Draft Resistance in America: Moral Obedience and Civil Disobedience

With roots in early colonial times, the American antidraft movement has evolved from individual acts of resistance based on religious convictions to mass demonstrations and concerted acts of civil disobedience for political, economic, and ideological purposes as well. At the heart of resistance, however, are individuals who choose not to comply with compulsory military service and who suffer the legal and social consequences of their decisions.

From the early 1600s many American colonists struggled with the ideological implications of conscription and the use of a colonial militia to settle the New World. The objection on religious grounds of Quakers and other pacifist groups to military support or service came to be widely accepted and had an impact on colonial draft policies during the American Revolution. In 1775 the Continental Congress passed a statute exempting religious conscientious objectors (COs) from serving in the military.

Congress enacted the first federal conscription law during the Civil War. Under the Draft Act of 1863, all males between the ages of 20 and 45 were required to register. That same year violent draft riots erupted in New York City. Many rioters protested the exemptions the act offered to the wealthy; the substitution exemption allowed a draftee to hire another person to serve in his place, and the commutation exemption released a draftee from service if he could pay $300. Other protesters objected to being drafted to fight for the freedom of slaves. These riots differed from earlier antidraft protests in that they were not based on principles of pacifism or religious ideology but instead were born from economic inequality and the Northern protestors' hostility to the antislavery cause.

World War I saw the emergence of mass resistance to draft laws. The first national draft since the Civil War was enacted in 1917. Men were drafted directly into the armed services and were immediately subject to military law. Resisters surfaced from a variety of religious, political, and economic backgrounds and included Quakers, Mennonites, Hutterites, Molokans, socialists, anarchists, and some members of labor unions. For the first time in U.S. history, religious, ideological, and political resisters joined in direct action. Protests against conscription, the war, and U.S. economic policy erupted across the country, but few CO exemptions were granted. The draft was discontinued following the armistice in 1918.

In anticipation of U.S. involvement in World War II, Congress reinstituted conscription in the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. Seen by most Americans as a "just" war, World War II was a challenge for the antidraft movement. Very few eligible men applied for CO status. During this time, however, antidraft submovements emerged. Members objected to perceived encroachments on the civil liberties of some cultural and racial groups in the United States. One group of resisters protested the armed services' Jim Crow segregation policy, Puerto Rican and Hopi groups emerged to protest their treatment by the U.S. government, and some Japanese Americans endorsed draft resistance to protest the violation of their civil rights while incarcerated in relocation camps. Most of the resisters were tried and found guilty of violating the law. Many were sent to prison, where they continued resistance efforts through hunger strikes and other nonviolent demonstrations.

The Vietnam War provided the backdrop for the largest and most organized antidraft demonstrations in U.S. history. Protestors practiced mass acts of resistance, including pickets and sit-ins at local draft boards, large demonstrations in cities throughout the country, and public draft-card burnings often staged for the media. This sustained effort used resistance tactics drawn from a maturing civil rights movement and combined the ideologies of religious, political, and moral opponents of the Vietnam War.

Seen at first as a "youth movement," antidraft efforts grew from small grassroots initiatives to large organizations, including the Chicago Area Draft Resisters (CADRE) and the New England Resistance. Student organizations sprang to life on campuses across the country, organizing resistance campaigns. But non-draft-age groups embraced draft resistance as well. A well-publicized antiwar statement was made by the Jesuit priest Father Philip Berrigan and three other protestors when they poured blood over records at a Baltimore, Md., draft board office. A group including the peace activists Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr., supported the young draft resisters' efforts by publishing their "Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" in 1967.

By the end of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam in 1973, the antidraft movement had gained considerable ground. President Richard Nixon called for the end of induction in late 1972, and in 1975 Pres. Gerald Ford proclaimed the end of the draft registration requirement. Perhaps the most telling evidence of the changed political climate in the post-Cold War era was Pres. Jimmy Carter's pardon of convicted Vietnam War draft resisters in 1977.

This was a short-lived hiatus for the draft. By 1980 President Carter had reintroduced a draft registration requirement, stating that reinstatement would show America's "resolve as a nation" in the face of Soviet aggression in Afghanistan. This new draft spurred a large resistance movement across the country. Still under effect today, the 1980 draft proclamation has spawned an increasing number of draft-age resisters who have failed to register. There has been no actual induction since 1972.