When Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley testified to Congress and defended the study of racism, hatred, and rage, he could have been speaking about the people involved in key incidents depicted in “Insurrection: Rebellion, Civil Rights, and the Paradoxical State of Black Citizenship” by Hawa Allan (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022).
The U.S. Insurrection Act got is start even before there was a United States. Variations of early insurrection acts were instituted to repress rebellions against slavery. But there have been other reasons to call up responses to restore “order.”
The Founders created the military, in part, to respond to insurrections, without relying solely on state militias and federalism (power dispersed primarily within the states), yet state militias were still needed as part of a balance-of-power equation. Allan explains:
“As elaborated in The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton advocated for ‘a force constituted differently from the militia to preserve the peace of the community and to maintain the just authority of the laws against those violent invasions of them which amount to insurrections and rebellions.’ In other words, framers advocated for the establishment of a federal military force, which was eventually enumerated in Article 1, referring to the power of Congress to 'raise and support Armies’ and ‘provide and maintain a Navy.’ The concerns raised at the time about establishing federal military forces –– the modern-day equivalent to the federal military corps that includes the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard –– had less to do with the enslaved and seemed to generally arise from that threat that such an armed body could pose to white citizens themselves.
“To dispel concerns about any abuse of federal military power, James Madison surmised in The Federalist Papers that the state militia together with armed civilians would be sufficiently numerous to repel a federal army. In other words, federal military forces could be easily repelled by the ‘people.’ Hamilton, however, also sought to quell fears about the federal military by assuring doubters that the federal military would, in fact, be constituted by the ‘people.’ ‘Where in the name of common sense are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens?’ Hamilton rhetorically asked in The Federalist Papers. ‘What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits, and interests?’”
The military and/or militias have been on both ends of insurrection acts, both as responders and as perpetrators. In 1786-7, veterans of the Revolutionary War, stormed court houses and attempted to take over a federal arsenal in what’s known as Shay’s Rebellion.
A sea change occurred during the Civil War and especially after the Emancipation Proclamation and during the years of Reconstruction. No longer was there a federal effort to repress slave rebellions; instead, riots arose from racism, hatred, and rage of white supremacists against fellow free black citizens.
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| A "KKK Services" 1929 rally. National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress) |
President Ulysses S. Grant, top former Union General during the Civil War, initiated actions to quell uprisings by groups, including especially the Ku Klux Klan. Insurrection acts and riot acts have been called up most often in former Confederate states, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia.
The U.S. military has always had a role in suppressing insurrection, but Congress put guard rails on that role under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which “heralded the end of the Reconstruction era by formally prohibiting the deployment of federal troops to enforce the law –– that is unless otherwise authorized by the Constitution or Congress.”
[Of note, this week President Biden signed the Emmitt Till anti-lynching bill in belated response to the killing of an African American teenager by a white mob in 1955.]
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| Gov. Orval Faubus calls for rejecting integration at Little Rock State Capitol, Arkansas, in 1959. (John T. Bledsoe; LOC) |
Many white citizens in the South were rallied to oppose integration and "race mixing" in the name of Christianity and anti-Communism. Faubus contended that Arkansas had sovereignty, and that the federal government was "occupying Arkansas." Parents should have rights over schools and the government, including the right to segregation.
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| White segregationists demonstrate, calling race mixing "Communism" and "march of the Anti-Christ." (John T. Bledsoe; LOC) |
Throughout her presentation of the history of U.S. insurrections, Allan scatters anecdotes of personal experience dealing with issues of race. She contemplates the meaning of dreams, silence, rage, and peace as she explores concepts from psychology, sociology, and philosophy..
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| Frederick Douglass |
Douglass, “a fugitive slave turned grand orator and editor,” said, “No man can put a chain around the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened around his own neck.”
That particular Douglass quote brings to mind the tragedy of Putin’s terror campaign in Ukraine and how it’s also affecting the people of Russia. Putin’s expanded kinetic war in Ukraine began three weeks ago. Brave Russians are risking their lives stand up and speak out against the war.
Citing the findings of Le Bon, Allan talks about the psychology of crowds –– and dangers of being a bystander who acquiesces or, worse, supports a deranged leader of their country or party.
These insights apply to the Lost Cause of the Civil War, lies by Hitler and Nazi Germany, and falsehoods and pretexts by Putin to justify invading Ukraine. Unfortunately, albeit on a smaller scale, the insights also apply to the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 U.S. election and resultant coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021.
“If the crowd is vulnerable to suggestion –– to having its collective unconscious tapped into and its drives channeled into unified action –– then who, exactly, is doing the hypnotizing? Le Bon puts forth a charismatic leader who, through his projection of strength and confidence, can transform a mere group of individuals into a crowd at his command. Such a charismatic leader can, perhaps, also transfer a government of laws into a government of men. Yet, as Le Bon suggests, this charismatic leader alone may not have the influence to muster a crowd. Though largely parroting the repetitive slogans of a strongman, the crowd also tends to be formed by members primed to defend their long-standing beliefs …
“The crowd, as Le Bon says, is inherently conservative, and seeks to either preserve the present or reinstate the conditions of the past. Only the crowd’s erratic violence might cause its members to be mischaracterized as revolutionary instead of what they actually are, which is reactionary. ‘It is precisely crowds that cling most tenaciously to traditional ideas and oppose their being changed with the most obstinacy,’ Le Bon writes. ‘The crowd does not usher in the new, but, instead, clears the way for the reinstatement of the old, and such beliefs, once finally implanted in the crowd, are difficult to uproot, and can only ‘be changed at the cost of violent revolutions.’ As Le Bon also writes, ‘The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief.’”
Allan assesses how populations are impacted by disasters, including in the aftermaths of hurricanes Hugo, Andrew, and Katrina. But the storm of war also applies, and our thoughts turn to Ukraine, especially as the toll of war dehumanizes people.
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| Hawa Allan |
How the Insurrection Act and related acts were used in history is told in black and white by Hawa Allan, who takes into account the motives of those who called for the Act and those who were impacted by it –– as well as the anger and rage they lived through.
Allan’s writing is well-paced and balanced, although some readers may find her style to be a bit scattered and off-point. I would have liked to see discussion of Milley’s rejection (along with other military leaders) of former President Trump’s threats and attempts to deploy the military against civilian protests, especially in the summer of 2020.
In the name of "law and order," Trump often threatened to enact the Insurrection Act during riots and protests after the murder of George Floyd and various police shootings of African Americans.
Yet, on January 6, 2021, “As commander in chief of the D.C. National Guard, it is clear that Trump and his administration could have authorized its deployment –– that is, if they actually interpreted the riot to be a threat to law and order.”
[Public hearings of the U.S. Congress’s J6 Select Committee could begin in April or May 2022, and the committee announced it intends to release an interim report in June.]
This is another worthwhile book by a gifted woman writer and yet another recommended read for Women’s History Month. General Milley would no doubt appreciate the wisdom Allan shares.
Top Photo: Army Gen. Mark A. Milley (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), then-Army Chief of Staff in 2016. (Sgt. 1st Class Jim Greenhill)
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