly not pacifist. Smedley’s father, Thomas Stalker Butler, was a representative of Pennsylvania in Congress for just over thirty years. According to Smedley’s mythology of his father as portrayed in Old Gimlet Eye — an interesting ‘autobiography’ told in the first person, but written and edited by Lowell Thomas — he was a man that, though Quaker, openly championed the expansion of the American military, telling of a time when “father had just made a speech on the floor on Congress advocating a good size navy. Leaving the House, in the corridor of the Capitol he met a pacifist, who said to him, ‘thee is a fine Friend.’ Father replied saying, ‘thee is a damn fool.’”[5] Because Old Gimlet Eye is essentially oral history, it is important to look at much of the fine details told here as hyperbole, but even so it is still a useful tool to get to know Smedley, if not exactly the facts of the events he experienced. It can be reasonably inferred from his regular correspondence with his mother throughout his life that Smedley held his family and childhood in high esteem. These letters between the two of them, along with his correspondence with others, will be a large piece in assembling a map of Smedley’s changing thoughts and convictions around his duty as a soldier and citizen of the United States.

Smedley came into the Marines during the Spanish-American war with grandiose ideals of his role assisting the American empire. The culture of ‘Manifest Destiny’ was rampant at the time and Imperialism was an ever more appealing notion to the American businessman and, therefore, politician. Much of the American population at the time was still hesitant to get behind overseas expansionism, but luckily it was the turn of the nineteenth century, and the narrative of far-off lands and their peoples and actions were easily controlled and distorted. During the Spanish-American war an all-too-familiar phenomenon developed that has come to be known as ‘yellow’ journalism.[6] The term was coined as popular editors like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer (of the famed ‘Pulitzer Prize’ for literary prowess and integrity) began to push a narrative of interventionalism on behalf of the Cuban revolution against the Spanish occupation. In itself this seems innocuous enough, until hindsight finds that this exact message has been used to coax populaces the world over into accepting, even if begrudgingly, intervention on behalf of a supposedly needy and persecuted underdog. From the Philippines to Vietnam to Afghanistan to even Ukraine, it’s all a frightfully similar story, and the innocent hero narrative never ends up translating to reality. Young Smedley was not at all immune to the narrative, and he spent his youth restless to see the world and fight for all of the archetypal American ideals.

Smedley signed up for the Marines with his mother’s help at the age of 16, with the ideal that he would be liberating the Cubans from the tyrannical Spanish occupiers. Because of his father’s influence, Smedley joined as an officer and after just six weeks of training, which he would say “planted the seed of Soldiering” that he was never able to shake, was promptly shipped out to Cuba to begin his long journey as an agent of imperialism.[7] He first arrived in Cuba weeks after much of the major fighting had ended; landing in Guantanamo he was in the perfect place to witness the beginning of both his career and the empire he was helping create. It was a conviction that led Smedley into the military and what he found in Cuba did not at all match his expectations. Upon first landing he and his fellow officers were disorientated, much to the amusement of the veteran enlisted men already there. Smedley remembers being young and hot-headed and snapping at them for making fun of his much yet-unearned stature, which of course just led the laughter into greater uproar. Eventually one of the old men took pity upon him and showed him his way.

Butler arrived after most of the fighting had concluded — much to his colleagues’s outward chagrin — though inwardly, it seems that he was much relieved. There were still some occasional skirmishes though when he was assigned to lead a group of thirty men on outpost duty. Thankfully to sixteen-year-old Butler, the men he was supposedly leading needed no ordering or direction. He recalled of that first real night outside safety by saying, “if I ever live to be five hundred, I could never again endure the panic and bewilderment of that night.”[8] He signed up to help save the poor Cubans being “starved and murdered by the beastly Spanish tyrants,” with the hope that he would play a heroic role in the liberation of a people, though he later recognized that he had no care or knowledge of the island nation before the Maine sunk: the impetus, or at least excuse, for American intervention.[9] A brief time in Cuba imprinted a love for soldiering and a deep sense of responsibility for his men, which would later, even given all his faults, prove to be nothing but genuine and unwavering.

“Now any fool can be a good man if he tries hard enough but not every man will make a good soldier, so I will devote my energies towards the latter and the former will follow I think,” Butler wrote his mother in early 1900 before arriving in the Philippines for the first time.[10] He certainly achieved the latter, as his next year would have him getting shot on two separate occasions, and one heroic act to save a fellow soldier that would give all involved a Medal of Honor, which Smedley only did not receive because at the time officers were not eligible for its reception. His first stay in the Philippines was brief, but it was his first experience in a war far away from the American homeland and popular interest. Few Americans at the time had heard of the Philippines and cared even less, which began to ruminate a question in Smedley’s mind about what America’s role in all this fighting was truly for.

When he learned that he was to go with 100 men to China he wrote his beloved mother, Maud, “it is needless to say that I am the happiest man alive.”[11] The Marines were told their primary objective in China was to keep Americans safe from the Boxer rebellion, and Smedley apparently took this at face value. After weeks of grueling marching through the wilderness under constant threat of fire, Butler revised his stance and swore to leave the military if he ever made it out alive. Though, once he reached relative safety he would write that all the terrible fighting, hardships, and sufferings had been worth it “to see all the women and children we have saved.”[12] It would be hard to argue that Butler did not genuinely love the turmoil of his perceived duty. After all, the only way a man can sleep at night after doing and seeing such things is to call it ‘good.’ China would also give him a second bullet wound — this time he was saved from certain death by a brass button attached to his clothing. “Needless to say,” wrote Smedley to his mother, “I have kept the button, and will have it gold plated for thee.”[13] He was an outstanding soldier and, at least according to the men he risked life and limb to save, that surely made him a good man as well. To be able to affirm this honestly, we have to look into some of the less favorable deeds of Butler and the marines, the accounts of which we have from his own pen and recollection.

Later, Smedley would say that, upon reaching the destroyed city of Peking, he and his men were devastated to find no loot worthy of plunder. They ransacked a palace and buried some of what they thought was gold, only to come back and find it was just brass.[14] He boasted that they were the first foreigners “to desecrate this holy territory,” and had poetically to say of it, “what a disappointment!”[15] Because there was no gold, silver, or sparkly jewels to plunder they “were filled with contempt for those Chinese rulers who were satisfied to live in musty, old palaces.”[16] Curiously, he never mentioned the looting and violent burning of half of Tientsin in his letters home to his beloved mother.

The Boxer Rebellion was a brutal period in Chinese history. In some degrees, what transpired is similar to many of America’s modern military interventions, where there was actually some danger to American citizens at the start, but it was not really the primary motive behind military mobilization. Regardless of what the U.S.’s involvement in the impetus of the rebellion really was, one thing that can be stated factually is that the Unites States did not leave China in a better place than they had found it, and the deaths of untold thousands of innocent Chinese civilians are a lasting legacy of the U.S. and its allies in their commitment in the nineteenth century to imperialism. Smedley would later recognize this, though in the moment, war was still a game he saw as well worth playing, and he was proud of the work he had left behind for China to deal with.

When he arrived in Honduras, Smedley wrote that he was “prepared to land and shoot everybody and anything that was breaking the peace,” and also had some considerable amusement at the apparently laughable size of the Honduran military. So still, opinion and conviction of his actions had not much changed, at least in his writings.[17] They wandered around Honduras, or, the “most God forsaken place” Smedley had apparently “ever stumbled upon,” in an effort to protect American interests. Arriving in Truxillo, he was quite amused and perplexed by a regime change, when “a new President, a nigger by the name of Bonilla,” was elected, even though only winning 34,000 votes.[18] A suspicion at the legitimacy of this election certainly arose, though the dots had not yet been connected. Butler would admit that he had no clear idea what all the fighting in Honduras was about, and his next experiences would largely continue the trend.[19]

Upon arriving in Panama, mainly to guard the trans-isthmus-railroad and to help prepare topographical maps to assist the coming canal, he was still restless as ever with wars he saw as below him, and was “wild to go as observers to the Jap War” (the Russo-Japanese War). He was still much caught up in the archaic idea of war as a glorious and noble thing. It took seeing the human devastation of the First World War for this idea to finally be completely cleared from Butler’s conscience.

After taking his new wife on a European honeymoon, and after heading to the Philippines once again to take up his new post, he traveled through the Suez Canal and wrote to his father in what is now a humorous canal measurement contest, “this canal, about which the British bray so much, is nothing more than one of President Roosevelt’s irrigation ditches and not worthy to be compared, in any way, to our Panama undertaking.”[20] He had still yet to look beyond the surface to the peoples so mercilessly affected by both of these undertakings. In one of his first nice things to say of a foreign country, he marveled in a telling act of humor, that Colombo, a city near Singapore, was “the most civilized looking place we have struck yet. Modern buildings and hotels where one can sleep without a life insurance policy in one hand and a box of bug powder in the other.”[21] He was much still of the temperament of the classic early twentieth-century adventurer, that saw everywhere in the world that was not home as uncivilized, so even a humorous quip about a place such as this is high praise.

One of Smedley’s most memorable stunts transpired in the Philippines when he was stationed on one end of Manila Bay, opposite the main port. He and his men saw many supply ships pass by them and dock in Manila, while their rations began to dry up. Fed up with being forgotten, Smedley and some men stole a dugout canoe and attempted to paddle across the bay, when a large storm appeared out of nowhere and completely overwhelmed them. By an act of equal parts luck and determination, the men were able to get to the opposite end of the bay by paddling their little craft with their bare hands after their oars were washed away. Upon arrival, Smedley got a considerable amount of chastising from the higher ups for his unannounced and dangerous stunt. He did, though, end up getting his men their supplies. This was his first considerable act of soft rebellion, and would set a course for the rest of his career. These small rebellions are a large part of what made him so beloved by both his men and the American public. The Marines today hold him in high esteem, the Maverick Marine that always looked after his men and broke a few rules to keep them safe, and as Hans Schmidt put it, exemplified the American military contradiction.[22] This contradiction would deepen as Smedley was moved to Nicaragua.

Philander Knox, then Secretary of State under Taft, had many friends with business interests in Nicaragua. Even before Juan Estrada’s coup, Knox received a letter from Nicaragua asking for “protection on the premises,” and an insinuated reminder that many mines were owned by “Pittsburgh capitalists, some no doubt known by you.”[23] When Estrada launched his coup against José Santos Zelaya, many of those friends would dump large sums of money and resources in his aid. William Reese, a capitalist from Pittsburgh told former La Luz gold mine accountant-turned top Estrada aid, Adolfo Diaz, that “our good friend Knox will help us.”[24] Sure enough, he did. Using the deaths of two American mercenaries at the hands of Zelaya’s government, Knox called him “a blot upon the history of Nicaragua” and stated that the U.S. government officially supported Estrada, in their conviction that “the revolution represents the ideals and the will of a majority of the Nicaraguan people more faithfully.”[25]

Adolfo Diaz would go on to be president in 1911 and succeeded by Emiliano Chamorro, Minister to America during Diaz’s term. When Chamorro announced his candidacy while still in Washington, the U.S. sent him back to Nicaragua on an American cruiser essentially endorsing that he was their favored candidate for president. He won the presidency, though most would call his office much more that of dictator, because when his term was over he launched another coup against his successor and took the presidency back.[26] His fatal flaw this time, though, was failing to get American support, and after only a few months resigned the presidency back to Philander Knox’s old friend, Adolfo Diaz. A racket.

Smedley’s time in Nicaragua was a marked turning point when he finally began to put into words all the things he was observing, and began to question the motives behind the wars he was involved in and put the pieces together of all the shady influences behind the scenes. His letters to his mother and father at the time are invaluable in finding his thoughts on the moral behind the intervention of the United States in foreign conflicts and affairs. After some colorful escapades involving a train, which we will get to later, he reached Jinotepe and met a “very polite” Spanish man who owned “the best coffee plantation in this section of the world” that apparently made a $3,000,000 profit a year in 1910 (roughly $93 million inflation adjusted).[27] If this hearsay can be believed — at the very least Smedley believed it — A foreigner was making close to $100 million a year in today’s money off the land and backs of Nicaraguans, and Smedley mentions that this Spanish man was very happy to see them. He makes no note as to whether he thought this was suspicious or not in his letter, and did not make the connection as to why an owner of an enormous coffee plantation would be overjoyed at the sight of the U.S. Military.

The schmoozing would soon get to him though. Exemplifying the blatant exploitation of the nation, its resources, and peoples, Smedley arrived in Granada and met with some American businessmen, one of which was “a young fellow from New York who just arrived to take charge of a gold mine.”[28] This man is unidentified, but it is possible he was one of Secretary Knox’s ‘friends.’ The night then escalated even further, and he was invited to a club to meet “the Lacayo family, the most prominent and aristocratic clan in Nicaragua” who were all also apparently “very glad” to see them.[29] The Lacayo family would remain in wealth and political prominence throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, likely due to their friendliness with the Americans and their capital. He tells of later being forced to sit through a veritable panel on “what the United States should do in the country,” which served to add to the growing ledger of issues he was taking with the U.S.’s relation to Nicaragua.

In a release from a great crescendo of angst, on March 1, 1910, Smedley wrote a letter addressed to his mother and father, where he finally puts his long-held thoughts into words. He starts with a long list of racist grievances against the Nicaraguan revolutionaries, “spigs”, as he calls them, “the most worthless, useless lot of vermin I have struck yet.”[30] This kind of talk was normal for Smedley though; what was abnormal came next:

What makes me mad is that the whole revolution is inspired and financed by Americans who have wild cat investments down here and want to make them good by putting in a government which will declare a monopoly in their favor. The whole business is rotten to the core, and I am ashamed to think that a Republican Administration is, if anything, assisting the revolution. The rebel army is comprised, mostly, of outcasts from other countries with the usual sprinkling of soldiers of fortune… the whole game of these degenerate Americans down here is to force the United States to intervene and by so doing make their investments good. There is no patriotic movement in this revolution… the poor common people are the only sufferers, as is always the case, and their blood will be on our heads…[31]

That he addressed this letter to his congressman father rather than his mother, as usual, is particularly telling of his frustration of the events that were unfolding before his eyes. He levies specifically great confusion at the acts of the State Department, led by our old capitalist friend Philander Knox. In some of his classic wit, he remarks, “I am simply a hired policeman and am not supposed to understand affairs of state. I can see, with my untrained eyes, however, that were we not living in this town the revolution would be over in a few minutes.”[32] Legitimate concerns about the moral of what he was doing on behalf of his country finally culminated in this outpouring.

While Smedley was certainly prone to the lack of outward compassion that is necessary for soldiers to survive and wars to proliferate — as shown in his attitude towards all the ‘spigs’ he encountered in Nicaragua and his “little brown brothers” he dealt with in the Philippines — there was a genuine shame about the things he was beginning to see beyond the bloodshed and how his beloved country was proliferating it. Not for liberty and democracy as he had once imagined, but rather for profiteers and their congressmen.

Smedley was not all talk. From his perspective, the naval officers were “very much in sympathy with Estrada,” the leader of one of the revolutionary forces.[33] Having expressed his shame in the U.S.’s antics, he resolved “to change this and remain absolutely neutral, and at all costs stop this horrible slaughter of a poor race which does not want to fight.”[34] Though still talking in the racist rhetoric of the time, a decade of wars had grown in him a genuine empathy towards the affected populace — albeit, still shrouded in the typical white, American, condescension of his time and ours. Four months on, he wrote directly to his father, saying he was sickened with being forced to be “wielding the ‘big stick’ in shady diplomacy.”[35] In a quite humorous quote, he says “these renegade swine from the slums of our race are all engaging in enterprises, which, if successful, will pay them 50 to 100% dividends, but are not willing to take a gambler’s risk, in other words they have taken a 100 to 1 shot on a horse race and for fear of losing have called in the police to hold all the other horses.”[36]

In Old Gimlet Eye, a highly theatrical telling of his adventures, he would give an age-old excuse for his actions. He was just following orders. It was not his business to understand the “intricate ramifications of the situation,” he was a marine, his business was to do as told.[37] As the epitome of the American contradiction — the fighting quaker — he would continue following orders for the next fifteen years, but his experiences in Nicaragua would go on to define the laudable and likable heroic rebellions of the rest of his life. In the opening of War is a Racket, he would write that all his time in Nicaragua was to help “purify” the country for “the international Banking House of Brown Brothers,” the majority owners of the aforementioned railroad which Butler so harrowingly defended and repaired.[38]

Smedley alludes to the railroad being American property on multiple occasions through his decade roaming around the country. Even more shockingly, Brown Brothers, along with the railroad, owned a large share in the Nicaraguan national bank as well.[39] They stated that they were simply making good on their investments, and that Nicaragua was all the better for their generous loans, paid back to the American capitalists from the pockets of the poor citizens at interest. The official website of Brown Brothers Harriman laments the loan, saying they thought it was sound. In an entirely cringeworthy plea for compassion, they say that “Nicaragua struggled to repay the loan, and Brown Brothers would have to wait another seven years to recover its principal and interest,” though a deep sympathy for American bankers is not the moral of this, nor any, story.[40]

Convinced that were it not for the U.S. military and capital the whole revolution would have dissolved in minutes, “It is an everlasting shame on our great nation that she permits it,” he wrote genuinely to his parents, along with noting that he believed the revolution in Nicaragua was the bloodiest Central America had ever seen. [41] [42] Luckily for the prideful patriot in Smedley, a hundred years on, our great nation has all but entirely forgot it’s shameful role in the bloodshed, doing so by not the slightest accident or happenstance. Smedley has become an archetypal American hero for this very reason. He is a renegade in the ways that make a good story — disobeying orders to save his men or shouting about politics — but stays in line and follows along with orders near enough to eventually get him the rank of general. After retirement he would go on speaking tours and display his strong pragmatism that so perfectly excited and related to the American populace. His propensity to speak “with a ‘damn’ and a ‘hell’” led him to the great endearment of the average citizen and veteran.[43] A love of country led to both action to defend it and expand it — and later to politicking once he realized what his service was really accomplishing. He still believed in the ideals that got him to join the military in his youth even though reality was proving itself to be dissociative from that thought. The two short and damning opening paragraphs of War is a Racket could be taken to be directly about Nicaragua, if it were not for all the other wars at the period that looked frightfully similar. “Conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”[44] After an escapade in Mexico City as a spy, a post at Veracruz, and a year at home with his family, these words became more true than they have been at nearly any time or place in history, in Haiti.

Butler believed in what he was doing in Haiti potentially more than at any other time or place during his career. In correspondence with politicians, he pleaded the case of the good deeds of his marines, constructing roads, telegraph and telephone lines, public health facilities, and running the postal service. All good things, but unlike Nicaragua, Smedley was unaware of the grime underneath the surface that caused the nation’s revolutions and endemic poverty. He reminisces of a golden age of Haiti under French rule, blaming the poverty on the rebellions, rather than vice versa, and looking into the underlying cause of the poverty. Namely, France. A world where his deeds were anything but legitimate and benevolent was incomprehensible, particularly in Haiti, where Butler also helped develop a new type of warfare that we now call counterinsurgency. Testifying to a special Senate committee on the occupation, he would say that they were “all imbued with the fact that we were trustees of a huge estate that belonged to minors… the Haitians were our wards and that we were endeavoring to make for them a rich and productive property, to be turned over to them at such time as our government saw fit.”[45]

In Old Gimlet Eye, Butler’s story of Haiti is all about him being a modern-day cowboy, fighting bandits and protecting civilians. A staunch contradiction to what he would write in War is a Racket. Like Nicaragua before, Smedley “helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank Boys to collect revenues in,” and “brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests.”[46] While the revolutionaries of Haiti were brutal, the background of why seems to have mostly eluded Butler at the time of occurrence. Shocking, considering all of his griefs with the fighting in Nicaragua were even more prevalent with the fighting and revolution in Haiti. He makes no mention of frustration with the absurdity of American involvement, potentially because, like the Philippines over a decade before, most Americans knew little of Haiti and cared even less. The only notes that are taught today are about the slave rebellion. Not the strong handing that came after, that doomed the now ‘free’ island to centuries of poverty and rebellion.

In his eyes the poorly state of the nation was entirely to blame on the Haitian people’s inability to establish a stable government. Of course, they needed the white man to come in and guide them into civilization, even though it was colonialism and an absurd debt for their freedom which so deeply impoverished them.[47] The nation had been syphoned dry by France in payment for their freedom, leading them into a debt trap, taking out loans from the likes of the United States and Germany in order to pay off France. Forced to pay huge chunks of their nation’s GDP just on these loans and their interest, eventually Haiti would default. It was decided among their generous lenders that the U.S., Germany, and France would simply take ownership of the national bank and split shares between them.[48] None other than our old friend Philander Knox brokered this ‘deal.’ Ever ones to make good on their investments, the United States launched a bank heist to steal the gold reserves from the Haitian National Bank in order to keep it ‘safe’ in a Wall Street bank until the debt could be repaid. None other than the U.S. Marine Corps manned this state-sponsored robbery of over half a sovereign nation’s reserves.[49]

Butler was hand selected by his old friend Littleton Waller, commander of all U.S. forces in Haiti, to lead the First Battalion of his First Regiment.[50] Waller had much experience harassing black people as he had ‘served’ in a militia as a teenager in Virginia that purposefully interfered with the hypothetical rights of the newly freed people. Waller wrote as if for a job interview that “I know the nigger and how to handle him. The same quality is going to be needed in San Domingo.”[51] After the initial invasion, Butler was celebrated by the American friendly locals, and even given a beautiful white horse by the President of Haiti and “the title of big white chief who never slept.”[52]

He would go on to lead many expeditions into the Haitian bush and experience some truly harrowing fighting — but he would also develop a fondness for the nation, spawning from a perceived cause to fight for it. That being said, he was in no way championing an equality for these people, and continued to talk down to the lowly black Haitians. He was put in charge of a group of Haitian militants, or “my little black army,” as he put it, and admitted that he was “beginning to like the little fellows.”[53] If that condescension was not enough, he added that “they will do very well, in time, and as long as white men lead them.”[54] Completely oblivious to the reality, Smedley soldiered on, and continued belittling the locals with any and all the racist colloquialisms a marine in the 1910s could think of.

Butler was outraged when he received news that he was to be awarded a Medal of Honor for his previous involvement in the invasion of Vera Cruz, and rightfully so, because in total sixty-three people received the medal for the short and unjustified seven-month occupation, more for any single action before or since. Understandably, this made the nation’s highest honor more than just a little less honorable, and Smedley asked for his to be taken back. It was not. In the same letter voicing his frustrations with the ‘honor’ for Vera Cruz, he told his father that Colonel Waller had recommended him for yet another Medal of Honor for his actions in the north of Haiti and expressed that he would happily accept this one. The mission which got him his horse would also get him his second Medal of Honor. He received it, eventually, by another recommendation from Franklin Roosevelt when he came to Haiti to visit as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and was quite impressed with how he was running things.[55] Whether Butler was happy about the medal is unclear, but he certainly was happy about his work in the country, and would begin to call the place “my native land” in an odd sense of appropriation.[56]

“Haiti is a wonderful country and well worth saving,” Butler wrote in a letter to Republican House Minority Leader, James R. Mann. “During French occupation, which ended in 1804, it was enormously rich, but now, owing to the shiftlessness of its population and to the numerous revolutions, it has become extremely poor and is in an entirely underdeveloped condition.”[57] Assuring Mann that with “little labor and comparatively small expense,” the old French services that he owed the former wealth of the island to, “can be restored.”[58] The Gendarmerie that Butler was heading would be of small expense because, while his salary was $8,814 a year — roughly equivalent to $200,000 in 2022[59] — the enlisted Haitian men under Butler, the “nigger police force,” as he called them, only made a mere $120/yr. — around $3,000 in 2022.[60] When they built the roads that are still the main transportation corridor to this day they paid even less. Nothing, in fact, because as Butler told Mr. Mann, hundreds of citizens simply volunteered their labor for free, completely uncoerced. He would later admit in Old Gimlet Eye of the strong-armed intimidation he employed to get all these ‘volunteers.’ Even so, he recollected that it was a “National Honor to assist the Haitians in getting on their feet.”[61]

While leading the Haitian Gendarmerie, the United States officially entered in the first World War, and it was all Smedley could think of. While proud of the work he was doing in Haiti, it was not a real, proper, and glorious war, a thing which Smedley still held grandiose ideals of. He specifically asked to be moved to Europe, and wrote that his extensive service entitled him to it, but the importance of keeping him in Port au Prince made the convincing slow and tedious.[62] His wish was eventually granted, though not as he had hoped. He was placed in charge of a camp about as far from the fighting as one could get in France. Promoted to Brigadier General and head of a camp of over 60,000 men at times, he committed to “do all in my power to make these poor, miserable, wretched, sick soldiers who pass by the thousands through here, as comfortable and happy as my poor strength will let me.”[63] He did an exceptional job at it, but would admit that it was the first in a long line of jobs that would kill his drive for soldiering.[64] “Since then,” he admitted, “a number of experiences have proved to me that opportunities are almost always given in the United States service to men with political or personal influence. A man’s record is rarely considered.”[65] An interesting observation and complaint, seen as his own father was a congressmen for just over thirty years.

Why Smedley has become a hero to as diverse a crowd as he has is because of the breadth of his story. If a Libertarian military hero that decries an offensive military is desired, some of Smedley’s later work can be used as a prime example. Though in reality when Butler wrote all those screeds that Libertarians hold to, he was a Socialist. And while he was a Socialist, he was also an ardent defender of prohibition, going so far as to use the military tactics he developed in Nicaragua and Haiti in Philadelphia as chief of one of the first truly militarized police forces in the nation — one that is still used in such a militarized form. But, while he developed a tool that is now used by the militant and ever-increasingly fascist-leaning Conservatives, he put a stop to a fascist coup when asked to lead an army of veterans against FDR, after an attempt to bribe him to “go around and talk to the soldiers in the background and see if we cannot get them to join a great big super organization to ‘maintain the democracy,’” on behalf of some millionaire’s attempt to return to the gold standard.[66]

This whole story, chronicled in a report to a Senate Investigation of Nazi Propaganda is worthy of an entire paper in itself. When asked if he was interested in leading this super-organization to ‘help the president,’ he said,

I am interested in it, but I do not know about heading it. I am very interested in it, because you know, Jerry [Gerald P. MacGuire], my interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home. You know that.[67]

When Butler asked how much money these people were willing to put up to accomplish their goals he got the number $300,000,000 — roughly $5 billion today. Paul French, a reporter who Butler trusted enough to tell his story to first and who he tasked with investigating further, said that MacGuire emphasized the need of a strong man “on a white horse,” and that “we might go along with Roosevelt and then do with him what Mussolini did with the King of Italy.”[68] MacGuire had spent time in Italy and was a great admirer of his Fascism, and how Mussolini used veterans to gain power. When questioned, quite lightly, by the committee, MacGuire admitted to having talked to Butler, and having received donations, but obviously denied any of the insurrectionist claims. The committee was satisfied to not dig any deeper, and the media largely made fun of Butler for his apocalyptic claims. According to Butler, he was assured that much of the money behind MacGuire controlled the media. As far as can be easily surmised, this ‘Business Plot,’ as it has come to be known, was a legitimate conspiracy, though a proper investigation into its breadth is far beyond a simple paper on Smedley Butler. What is not beyond us, though, is that Smedley was asked to conspire, and it spooked him enough to get an investigative reporter involved and eventually testify to Congress.

Any one of these deeds could make an American hero to just about anyone, but the implied narrative of these individual actions and stories contradict. The Smedley that the Libertarian calls a hero is not the same Smedley the Anarchist calls a hero, but they are about the same man. A single anecdote, while fun and interesting, is not a history, and almost any one-liner is markedly false. Thus is the problem with history in general: finding the right line between enough refinement to be useful and too much as to be dishonest.

Looking at a life from a century beyond its conclusion in one swath, all the idiosyncrasies and contradictions wrapped up in one’s story seem almost blatantly obvious, but when studying the history of a person it is crucial to remember the key factor that history studies: change. Change is really what ought to be looked at when seeking to know someone or something, past or present, and especially when we attempt the oft-futile act of applying the knowledge of the then to the now. An interesting person who searches for knowledge and wisdom from their life almost necessarily changes; personal growth is the only honest move in response to new knowledge and experience.

Writing a definite conclusion that surmises a clean and easy lesson to learn from an entire life is a mostly futile exercise, but the more we restrict and narrow that conclusion the closer to accuracy we can actually come. Learning appears to be not much more than refinement on the foggy historical milieu though, so extraction of a simplification is needed to get anything out of research. Smedley entered the military as an idealistic and patriotic teenager and retired having witnessed and assisted the overthrowing of half a dozen independent nations, the invasion and occupation of even more, and seen the deaths of many of his colleagues and thousands of citizens from many corners of this planet. Only an omnipotent or unfathomably cruel or selfish being could experience such horrors and come out the other end unchanged. That word, change, then, is the critical piece to look at, because that is where the wisdom or malevolence of the past lies. Butler’s experience led him to decry the American empire and her vast stores of capitol and to being, literally, a socialist, to the presumably purposefully overlooked behest of many modern libertarians that have chosen to cast Butler as an icon for their ideology. A hero narrative is almost exclusively a toxic one, and putting Smedley’s actions for the vast majority of his life on a weighted scale of as close to objective morality as we can muster, lands him comfortably on the evil end of the spectrum. While he did eventually decry the evident evils of capitalism and speak out against imperialism, he did, after all, spend his whole life ensuring those very interests.

References

Brown Brothers Harriman. “Brown Brothers & Co. in Latin America.” Brown Brothers Harriman. Accessed September 29, 2022. https://www.bbh.com/us/en/bbh-who-we-are/our-story/200-years-of-partnership/brown-brothers-co-in-latin-america.html.

Burns, Adam. American Imperialism: The Territorial Expansion of the United State, 1783–2013. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

Butler, Smedley Darlington. General Smedley Darlington Butler: The Letters of a Leatherneck, 1898–1931. Edited by Anne Cipriano Venzon. New York, NY: Praeger, 1992.

Butler, Smedley. War Is a Racket. Rapid City, SD: Vantage Point University Press, 2010.

“GEN. BUTLER URGES BONUS ARMY TO STICK: Ex-Marine Officer Makes Fiery Address to Veterans in Camp at Anacostia.” The New York Times. July 20, 1932.

Karabell, Zachary. “REVIEW — The Capitalist Culture That Built America — Since the Early 19th Century, the Firm of Brown Brothers Defined the Distinctive American Mix of Financial Power and Public Service. Its Example Can Still Instruct Us.” Wall Street Journal. May 15, 2021.

Katz, Jonathan M. Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2022.

Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York, NY: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979.

Penfield, Walter Scott. “Emiliano Chamorro, Nicaragua’s Dictator.” Current History (1916–1940) 24, no. 3 (June 1926): 345–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45335616.

Porter, Catherine, Constant Méheut, Matt Apuzzo, and Selam Gebrekidan. “The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers.” The New York Times. The New York Times, May 20, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-history-colonized-france.html?searchResultPosition=4.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt: The Politics of Upheaval. Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1960.

Schmidt, Hans. Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

“The Secretary of State to the Nicaraguan Chargé,” Dec. 1, 1909, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States with the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 7, 1909, Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti and Santo Domingo: Hearings before a Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo. 67th Cong., October 27, 1912

Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Report, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain other Activities §. Hearings — 73-D.C.-6 (1934).

Thomas, Lowell. Old Gimlet Eye: The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler. New York, NY: Ferris Printing, 1933.

[1] Smedley Darlington Butler, War Is a Racket (Rapid City, SD: Vantage Point University Press, 2010).

[2] Butler, Smedley D., War Is a Racket

[3] Lowell Thomas, Old Gimlet Eye: The Adventures of Smedley D. Butler (London, UK: Kismet Publishing, 2018), p.13

[4] Butler, Smedley D., War Is a Racket, p.1.

[5] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.11.

[6] Adam Burns, American Imperialism: The Territorial Expansion of the United State, 1783–2013 (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), p.79.

[7] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.10.

[8] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.16.

[9] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.7.

[10] Jonathan M. Katz, Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2022), p.50.

[11] Butler, Smedley D, Letters of a Leatherneck, p.18.

[12] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.20

[13] Smedley Darlington Butler, General Smedley Darlington Butler: The Letters of a Leatherneck, 1898–1931, ed. Anne Cipriano Venzon (New York, NY: Praeger, 1992), p.28.

[14] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.76.

[15] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.77.

[16] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.77.

[17] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.38.

[18] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.39, 41.

[19] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.105.

[20] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.49.

[21] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.50.

[22] Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1998).

[23] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p.134.

[24] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p.134.

[25] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p.134.

[26] Walter Scott Penfield, “Emiliano Chamorro, Nicaragua’s Dictator,” Current History (1916–1940) 24, no. 3 (June 1926): pp. 345–350, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45335616.

[27] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.72.

[28] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.73.

[29] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.73.

[30] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.75.

[31] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.76–77.

[32] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.88.

[33] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.84.

[34] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.85.

[35] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.87.

[36] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck p.87–88.

[37] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.170.

[38] Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket (Rapid City, SD: Vantage Point University Press, 2010).

[39] Zachary Karabell, “REVIEW — The Capitalist Culture That Built America — Since the Early 19th Century, the Firm of Brown Brothers Defined the Distinctive American Mix of Financial Power and Public Service. Its Example Can Still Instruct Us.,” Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2021.

[40] https://www.bbh.com/us/en/bbh-who-we-are/our-story/200-years-of-partnership/brown-brothers-co-in-latin-america.html

[41] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.85.

[42] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.88.

[43] “Gen. Butler Urges Bonus Army to Stick; Ex-Marine Officer Makes Fiery Address to Veterans at Camp Anacostia.” The New York Times, July 20, 1932.

[44] Butler, Smedley D., War Is a Racket, p.1.

[45] Inquiry into Occupation and Administration of Haiti and Santo Domingo: Hearings before a Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo, Senate, 67th Cong., October 27, 1921

[46] Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket (Rapid City, SD: Vantage Point University Press, 2010). Introduction.

[47] Catherine Porter et al., “The Root of Haiti’s Misery: Reparations to Enslavers,” The New York Times (The New York Times, May 20, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-history-colonized-france.html?searchResultPosition=4.

[48] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p.203.

[49] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p.202.

[50] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p.205.

[51] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p. 206.

[52] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.156.

[53] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.159.

[54] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.159.

[55] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.239.

[56] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.173.

[57] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.168.

[58] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.168.

[59] Katz, Jonathan M., Gangsters of Capitalism, p.222.

[60] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.190

[61] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.169

[62] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.193

[63] Butler, Smedley D., Letters of a Leatherneck, p.212

[64] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.158

[65] Thomas, Lowell, Old Gimlet Eye, p.158

[66] Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Report, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain other Activities, §. Hearings — 73-D.C.-6 (1934).

[67]Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Report, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain other Activities, §. Hearings — 73-D.C.-6 (1934).

[68] Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Report, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain other Activities, §. Hearings — 73-D.C.-6 (1934).