First Era, 1607-1783: Colonial, then state militias – volunteer and conscripted – served short-term military needs at the national level. From the earliest Euro-American colonial period, settlers refused to fight with the Indians or expropriate their land or to be drafted by the King’s army during times of war.  The vast majority were Quakers and conscientious objectors.  The purpose of their pacifism was to make a personal religious statement for peace and to set a personal example of pacifism and commitment to God.  They primarily sought personal exemptions from involvement in the war and thereby refused to cooperate with the draft law.

• 1607 - 1775   Each colony formed militias from all adult male citizens, largely to fight Indians as well as to fight any battle in which England is involved.

  • Resistance:  From the first colonial settlement, some settlers refused to fight the Indians, take Indian land, or be conscripted by the King’s army during times of war.  Most were pacifists – primarily Quakers and Conscientious Objectors (COs) - who were personally, philosophically, and morally opposed to war and who sought a personal exemption from involvement in the war by refusing to cooperate with the draft laws.
  • Response: In general, official and public response was tolerant.  In a few instances, pacifists were punished like Richard Keene who in Maryland in 1658 was fined and ”abused by the sheriff” for “refusing to be trained as a soldier.”  The sheriff “drew his cutlass and therewith made a pass at the breast of Richard, and struck him on the shoulders, saying, ‘You dog, I could find it in my heart to split your brains.’”
• 1673  Rhode Island passed the earliest CO exemption in the colonies, making conscientious objection one of the colony’s fundamental liberties.  The law excused COs from active military duty and from any type of punishment for reasons of conscience that made COs not want to “train, arm, rally to fight, to kill.”  Pennsylvania passed a similar law.
• 1775 - 1783  The Revolutionary War. A regular volunteer army was raised by offering enlisted men cash bonuses and promises of free western land after the war is over.  When this system did not attract enough soldiers, General Washington called on state militias – all of which were made up of poorly-trained citizens who often needed to return home to tend to their farms. President Washington tried to register all men for service, but Congress refused to pass such legislation, as it continued to do under Presidents Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.

  • Resistance: About one-third of all colonists refused to join the war against the King; about 100,000 of these fled to Canada and England. 
  • Response: Eight colonies recognized CO status grounds for exemption from military duty.  The Continental Congress passed a law in 1775 exempting COs from military duty.When the Constitution was written, no law was passed dealing with exemptions from the draft since the Founders believed that the individual states would continue to honor CO status.
• 1846   Mexican-American War was the first war in U.S. history to be fought solely with volunteers.  All previous wars relied upon soldiers who had been conscripted from state militias and who had volunteered for national service.

  • Resistance: An actual movement began to evolve, encouraged in large part by Henry David Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” – the goal of which was to encourage persons who were morally opposed to the war to collectively use passive, nonviolent action to protest the war and hopefully force concessions from the government.   Several different groups resisted this unpopular war:  anti-slavery advocates who saw war as a means to extend southern slave territory; racists who did not want to extend American territory where Americans might be forced to mingle with inferior people of nonwhite races; and deserters who numbered approximately 9,207.

Second Era, 1862-1917: First wartime conscription was enacted at the national level to meet the national emergency of the Civil War. During this era, a few small movements arose of people who were against being drafted to fight in a war that was not of their choosing.

Third Era, 1917-1940: First mandatory all-male registration was required for conscription in times of WWI national emergency. The vast majority of dissenters were personally and philosophically opposed to war, as well as morally and politically opposed to war.  The purpose of their pacifism was to create a social force for civil disobedience based upon the belief in the power of individuals and the ability of individual action to inspire others to follow.  They primarily sought to disobey the law by refusing to participate within a system in order to frustrate its ability to function.

• In Collinsville, Illinois in 1918 a young man of German descent who was registered as an enemy alien and had Socialist leanings, was wrapped in an American flag and lynched by a mob. During a trial of the mob leaders, their defense attorneys called the act a "patriotic murder." After 25 minutes of deliberation, the local jury acquitted them.
• At Rutgers University, a group of students demanded that an antiwar Socialist, Samuel Chovenson, speak at their Liberty Loan rally. Upon refusal, Chovenson was stripped, tarred and feathered, and paraded through New Brunswick.
• In Berkeley, California, a mob attacked a group of religious pacifists, burned down their place of worship, and dunked them in their baptismal tank. The authorities arrested and jailed the pacifists.
• Professor J. M. Cattell, a psychologist teaching at Columbia University, was fired for his antiwar views.

Anti-war propaganda songs also became popular, especially those using the appeal of "the voice of motherhood, "such as Don't Take My Darling Boy Away. The message came through loud and clear in the title of I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be a Soldier (subtitled A Mothers Plea for Peace, respectfully dedicated to every Mother- everywhere). The lyrics preached to mothers worldwide that if they united in the cause, they could put an end to the fighting and save the lives of millions of young soldiers. For instance, "There'd be no war today If mothers all would say, 'I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier'." The cover of the sheet music portrays exploding shells bursting around an old gray-haired woman protecting her son.

Fourth Era, 1940-1948: First peacetime conscription and lottery system was established at the national level.  Most opposition to war came from Conscientious Objectors, all of whom were personally, philosophically, and politically opposed to war.

• 1940-1945   World War II.  Congress passed the nation's first peacetime draft with the Selective Training and Services Act of 1940 that required all males between 21 and 35 to register for the draft for one year of service restricted to the Western Hemisphere and U.S. territories, and established the nation's first national lottery. As the war progressed, the draft age was lowered to 18 years of age and men are called to service not by lottery number, but by age – with the oldest going first.
• In 1941, Congress voted to keep the one-year draftees in the Army beyond their term.  After Pearl Harbor in December, Congress extended the draft to men between 18 and 38 years of age (and briefly to 45) for the war’s duration and gave the president the power to send draftees anywhere in the world.  Approximately 10 million men were drafted and nearly 6 million enlisted.

  • Resistance: Opposition was largely from COs and various other evaders.
  • Response:  The Justice Department investigated 373,000 alleged evaders and obtained convictions of 16,000.  Some 72,000 registrants applied for CO status, 25,000 of whom entered the army as noncombatants, 12,000 entered civilian work camps, 20,000 had their claims rejected, and 6,000 were imprisoned (most of whom were Jehovah’s Witnesses.) 
• 1947   President Truman recommended that Congress allow the 1940 Selective Service and Training Act to expire and that the level of required military forces be maintained through volunteer enlistment.
• 1948  Congress amended the Selective Training and Services Act and declared that "religious training and belief" was to be defined as "an individual's belief in a relation to a Supreme Being involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation, but [not including] essentially political,  sociological, or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code."

Fifth Era, 1848-1973: Peacetime and wartime conscription was enacted to fill vacancies in the armed forces that could not be filled by volunteers. Most dissenters were both anti-war and anti-draft and were personally, philosophically, and politically opposed to war.  Opposition mounted during the Vietnam War with rising draft calls and casualty rates.  By the late 1960s, a strong anti-war coalition existed of students, pacifists, clergy, civil rights and feminist activists, and various other groups who regularly engaged in civil disobedience demonstrations and sit-ins at induction centers, as well as illegal activities such as break-ins at local draft boards and draft-card burnings.

• 1950-1953  Korean War. Congress enacted a draft for all men between 18-1/2 and 35 years of age for average terms of 2 years.  Men who served in World War II were exempted. Approximately 1.5 million men were drafted and another 1.3 million volunteered.

  • Resistance:  Opposition was largely from COs and various evaders. 
  • Response:  Some 80,000 alleged draft evasion cases were investigated.  The percentage of inductees exempted as COs was nearly 1.5 %.
• 1951 Congress passed the Universal Military Training and Service Act requiring males between 18 and 26 years of age to register.
• 1964-1975   Vietnam War.  After President Johnson committed ground troops to Vietnam in March 1965, draft calls soared from 100,000 in 1964 to 400,000 in 1966.  By 1968, 543,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam; 40,000 Americans had died and another 250,000 had been wounded.  Draftees were a small minority of the military (16%), but by 1969, they were 88% of the infantry riflemen who accounted for more than half of the army's battle deaths.  Because of student and other deferments, both the draft and casualties fell disproportionately upon working-class youths.   African-Americans, 11% of the U.S. population, accounted for 16% of the army casualties by 1967 and 15% for the entire war.
• 1965   In U.S. v. Seeger, the U.S. Supreme Court broadened the definition of COs to include religious beliefs outside of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions.
• 1969   President Nixon instituted an annual draft lottery  and began the "19-year-old draft" - if a young man was not drafted by 19, he was exempt from future military service except in the event of war or national emergency.  This allowed deferrals for hardship cases, certain occupations, COs, clergymen, and high school and college students.
• 1970  In U.S. v. Welsh, the U.S. Supreme Court added sincerely held ethical and moral beliefs to the definition of allowable grounds for CO status.
• 1971   Congress extended the draft for two more years, eliminated student deferments, and voted a massive ($2.4 billion) pay increase for the lower ranks in the hopes of achieving an All-Volunteer Force (AVF) by mid-1973.
• 1972  President Nixon cut draft calls to 50,000 and stopped forcing draftees to go to Vietnam.
• 1973 On January 27th, a cease-fire was announced.

  • Resistance:  Opposition mounted with rising draft calls and casualty rates.  By the late 1960s, a strong anti-war coalition of students, pacifists, clergy, civil rights and feminist activists, and various other groups regularly engaged in demonstrations, draft-card burnings, sit-ins at induction centers, and break-ins at local draft boards.  Between 1965-1975, about 570,000 young men illegally evaded the draft: 360,000 were never caught; between  30,000-50,000 fled to Canada, Britain, and Sweden; 198,000 had their cases dismissed; 22,500 were indicted; 8,800 are convicted; and 4,000 went to prison. CO exemptions in relation to actual inductions grew from 8% in 1967 to 43% in 1971 and 131% by 1972.  Between 1965 and 1970, 170,000 registrants were classified as COs.

Sixth Era, 1973 to the present: Conscription ended and the All Volunteer Army was established. Notable anti-war efforts did not surface until a year after the War in Iraq began.  Most endeavors came from enlisted men and women who had served their time, but who did not accept Stop Loss and who did not wish to be sent back to Iraq.

• 2003  "Operation Iraqi Freedom."   In March, hundreds of thousands of U.S. volunteers soldiers engaged in the war in Iraq, followed by peace-keeping efforts. The Bush administration predicted that it would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order, and install a new government.

For more information see the GI Rights Hotline at http://girightshotline.org/ and the following:

• John Whiteclay Chambers II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America (1987)
• George Q. Flynn, Conscription and American Culture, 1940-1973 (1973)
• Stephen M. Kohn, Jailed for Peace: The History of American Draft Law Violations,
  1658-1985 (1986)
• Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, "The American Militia and the Origin of Conscription: A
  Reassessment," Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Fall 2001):29-77

Goal #3: To examine the various ways the U.S. government has tried to stop anti-war dissent during various crises.

Un-American” Dangerous Dissenters before, during, and after WWI: As we just learned, for the first time in history, the federal government responded to dissent during WWI - dissent that was perceived to threaten the very structure of the American way of life. Its initial response was to target at least four groups of Americans were perceived to be dangerous dissenters:

• “Hyphenated” Americans such as German-Americans who may not wish to fight German soldiers and Irish-Americans who may not wish to fight anyone at war with the British.
• Supporters of Socialism and/or the Socialist Russian Revolution which included some hyphenated Americans, eastern European immigrants, as well as American-born liberals and socialists.
• Draft resistors, pacifists, or Conscientious Objectors.
• Labor unions - individual members and leaders.

All four groups were generally lumped into a single negative category - "Un-American" in thought as well as deed. Their thoughts were believed to be anti-war and anti-American; and their deeds were considered to fall short of the contemporary demand that everyone be "100% American."

Federal actions used to stop “un-American” dissent and the anti-war movement, 1917 - 1920. The federal government used three effective avenues to quell such "un-American" dissent:

1. Passing Congressional Acts designed to prohibit and punish “disloyalty’.

• Selective Service Act 1917 - Unlike previous draft laws during war times, the new act places thousands of COs under military authority before they obtained religious exemptions.  Thus, all COs who registered immediately fell under military authority and became subject to military justice. In the first year of the war, over 8,000 indictments come down under the Selective Services Act – 450 COs are found guilty at court martial hearings.
• The Espionage Act of 1917 outlaws statements “obstructing the war effort” and “aiding the enemy; forbids “false statements” designed to “obstruct” enlistment into the armed services and conspiracies designed to cause “disloyalty” or “insubordination”; and bans from the mails materials considered to be treasonable. Those found guilty are subject to heavy fines and imprisonment of up to twenty years.
• The Sedition Act of 1918 prohibits the utterance or publication of anything “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive” about the U.S. government, emphasizing that any disloyal opinion and demeaning references to the government or the flag could be punished by a 21-year prison sentence. More than 2000 people are prosecuted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts and thousands of others are intimidated into silence.
• More than 2000 people were prosecuted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts and thousands of others were intimidated into silence.

2.  Creating federal agencies to enforce the Congressional acts, assemble information on those suspected of disloyalty, and arrest and punish offenders.

• Soon after declaring war, President Wilson appoints a journalist, George Creel, to head up a new agency - The Committee on Public Information (CPI).  The CPI employed many of the nations most talented writers to shape the public’s opinion of and support for the war; to create anti-German propaganda and films; to speak at schools and churches; and to encourage citizens to spy on their neighbors and report any suspicious activities to the authorities.
• The Department of Justice creates the American Protective League which organized 12,000 local units across the nation.  Its members, primarily business and professional men, spy on draft dodgers, gather gossip about those suspected of disloyalty, and check up on people who failed to buy Liberty Bonds.
• The Department of Justice creates a General Intelligence Division (GID), the predecessor of the FBI, to assemble information on all suspected “un-Americans.”  In November 1919, GID officials descend on Russian meeting places in eleven cities and seize hundreds of members of the Union of Russian Workers, 650 in New York City alone.  One month later, 249 aliens are deported from the United States and sent to Russia, via Finland.
• The Department of Justice uses federal officials and local police forces to conduct the most overt terrorist tactics against political dissents to date: the Palmer Raids of January 1920.  In 33 cities, over 4,000 aliens and suspected members of the two communist parties are seized at homes, in their officers, at meetings, and in pool rooms by federal officers without search warrants.  All seized are jailed and denied council.  About 600 are eventually deported.  While all were scheduled for deportation, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the raids, the remainder of those seized are eventually were released.

3.  Using the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of the government’s actions.

• When the Espionage Act is challenged in court, the Supreme Court unanimously decides in Schenck v. U.S. (1919) that the draft was constitutional and that the First Amendment could be restricted in time of war.  In what came to be the famous words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing panic.”  Further, if words “are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantial evils that Congress has a right to prevent,” free speech could be limited.
• The Sedition Act is constitutionally upheld by Supreme Court in Abrams v. U.S. (1919)

The press was equally as intolerant of pacifists, as illustrated in the Washington Post editorial of April 1, 1917.

"Large advertisements are appearing in the metropolitan newspapers, skillfully written for the purpose of stirring up class hatred and suspicion and thus dissuading Americans from enlisting in the war that is coming... At this time, when the United States is on the verge of war, the Washington Post believes that the advertisements in question are an abuse of the right of free speech. It does not presume to judge other newspapers which print these advertisements, but for itself, it will not print them... An effort to prevent the voluntary enlistment of American citizens for the defense of their country is treasonable in time of war.  It is sedition at any time.  'The hope of impunity is a strong incitement to sedition,' said Hamilton.  The pacifists will not long enjoy impunity.  If they are wise they will cease their agitation before they are legally classified as public enemies and punished accordingly."

Source:  Quoted in Jim R. McClellan, Changing Interpretations of America’s Past, Volume II (p. 201)

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Conclusions
Pacifism and Dissent in Times of War

1. Anti-war and anti-draft dissent in America, as well as official and public responses to such dissent, has played a long role in U.S. history.  Indeed, the growth of dissent, has been evolutionary - moving from personal religious statements during the colonial period, to collective political and ideological actions during the 19th Century, a melding of the two earlier strategies with the outbreak of World War I and beyond.
2. The growth of governmental intervention with anti-war and anti-draft dissenters has been evolutionary.  Not until World War I when dissent was perceived as a threat to the status quo did the government move from tolerance to oppression. 
3. In contrast to the federal government, the public reaction to dissent has been constant.  From the beginning of our history, Americans have rarely tolerated people who deviate from the status quo - people who refused to fight American Indians; who refused to fight King George for independence; who balked at fighting in the Civil War to free the slaves; who refused to fight for political, economic, and ideological convictions during WWI; and who fled to Canada rather than fight the war in Vietnam.
4. With the outbreak of World War I and the refusal of some Americans to enlist in the war effort, the federal government legalized political repression against anti-war and anti-draft dissenters.  Such repression was responsible for two major consequences. 

   • First, political repression allowed the federal government to institutionalize laws that were designed to destroy popular dissident organizations and imprison their leaders.
   • Second, political repression provided the ideological and legal underpinnings of the Red Scare and of future governmental intrusions into the political and religious activities of millions of Americans throughout the 20th Century.
5. Since World War I, the federal government has continued to deploy the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in the legalized battle against anti-war and anti-draft dissenters.

.