By issuing Executive Order 10730 on September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, where unruly crowds had prevented the desegregation of all-white Central High School. Not since the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War had federal troops gone to the South to maintain law and order. Many southern leaders angrily protested and said that the federal government was intervening in a matter for which state and local officials had exclusive responsibility. Even though Eisenhower’s executive order had the effect of advancing integration, the president was not a strong supporter of civil rights. Instead, he acted because the mob at Central High was interfering with a federal court order to carry out a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court about school desegregation. He declared, “There must be respect for the Constitution—which means the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution—or we shall have chaos” (qtd. in Galambos and van Ee, 2001, vol. 18, p. 322).