Insurrection Act of 1807

Based on Wikipedia: Insurrection Act of 1807

The Law That Lets Presidents Send Soldiers Into American Streets

Here's a question that sounds like it should have a simple answer: Can the President of the United States order the military to operate inside American cities? The answer is complicated, and it sits at the intersection of federal power, states' rights, and the fundamental question of what a democracy should do when its own citizens rise up against it.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 is the law that makes this possible. It's one of the most consequential and least understood statutes in American law—a sleeping giant that presidents have invoked to enforce school desegregation, suppress labor strikes, and restore order after natural disasters. And in recent years, it has become the subject of renewed debate as questions about its scope and the limits of presidential power have taken center stage in American politics.

Why We Even Need Such a Law

To understand the Insurrection Act, you first need to understand the principle it creates an exception to. The United States has a deep cultural and legal aversion to using soldiers as police. This isn't just tradition—it's codified in a law called the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it a crime for the military to enforce civil law on American soil without explicit legal authorization.

The Latin term "posse comitatus" roughly translates to "power of the county," referring to the old English practice of sheriffs deputizing local citizens to help enforce the law. The 1878 act was passed during the tail end of Reconstruction, when federal troops were still stationed throughout the former Confederacy. Southern politicians wanted those soldiers gone, and Posse Comitatus was part of the compromise that ended military occupation of the South.

But here's the tension: what happens when a state government can't—or won't—maintain order? What if there's an armed rebellion? What if a hurricane devastates a major city? What if state officials themselves are defying federal law?

The Insurrection Act provides the answer. It creates specific circumstances under which the president can deploy the military domestically, carving out exceptions to the general prohibition.

Three Doors to Deployment

The modern Insurrection Act provides three distinct pathways for presidential action, each with different triggers and implications.

The first is the cooperative path. When a state's legislature—or its governor, if the legislature can't meet—asks the federal government for help suppressing an insurrection, the president can send in troops. This is the least controversial use of the act. A state is saying: we can't handle this ourselves, please help. Think of it as calling 911 at the state level.

The second path is more muscular. When an insurrection in any state makes it impossible to enforce federal law through normal court proceedings, the president can intervene—with or without the state's permission. This was the pathway that mattered during desegregation. When Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to prevent Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower didn't need Arkansas's permission to send in the 101st Airborne Division. The state was actively obstructing federal court orders.

The third path is the broadest and most controversial. When an insurrection, domestic violence, or conspiracy in any state deprives citizens of their constitutional rights, and the state is unable or unwilling to protect those rights, the president can act. This provision was added in 1871 specifically to protect Black Americans from the Ku Klux Klan. It gives the federal government power to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment even against the wishes of state governments.

The Proclamation Requirement: A Rarely-Noticed Safeguard

There's one procedural requirement that often gets overlooked. Before actually exercising the powers granted by the Insurrection Act, the president must issue a formal proclamation ordering the people involved in the unrest to disperse. This isn't just a formality—it's required by law and codified in Title 10 of the United States Code, Section 254.

The proclamation serves as both warning and documentation. It puts the country on notice that extraordinary measures are being taken. When President Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, he first issued Proclamation 3204, formally commanding "all persons engaged in such obstruction of justice to cease and desist therefrom, and to disperse forthwith."

Whether a group of protesters would hear such a proclamation is another matter entirely. But the requirement exists as a check on impulsive action—a speed bump, however small, before soldiers enter the streets.

From the Founding to the Civil War

The Insurrection Act didn't spring into existence fully formed in 1807. It replaced an earlier law, the Calling Forth Act of 1792, which allowed the president to federalize state militias—the precursors to today's National Guard. That earlier act was itself a response to the Whiskey Rebellion, when farmers in western Pennsylvania violently resisted a federal excise tax on whiskey. President George Washington personally led troops to suppress the rebellion, demonstrating that the new federal government would enforce its laws.

The 1807 version expanded presidential power by allowing the use of regular army forces, not just state militias. But notably, it didn't create any criminal penalties for insurrection itself. You could rebel against the government, and the government could use soldiers to stop you, but you couldn't be prosecuted under this particular statute.

That gap wasn't filled until the Confiscation Act of 1862, passed in the heat of the Civil War, which finally made insurrection a crime punishable by law.

The Civil Rights Era: A Turning Point

The Insurrection Act might have remained a historical curiosity if not for the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. The Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation unconstitutional, but many Southern states had no intention of complying.

The showdown came in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Nine Black students—who would become known as the Little Rock Nine—attempted to enroll at Central High School under a court-ordered desegregation plan. Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering. When a federal court ordered Faubus to remove the guards, he complied, but a violent white mob took their place.

President Eisenhower, a former general not known for radical politics, took extraordinary action. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard—essentially taking them out of the governor's control—and deployed the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students to school. These were battle-hardened paratroopers from one of the most elite units in the U.S. Army.

The image was stunning: American soldiers with fixed bayonets protecting American children from American citizens. Eisenhower was invoking a law written to put down armed rebellions, using it instead to enforce a court's interpretation of the Constitution against a state government's active resistance.

President John F. Kennedy followed suit in 1962, when James Meredith attempted to become the first Black student at the University of Mississippi. Governor Ross Barnett had personally blocked Meredith's enrollment, and riots erupted when federal marshals attempted to bring him onto campus. Two people were killed. Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and sent in regular Army troops to restore order and ensure Meredith could register for classes.

These uses of the Insurrection Act were controversial at the time but are now generally celebrated as necessary federal interventions to protect constitutional rights. They demonstrated that the law could serve as a tool for expanding liberty, not just suppressing it.

Labor Wars and Other Applications

The civil rights deployments weren't the first time the Insurrection Act had been used in controversial circumstances. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presidents repeatedly invoked it during labor disputes.

The Pullman Strike of 1894 saw President Grover Cleveland send federal troops to break a railroad workers' strike, over the objections of Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld. The stated justification was protecting mail delivery—a federal responsibility—but the practical effect was crushing a union action. Thirty workers were killed in the resulting confrontations.

This use of federal military power against workers left deep scars in the American labor movement. The phrase "calling in the troops" took on dark meaning in union halls for generations afterward.

Natural Disasters and Civil Unrest

Not every invocation of the Insurrection Act involves political conflict. Sometimes it's about basic public safety.

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo devastated the South Carolina coast and parts of the Caribbean. In the storm's aftermath, looting broke out in affected areas. South Carolina's governor requested federal assistance, and President George H.W. Bush deployed military personnel to help restore order—a textbook example of the cooperative pathway, where a state asks for help it genuinely needs.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots presented a similar case. After a jury acquitted four police officers in the beating of Rodney King—a Black motorist whose assault had been captured on video—violence erupted across Los Angeles. Over six days of unrest, 63 people died, more than 2,000 were injured, and property damage exceeded one billion dollars. California Governor Pete Wilson requested federal assistance, and President Bush authorized the deployment of Marines and Army soldiers to help the National Guard restore order.

These cooperative deployments are less constitutionally fraught than ones imposed against a state's wishes. When a governor asks for help, the federalism concerns largely disappear.

Hurricane Katrina: A Crisis of Federalism

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 tested the limits of the Insurrection Act in ways that left everyone uncomfortable.

The hurricane itself was catastrophic, but the government response was widely seen as disastrously inadequate. Tens of thousands of people were stranded in New Orleans without food, water, or rescue. Reports of looting and violence in the Superdome and Convention Center—many later proven exaggerated—created pressure for more forceful intervention.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco wanted federal military assistance but was reluctant to cede control of the operation to federal authorities. The George W. Bush administration considered invoking the Insurrection Act to intervene without her cooperation, which would have been unprecedented in a natural disaster context. The idea was ultimately rejected as politically untenable and constitutionally questionable.

But the crisis prompted Congress to act. In 2006, buried in the National Defense Authorization Act for that year, an unidentified legislator added a provision expanding the circumstances under which the president could invoke the Insurrection Act without state consent, including natural disasters that hindered law enforcement.

The reaction was immediate and bipartisan. All fifty state governors—Republicans and Democrats alike—signed a joint statement opposing the change. They saw it as a dangerous expansion of federal power at the expense of state sovereignty. Within two years, Congress had repealed the amendment, restoring the prior balance.

The George Floyd Protests and January 6th

The Insurrection Act returned to national attention in 2020, when protests against police violence spread across the country following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.

On June 1, 2020, President Donald Trump walked across Lafayette Square—which had been cleared of peaceful protesters using chemical agents—to hold up a Bible in front of St. John's Church. In remarks before that walk, he urged governors to "dominate" the protesters and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act if they didn't deploy sufficient National Guard forces.

"If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents," Trump said, "then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them."

The threat was never carried out. Senior officials—including Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley—reportedly talked the president out of it. Milley later issued a public apology for having participated in the Lafayette Square walk, saying he shouldn't have been there and that it created the perception of military involvement in domestic politics.

The January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol presented an ironic contrast. A violent mob, incited by the president himself, stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. National Guard reinforcements were eventually deployed to help clear the building, but the Insurrection Act was never invoked—even as something resembling an actual insurrection unfolded on live television.

The Second Trump Administration

When Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025, the Insurrection Act once again became a subject of intense speculation.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to submit a report within ninety days on conditions at the southern border, including recommendations on "whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807." The idea of using the military to enforce immigration law—a civilian function—alarmed many legal scholars and civil liberties advocates.

When the report came back in April 2025, it ultimately recommended against invocation. But the mere consideration marked a significant shift in how the law was being discussed.

In June 2025, anti-deportation protests in Los Angeles prompted another round of consideration. And by October 2025, Trump was publicly floating the possibility of invoking the act in cities like Portland, Oregon and Chicago, Illinois—even as their mayors and governors made clear they opposed any such intervention.

The pattern represented something new: a president repeatedly threatening to use the Insurrection Act not to assist states, but to override them, in contexts that had nothing to do with armed rebellion in any traditional sense.

Calls for Reform

All of this attention has produced serious proposals for changing the law.

In 2020, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced the CIVIL Act—the Curtailing Insurrection and Violations of Individuals' Liberties Act. His proposal would require the president to consult with Congress before invoking the law, limit any deployment to fourteen days without explicit congressional authorization, and require joint certification from the president, Secretary of Defense, and Attorney General that a state is actually failing to enforce the law.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, submitted its own detailed reform proposal to the House committee investigating the January 6th attack. Their analysis focused on vague language in the statute that might permit abuse.

For example, the law currently allows invocation in response to "any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." The Brennan Center argued that "conspiracy" is dangerously broad—technically, any agreement between two or more people to break any law could qualify. Could the president send in the Army to stop a protest where some participants had agreed to block a street? The language doesn't clearly prevent it.

Even more concerning to some analysts is the phrase "or by any other means." The statute says the president can act "by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means." What are those other means? Private contractors? Deputized civilians? The law doesn't say.

The Core Tension

At its heart, the Insurrection Act represents an unresolved tension in American democracy.

On one hand, there are genuine emergencies when normal law enforcement fails. Cities burn. Armed groups seize government buildings. States refuse to protect their own citizens' constitutional rights. In those moments, someone must have the authority to act.

On the other hand, giving the president power to send soldiers into American streets—especially against a state's wishes—creates obvious risks for abuse. The same tool that protected Black children in Little Rock could, in different hands, be used to suppress peaceful protest or override local democratic choices.

The founders understood this tension. They feared standing armies as instruments of tyranny. They designed a system of divided power precisely to prevent any single actor from accumulating too much authority. But they also lived through the chaos of Shays' Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, and they knew that a government that couldn't enforce its laws was no government at all.

Two centuries later, we're still working out the balance. The Insurrection Act remains on the books—invoked more than twenty times in American history, always controversial, never quite reformed. It's a reminder that constitutional democracy isn't a finished project but an ongoing negotiation between liberty and order, federal power and local control, the rule of law and the reality of force.

And as long as presidents consider invoking it—and opponents consider resisting it—that negotiation continues.