Here's How Many Times Martial Law Has Been Declared In The United States

On Wednesday morning, South Korean parliament unanimously voted to lift President Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law. This happened a mere six hours after Yoon put martial law into effect when he cited an "anti-state" plot within the South Korean government working in tandem with North Korea. During the bizarre, surreal night in question, lawmakers pushed past armed troops into parliament to overturn Yoon's decision 190-0, a decision regarded as a dramatic overextension of power that doesn't reflect any real crisis currently facing Korea.

Naturally, and perhaps in light of endlessly rising political divisions within the U.S., events in South Korea have left some Americans wondering if the same could happen on U.S. soil. Acting as both bad news and good news: Yes, it could happen and has already happened 68 times across the United States' roughly 250-year history. The Brennan Center for Justice has a full breakdown of the causes behind each declaration of martial law, who declared it, who ended it, how long it lasted, whether it happened on the state or federal level, and even if any civilians were tried by military tribunal as a result.  

Twenty-nine out of 68 times, martial law was declared in response to disputes between workers and employers/industries. Examples include martial law in Pennsylvania in 1877 over a "general strike," an 1892 miner strike in Idaho turned violent, and the "Colorado labor wars" lasting for more than two months in 1904. Riots were the next most common cause for martial law (11 times), and war the least common (twice). Fifty-two times, it was state governors who enacted martial law on the state level.

There's a lot of general confusion regarding the definition of martial law and what it actually entails in terms of powers granted. There are an enormous amount of rules and details in the books regarding U.S. martial law, defined in the journal Law and Order in 1989 as, "the temporary substitution of military authority for civilian rule and is usually invoked in time of war, rebellion, or natural disaster," per the U.S. Department of Justice. And yet, as an explanatory brief on the Brennan Center for Justice says, martial law has "no established definition."

A lot of the confusion and complexities of martial law in the U.S. boil down to various divisions of power, like state vs. federal government and civilian law enforcement vs. military intervention. The president is the "commander-in-chief" of the U.S. military and adopts that role if federal-level martial law is declared, and yet the president must be a civilian. Furthermore, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents the military from intervening in civilian law enforcement, in general. So what is the military's role if martial law is invoked, then? The Brennan Center for Justice says that the military usually supports local law, but has sometimes taken over for them, anyway.

Moreover and contrary to what people think, various political bodies can declare martial law, including Congress, the president, a state governor, a military general, a National Guard general, and even a mayor. Each decision comes with its own checks and balances. Folks detained under martial law, for example, can appeal to federal courts, which can declare the declaration of martial law unconstitutional. Such rules, and many more, make for a highly opaque and poorly defined process.

The first President to declare martial law was Abraham Lincoln, who made the executive order twice during the Civil War. The first declaration was made in a very broad way and lasted for four years from 1862 to 1866. It applied to "all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors, within the United States," per the Brennan Center for Justice. Later during the war, he declared martial law over the entire state of Kentucky in 1964 which spanned one year and three months. 

After this, the next and last time a U.S. president declared martial law was when Franklin Roosevelt did so in response to World War II's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Much like Lincoln's declaration covering only Kentucky, Roosevelt's declaration was confined to the U.S. territory of Hawaii. 

True to the U.S.' dance of power between branches of government, Congress can object to a president's declaration of martial law or defer to courts and let them consult constitutional precedent. Each and every scenario is unique. 

Like we mentioned, U.S. state governors have declared martial law far more often than any other governmental or military person or body. In each case, governors were responding to state issues, mostly civil unrest and riots, or conflicts with labor forces. In 1886, for example, Washington Gov. Watson Squire declared martial law in response to anti-Chinese rioting — this was when Washington was still a territory, three years before it became a state in 1889. Ohio Gov. George Nash declared martial law in response to Akron riots in 1900, and Texas Gov. James Ferguson did the same in response to the Houston riots in 1917. 

Sometimes, governors enacted martial law in response to natural disasters, like when Florida Gov. William Sherman Jennings declared martial law in Jacksonville in 1901 after fires tore through the city. Brigadier Gen. George Wood did the same in 1913 in Dayton Ohio after the city was ravaged by floods.

In a few cases, governors declared martial in reaction to local wars or insurrections, like when Mormons faced off against the U.S. Army in 1857 in what's been dubbed the "Utah War." The title is a bit of a misnomer, as the war never really happened and the conflict was settled via negotiation. Utah territory Gov. Brigham Young, a Mormon himself, declared martial law in order to provoke the conflict; he was deposed the same year as the war.

In 1870, North Carolina Gov. William Holden declared martial law during the Kirk-Holden War, which saw state militia crush a Ku Klux Klan uprising. The last time martial law was declared in the U.S. was in 1963 when Maryland Gov. J. Millard Tawes issued the order to quell the Cambridge Riots during the Civil Rights era.