Military-Force

MacArthur Uses Tanks and Tear Gas to Violently Suppress Bonus Army of 43,000 Veterans

| Importance: 9/10

On July 28, 1932, U.S. Army troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur violently disperse the Bonus Army—43,000 demonstrators including 17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who had marched on Washington, D.C. to demand early payment of service bonus …

Douglas MacArthur Herbert Hoover Dwight D. Eisenhower Walter Waters Bonus Army veterans +1 more military-force veterans great-depression civil-liberties state-violence
Read more →

Great Railroad Strike of 1877 Erupts Across Nation, Federal Troops Deployed Against Workers

| Importance: 9/10

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 begins when Baltimore & Ohio Railroad workers walk off the job in response to a 10% wage cut—the second reduction in eight months during the severe economic depression following the Panic of 1873. The strike spreads rapidly across the nation’s rail …

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Rutherford B. Hayes U.S. Army Railroad workers State militias labor-suppression gilded-age railroad-strike federal-intervention military-force +1 more
Read more →

Trail of Tears Forced Removal Begins as 7,000 Troops Round Up 16,000 Cherokee at Gunpoint

| Importance: 10/10

U.S. troops under General Winfield Scott begin forcibly removing the Cherokee Nation from their ancestral homelands in Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama, starting a process that becomes known as the Trail of Tears. President Martin Van Buren, enforcing the fraudulent 1835 Treaty of New …

Martin Van Buren Winfield Scott Cherokee Nation John Ross U.S. Army +1 more ethnic-cleansing trail-of-tears indian-removal state-violence military-force +1 more
Read more →

Whiskey Rebellion Establishes Federal Power to Suppress Domestic Dissent with Military Force

| Importance: 8/10

President George Washington issues a proclamation declaring western Pennsylvania whiskey protests to be treasonous acts that amount to “levying war against the United States,” establishing the precedent for federal military suppression of domestic economic dissent. The crisis stems from …

George Washington Alexander Hamilton Western Pennsylvania farmers U.S. Militia federal-power taxation military-force class-conflict democratic-resistance
Read more →