Not too often, thank God. The last I recall for sure was the beat down of the Bonus Army back in the 30s, which saw Hoover out of office, which gave us FDR, a SAD day for America. MacArthur was Army Chief of Staff at the time and Majors Eisenhower and Patton were intimately involved in that debacle.
Any others since then that you are aware of?
New Orleans 2005, Los Angeles 1992, Chicago 1968, Detroit 1967, Little Rock 1957, to name a few from the last half-century.
“The last I recall for sure was the beat down of the Bonus Army back in the 30s, which saw Hoover out of office, which gave us FDR, a SAD day for America. MacArthur was Army Chief of Staff at the time and Majors Eisenhower and Patton were intimately involved in that debacle.”
There’s a lot of disinformation concerning that incident. I haven’t read the papers about this incident in many years so my memory may be a bit fuzzy.
What happened during the Bonus Army march was that the marchers were infiltrated by communists and anarchists. (This was known by the leftists as the ‘Progressive era’) These red flag wavers, as they were known, occupied federal buildings under construction. The DC police ordered them out and the vets left, while the commies and anarchists refused to leave.
The commies attacked the DC police, killing one officer and injuring many. Thus, Hoover ordered the Army out to remove the commies and anarchists, not the vets who had already obeyed the order to leave.
The incident is never reported correctly, as it serves the government to make people believe that the army will attack them. It’s a good bogeyman.
An earlier matter concerned the 2nd whisky rebellion. The government needed cash to pay for the Civil War, so it imposed a whisky tax that mainly affected the southern states. Naturally, the south resisted and ran the revenuers off. So the army was called in to supress the rebellion.
You can read old reports from the army that recommended that the federal government not try to collect the tax. The whisky makers were heavily armed, organized and willing to fight. Several hundred died on both sides in skirimishes. It was a stalemate that lasted for 60 years until Capone and buddies took over the booze business.