The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

He recommended that Eisenhower send in federal troops, drawing for authority on Sections 332 and 333 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which enshrines the Insurrection Act of 1807. According to the statute, “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.” Faubus’s defiance presented just such a case of rebellion. Eisenhower reluctantly acknowledged this fact and agreed to use federal troops to enforce the law.