By the time that the army reached Washington, it numbered only five hundred men. Upon arriving in Washington, Coxey and his supporters demanded that the federal government immediately assist workers by hiring them to work on public projects such as roads and government buildings.
Law enforcement officials arrested Coxey for trespassing on public property. Coxey's Army quickly dispersed upon its leader's arrest. Palmateer, Dmitri. Schwantes, Carlos. Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Skip to main content.
A project of the Oregon Historical Society. Search Search. Explore Entries A-Z Browse the complete list of entries. Entries by Themes Browse curated collections of entries. In the Classroom. Staff and Board. At the head of the procession walked Jasper Johnson, a West Virginian and one of a number of black marchers in the ranks, carrying the American flag and accompanied by his dog Bunker Hill.
Next came a seven-piece marching band, followed by Browne on horseback. Nearby rode the Great Unknown, bedecked in white and blue and atop a bright red saddle, continuing to yell orders, and alongside him rode a skilled trick rider known as Oklahoma Sam. Coxey followed in a fancy carriage known as a phaeton, along with his wife, her sister, and his three-week- old infant, named Legal Tender Coxey. The men trekked from town to town through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, arriving on the outskirts of Washington just in time to march to the Capitol on May Day.
They were fed along the way by sympathetic townspeople and camped out at night. Newspaper readers nationwide became familiar with the names and personalities of Coxey, Browne, the Great Unknown, Oklahoma Sam, and several others. When there were turf wars and power struggles, the reporters gleefully told their readers all about them. But to get anywhere near Washington, the westerners had to hijack a few trains. Big, noisy Carl Browne, ostentatiously done up in his buckskin cowboy costume, quarreled with the police then bolted into the crowd.
But he was quickly stopped. Police then turned on the crowd with sticks raised, beating the crowd back. It was over in 15 minutes. The crowds dispersed. Coxey and Browne were sentenced to 20 days in a workhouse for trampling Congressional shrubbery. Many of the marchers simply traded homelessness in Cleveland for homelessness in Washington. It could have been worse, in an era when detectives shot strikers and anarchists threw bombs, but to the eager petitioners, it looked like a total failure.
The couple later separated. But 50 years later, the former radical Jacob Coxey was invited back to Washington, hailed now as a visionary. On May 1, , Coxey was at last asked to read his petition from the steps of the U. We have come here through toil and weary marches, through storms and tempests, over mountains, and amid the trials of poverty and distress, to lay our grievances at the doors of our National Legislature and ask them in the name of Him whose banners we bear, in the name of Him who plead for the poor and the oppressed, that they should heed the voice of despair and distress that is now coming up from every section of our country, that they should consider the conditions of the starving unemployed of our land, and enact such laws as will give them employment, bring happier conditions to the people, and the smile of contentment to our citizens.
That first march on Washington tells the very human story of how America slowly reformed itself after the Gilded Age. Jacob Coxey and his bizarre and ragtag army of some 10, jobless followers and reformers, proposed one farsighted solution and many, many weird ones.
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