"CLEAN SWEEP BUTLER" RARE 1932 SENATE CAMPAIGN BUTTON FOR MARINE CORPS MAJOR GENERAL.
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Winning Bid:
$257.35
(Includes 18% Buyer's Premium)
Bidding Ended:
Tuesday, March 13, 2018 10:00:00 PM (20 Minute Clock Begins At Tuesday, March 13, 2018 10:00:00 PM)
Item Description
1.25" real photo button depicting fascinating U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler, with caption "Clean Sweep Butler", from his 1932 Senatorial primary campaign (which he lost). Button has no back paper but known to be by Keystone Badge, Philadelphia. Celluloid is clean and Exc. displaying Mint. He was twice awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for action during the Banana Wars, and was later front runner for Commandant of the USMC, but was caused to be court-martialed by Hoover for recounting gossip that Mussolini had killed a child in a hit-and-run accident. Butler came out in support of the Bonus Army in 1932, addressing them at their camp on the Anacostia flats, and began to publicly repudiate militarism and fascism with a speaking tour and book entitled War Is A Racket ("I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism..."). He also blew the whistle on a 1933 conspiracy by Wall Street interests, who solicited him to lead an army of 500,000 veterans to Washington with the goals of taking FDR captive, forcing reinstatement of the gold standard, and keeping Roosevelt on as a figurehead until he could be "encouraged" to retire. One of three known to us.
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