The origins of the Insurrection Act lie in a 1792 law that enabled President George Washington to lead troops against the Whiskey Rebellion. President Abraham Lincoln invoked the Insurrection Act at the dawn of the Civil War. President Ulysses S. Grant used it to combat racial terrorism in the South during Reconstruction. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson employed it to enforce court orders on school desegregation. The Insurrection Act gave California’s governor a legal basis to ask President George H.W. Bush for military help during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.