Historically, that constitutional duty — to protect America's states against invasion — has been the province of the president of the United States, the chief executive, who today is Joe Biden.

How did Biden's predecessors do in discharging their duty to secure America's borders?

During the War of 1812, President James Madison assigned the defense of New Orleans against an invading British army that had just burned the Capitol and White House to Gen. Andrew Jackson.

On Jan. 8, 1815, Jackson crushed the battle-hardened and numerically superior British force that had invaded our country.

Jackson was also the chosen instrument of President James Monroe to punish and expel Indian marauders raiding Georgia from Spanish Florida in 1818.

Exceeding his mandate, the resolute Jackson entered Florida, expelled the Spanish governor and annexed the peninsula for the United States after executing two British subjects and almost igniting a war with Great Britain.

In 1845, President James K. Polk sent an American army to Texas to validate our claim to all the land north of the Rio Grande that had belonged to the Lone Star Republic when it seceded from Mexico in 1836 and joined the Union in December of 1845.