Saturday, Jan. 2, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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If President Donald Trump can stir up civil unrest with false claims of vote rigging, he just might get the reason he needs to invoke martial law.
Trump, of course, would say he had to take such drastic action to save lives amid an uprising of leftist socialists. But his motivation clearly would be to overturn a lawful election that he lost by more than 7 million votes and attempt to send in troops to do his dirty work.
Since the early 19th century, presidents and Congress have had the right to employ martial law in the wake of national disasters, violent insurrections, etc. Governors also can take similar action, but only in their own states.
There was an attempt in 2006 to give the chief executive the right to call out state national guards without getting the OK from state governors. It rode in as part of much larger legislation.
The Senate later repealed that part of the law and restored the 1807 Insurrection Act to limit the president’s martial law powers to its original — and current — limits.
My guess is that 14 years ago, lawmakers must have feared that one day a lunatic wannabe autocrat would wind up in the White House and would not want to leave after losing a reelection bid in a lawful balloting procedure. For the sake of the republic, I pray that never happens.
The first time martial law was used in the United States was when Gen. Andrew Jackson restricted movement in New Orleans prior to the 1814 Battle of New Orleans, when a ragtag U.S. militia defeated a large, well-disciplined contingent of British Regulars and secured U.S. victory in the War of 1812.
That worked well until a Louisiana state senator was arrested by Jackson after writing an op-ed in the Louisiana Courier, criticizing Ol’ Hickory for imposing martial law. A judge freed the senator. Jackson, in turn, threw the judge in jail. Shortly after that, the future U.S. president lifted martial law.
Hmm. Throwing a judge in jail? Look out, you nine Supreme Court justices and many other lower court judges who threw Trump out of court in more than 60 appeals because he had no proof of widespread voter fraud.
Of course, all of what Jackson did occurred after the British burned down the White House. Hey that’s an idea for giving Trump a measure of victory. He can burn down the White House, so Biden will have nowhere to go Jan. 20.
Over the next 125 years, martial law was primarily invoked to quell violent labor disputes (the 1934 San Francisco waterfront strike, for one) and major disasters (the 1871 Great Chicago Fire and 1906 San Francisco earthquake are two examples).
In the early-to-mid-20th century, martial law became an instrument to curb racial incidents, such as in the 1919 Omaha race riots, where Will Brown was mob lynched, and in the 1920 Lexington riots, where Willie Lockett was hanged. Both men were Black.
Following the Dec. 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese, primarily white U.S. troops were accused of acting like military dictators in their treatment of native Hawaiians, a people of color. Also, martial law in Hawaii continued well into 1944 — a much longer period than usual.
The race controversy continued into the Civil Rights Movement. On May 21, 1961, Alabama’s governor imposed martial law because his state was being invaded by “outside agitators” who plan to “violate our laws and customs” leading to “outbreaks of lawlessness.” (Sound familiar, Mr. Trump?)
Those so-called agitators turned out to be the brave and heroic Freedom Riders, a group of primarily young and peaceful civil rights activists on a bus, traveling through the South, challenging illegal racial segregation,
What we have learned is that martial law can either be an apparatus for order or a weapon for oppression. History has proven that martial law should not be employed without careful consideration — when to apply it and when to lift it.
Using martial law to wipe out millions of legal votes and bring in soldiers to oversee new elections at gunpoint would be the most egregious use of martial law, reducing the United States to the status of a Third World dictatorship.
Simply put, it cannot be allowed if we are to keep alive our precious — and apparently so very fragile — 244-year-old experiment in democracy.
Ed Koch is a longtime Sun reporter who for the last 11 years has occasionally contributed to the Sun.
