Coxey's Army at Camp Tyranny

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

After the police hustled Coxey away from the Capitol as he tried to speak, he rejoined his men at a camp they established near an old canal located near the present-day intersections of 1st, M, and Canal Streets, S.W. They christened it Camp Tyranny. Conditions at the camp were deplorable, with The New York Times describing it “as barren and desolate an acre of ground as can be found anywhere within the limits of the District.” The marchers’ May 1 dinner consisted of hard-boiled eggs, soup, bread, and water. Coxey threatened to remain at this location all summer in order to convince Congress to implement his relief measures, but city health officials began to press for the camp’s closure, which spurred Coxey to relocate his men in mid-May to another site in Bladensburg, Maryland just over the District boundary. Coxey and Browne were subsequently tried and sent to prison for trespass on the Capitol grounds. The inglorious end to the march left many reporters criticizing Coxey’s march as a senseless crusade, although scholars subsequently have treated it more positively, noting its influence on future activists seeking to march on Washington to petition the government.

Images

Carl Browne

Coxey’s return to the Capitol, 1922

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

Coxey’s March on Washington ended with his conviction for trespass and his men pushed out of the city and into Maryland. The police arrested Browne on the day of the march and took him to a police jail located at 5th and E Streets, S.E. The police placed Coxey under arrest on May 2 after he surrendered to District of Columbia authorities after they issued a warrant for his arrest. A sympathetic D.C. grocer posted bail for both Coxey and Browne. On May 8, a jury found them guilty of violating the 1882 Act to Regulate the Capitol Grounds and a judge sentenced them on May 21 to 20 days in prison and a five-dollar fine. Coxey’s Army remained in Maryland for a few weeks until his band of followers began to dwindle as many made their way home.

In the aftermath of the march, media reports were generally critical of Coxey, noting that he failed to achieve the objective of his protest, which was to convince Congress to implement his reform ideas. Vendors selling peanuts and lemonade outside of Camp Tyranny, a Washington Post article concluded, “lent additional color to the illusion that it was all a circus.” Press interest in Coxey’s march began to fade as media attention focused on other news stories, especially the Pullman railroad labor dispute that began to erupt and convulse the nation in June. In the years that followed, “Coxey’s Army” entered the slang lexicon to mean a scruffy, unorganized group.

Scholars examining Coxey’s march have tended to see the event more positively, describing it as a major milestone in the industrial reform movement in the United States. The march put a national spotlight on the economic hardships that workers endured during the industrial age and gave energy to the Populist movement. The march also generated debate about the role of the federal government in the economy and whether elected officials had a responsibility to ensure full employment or redress the hardships of the unemployed. Perhaps as importantly, the event showed how individual citizens could take action to try to change government policies. In this sense, Coxey’s Army was an important example of participatory democracy that spurred future Americans – whether suffragettes, veterans, or civil rights activists – to lead their own march on Washington.

Coxey returned to Ohio to continue his business pursuits, but never ceased advocating for his Good Roads proposal. He launched his own newspaper, went on several lecture tours, testified before Congress, pitched his ideas to President Theodore Roosevelt, and ran for elected office on numerous occasions, including for Congress as a Populist in 1894. His only successful election bid, however, came in 1931 when the people of Massillon elected him mayor. He had a falling out with his partner Browne after Browne married Coxey’s daughter (who had dressed as the “Goddess of Peace” to lead the march to the Capitol on May 1).

It would take another depression in 1929 worse than the Panic of 1893 to induce the federal government into creating a national jobs program – implemented through the Works Progress Administration – for the unemployed. Coxey lived to see this event and was invited to return to the U.S. Capitol in 1944 to deliver the speech he had been prevented from making 50 years earlier. Coxey died in 1951 at the age of 97. There are no national monuments to him and his band of followers.

Sources

1. “Coxey Silenced by Police.” The New York Times, May 2, 1894.

2. “Coxey Placed Under Arrest.” The New York Times, May 3, 1894.

3. “Coxey’s Plague Pen.” The Washington Post, May 3, 1894.

4. “Coxey Must Vacate: Given Forty-eight Hours’ Notice to Move his Army.” The Washington Post, May 10, 1894, 2.

5. “Army to Leave Washington: Coxey’s Tramps Remove to Spa Springs, MD.” The New York Times, May 11, 1894.

6. “Coxey Breaks Camp.” The Washington Post, May 12, 1894.

7. “Leaders Go to Prison: Coxey, Browne and Jones Jailed for Twenty Days.” The Washington Post. May 22, 1894, 2.

8. “Invasion That Ended in Route: Story of the Day’s Doings of Coxey’s Army of Tramps.” The New York Times, May 2, 1894, 2.

9. Schwantes, Carlos. Coxey’s Army: An American Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.

10. McMurray, Donald. Coxey’s Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1929.

11. Bishop, Wesley. “Creating the Commonweal: Coxey’s Army of 1894, and the Path of Protest from Populism to the New Deal, 1892-1936.” Doctorate dissertation, University of Purdue, 2018.

12. Luechtefeld, Sean. “Before the National Mall: Coxey’s Army and the Precedent for Public Protest.” In Rhetorics Haunting the National Mall: Displaced and Ephemeral Public Memories, edited by Roger Aden, 35-52. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2018.

13. Prout, Jerry. Coxey’s Crusade for Jobs: Unemployment in the Gilded Age. Dekalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2016.

Images:

1. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016864837/

2. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/npcc.22803

Image Sources(Click to expand)

Library of Congress