The Business Plot

Wall Street asked a general to overthrow FDR. Butler testified. Congress agreed. Nobody hanged.

1933-34: retired Marine Major General Smedley Butler — twice Medal of Honor — testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that a bond-house emissary had solicited him to lead 500,000 veterans against Roosevelt, financed through Du Pont and Morgan-adjacent circles, to install a 'secretary of general affairs.' The committee's final report stated it found evidence verifying the essential statements. No prosecutions followed; the press ridiculed it; the committee records sat for decades. The archive's canonical entry for the category: an attempted coup, congressionally credited, culturally deleted.