Bonus Army

News of the cavalry’s gassing and trampling of civilians — the slain including an infant born during the nationwide march of the so-called Bonus Army — would dominate the front pages and tar Hoover’s public image through the presidential campaign.

For the attack on the Bonus Army and the Madison Square Garden rally share features that could bind them together as campaign turning points.

As Twain might have acknowledged, the comparison isn’t perfect — among other differences, the Bonus Army attack occurred on July 28, 1932, in the middle of the presidential campaign, while the Trump rally came only 10 days before election day and after early voting by mail and in person has already started in many states.

For Hoover, it was his response to the Bonus Army.

They started to move east — “hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, and babies ... walking, hitchhiking, hopping freights,” as Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen reported in their 2004 book about the Bonus Army.