A little over a year after President Jefferson signed The Insurrection Act on March 3rd, 1807, he invoked it on April 19th, 1808, so he could have the militia arrest smugglers on Lake Champlain violating the Embargo Act of 1807. While Jefferson was the first president to use The Insurrection Act to put down lawlessness, he was not the last.

In the history of our country, 45 different men have been President. Two – Cleveland and Trump – were elected twice and had split terms. Fifteen of these presidents, exactly one-third of them, have used The Insurrection Act to restore law and order.

There is some consistency in their actions. For example, Grant used it five times to quell activities by white supremacists, and once to preserve the peace after a contested election.

Kennedy and LBJ each invoked the act three times. Kennedy used it to enforce desegregation, and LBJ once to enforce desegregation and twice to suppress riots, one in Detroit in 1967 and the other in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.

Bush I used the legislation to restore order and stop looting in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1982 after Hurricane Hugo devastated the islands. He used it again to put down the riots in 1992 in LA in the aftermath of the acquittal of the police officer who beat up Rodney King.

FDR used the act to provide the legal basis of using the National Guard to quell a race riot in Detroit in 1943. Rutherford B. Hayes used The Insurrection Act as the basis of putting down a railroad strike and ending a feud between rival gangs that had gotten way out of hand.

Going farther back in history, Lincoln used the powers of The Insurrection Act in 1861 to fight the Confederacy, and he also used its legal power to use Federal troops to end the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City.

Andrew Jackson used The Insurrection Act in 1831 to send troops to end a border dispute on what was then the Arkansas/Mexico border because Texas had not yet become a country, much less a state. He also put down a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831 and threatened to send in the U.S. Army to Maryland to end a labor dispute in 1834.

Gang violence was a problem in 1882 in the Arizona Territory which caused Chester Arthur to use The Insurrection Act to deploy the Army to put an end to the gang activities.

This is just a sample of how Presidents have used The Insurrection Act to restore law and order, just as our Founding Fathers intended. There is, however, one exception.

In 1932, veterans who were promised financial bonuses in the form of cash and bonds had not been paid. 43,000 of them set up camp in Washington, demanding payment which had been delayed by Presidents Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge. Now Herbert Hoover was in the White House, and he told the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army to “Surround the area and clear it without delay.”

MacArthur followed his orders from the Commander-in-Chief claiming he was acting under the powers given to the President under The Insurrection Act. However, to employ the power in The Insurrection Act, the President is required to publicly state and report to Congress that he intends to do so. Hoover never made such a statement, nor is there any record of him telling Congress.

U.S. Army photo of the Bonus Army shacks burning in 1932.

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