Principles and Heresies

The Constitutional Crisis

Looking back upon the first days of the school year in Little Rock, the significance of certain events grows sharper. Many times before September 25, 1957, officers of the United States Army have addressed an assembly of school children. What made that date so different is that it was the first time that an officer of the United States Army, acting under the orders of the President of the United States, addressed such an assembly in a building surrounded by the unsheathed bayonets of his command. Speaking with the sanction of the naked authority of steel, an army officer instructed American students on what they had better accept as the meaning of the Constitution—or else.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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The Constitutional Crisis

Looking back upon the first days of the school year in Little Rock, the significance of certain events grows sharper. Many times before September 25, 1957, officers of the United States Army have addressed an assembly of school children. What made that date so different is that it was the first time that an officer of the United States Army, acting under the orders of the President of the United States, addressed such an assembly in a building surrounded by the unsheathed bayonets of his command. Speaking with the sanction of the naked authority of steel, an army officer instructed American students on what they had better accept as the meaning of the Constitution—or else.