Donald Trump seems to relish threatening Americans with the U.S. Army.

In 2020, he threatened to send U.S. soldiers into American cities to stop the protests over the murder of George Floyd. Last week, he said that the “enemy from within” — apparently referring to those who might take to the streets if he wins the upcoming election, but possibly to his political opponents, based on his follow-up comments — “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

The “enemy from within” threat set off an uproar, but what many people fail to realize is how often American presidents have deployed the U.S. army domestically for justifiable reasons.

In 1794, President George Washington sent a federal militia to stop the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent tax revolt by farmers and distillers in western Pennsylvania that threatened the new nation’s stability. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant sent members of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment from the frontier to the South to put down the Ku Klux Klan’s........

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