A Short History of the Draft

I.       Short History of the Draft

In 1658, Richard Keene was fined and “abused by the sheriff” after he “refused to be trained as a soldier.”[1] During the French and Indian War, Virginia sent a group of Quakers to prison for violating the 1756 Virginia militia law.[2] Colonial life wasn’t easy. Cities and towns weren’t as populated as they are today. When war was on cities’ doorsteps, they had to call on local men to fight.  

In the American Revolution, the colonies filled their armies mostly with volunteers. Militia units may have forced local men into service, essentially drafting them, but there was not a federal conscription law in 1776. The same was true about the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. The first draft law did not arrive until the United States Civil War.

On April 16, 1862, the Confederacy passed the Conscription Act.[3][4] The North followed the next year with the Union Conscription Act. Neither side could raise troop strength and numbers by volunteers alone. Modern warfare necessitated that the North and the South needed hundreds of thousands of men.

In 1917, Congress passed the World War I Draft Act in response to the escalation of war in Europe. In 1918, in Arver v. U.S. (245 U.S. 366 (1918)), the Supreme Court ruled that the military draft did not violate the Constitution. The justices concluded that Congress and the President had broad powers, which included the powers to establish draft boards and to conscript men into the military under Article I, Section B of the U.S. Constitution.[5]

From September 17, 1917 to November 1918, during World War I, more than 2.8 million men were inducted into the armed services.[6] Men were drafted in World War II. In 1940, FDR signed draft legislation into law, which resulted in more than 10 million inductions by 1945.[7] After the war, on June 24, 1948, Congress passed the Selective Service Act.[8] This law outlined the way in which men of military age could register and ultimately be drafted into the armed forces.

In 1950, as the conflict in Korea intensified, the Selective Service drafted 220,000 men by the end of that year, sending young Americans to the Korean peninsula.[9]In 1951, draft boards began to exclude students who were in the top half of their class or who recorded high scores on a nationwide aptitude test.[10] 1.5 million men were drafted during the Korean War.[11]

1.8 million were inducted from August 1964 to February 1973, during the Vietnam War.[12] On June 30, 1973, the last man inducted joined the Army.[13] In 1965 more than 200,000 American troops were sent to Vietnam. Even more joined the war effort a year later.[14] In 1966, 1967, and 1968, the Selective Service drafted an estimated 300,000 men per year.[15]

In 1968, the year of the United States Presidential Election, more than 500,000 American soldiers were stationed in Vietnam.[16] The draft affected families across the country. Sons, brothers, boyfriends, and fathers were sent to war. Men who would not have served in the military in a time of peace, now died thousands of miles away in Vietnam. Anger against the draft added fuel to the war resistance and became one of the reasons why people did not support the war.

[1] Kohn, Steven M. 1986. Jailed for Peace: The History of American Draft Law Violators, 1658-1985. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Pg. 6

[2] Ibid, 7

[3] Masur, Louis P. 2011. The Civil War: A Concise History. New York: Oxford University Press. Pg. 36

[4] Brock, Peter. 2004.‘These Strange Criminals’: An Anthology of Prison Memoirs by Conscientious Objectors from the Great War to the Cold War. Toronto, CA: University of Toronto Press. Pg. 61

[5] Kohn, Steven M. 1986. Jailed for Peace: The History of American Draft Law Violators, 1658-1985. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Pg. 111

[6] Selective Service System. Induction Statistics. https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/Induction-Statistics (accessed 12/8/2018)

[7] Gettleman, Marvin E, Jane Franklin, Marilyn Blatt Young, and H. Bruce Franklin. Vietnam and America: A Documented History. 2nd Ed., Rev. and Enl ed. New York: Grove Press, 1995, 36

[8] Ibid

[9] Ibid, 37

[10] Gettleman, Marvin E, Jane Franklin, Marilyn Blatt Young, and H. Bruce Franklin. Vietnam and America: A Documented History. 2nd Ed., Rev. and Enl ed. New York: Grove Press, 1995, 37

[11] Selective Service System. Induction Statistics. https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/Induction-Statistics (accessed 12/8/2018)

[12] Ibid

[13] Ibid

[14] Zinn, Howard. 2001. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Harper Collins. Pg. 477

[15] Vietnam and America, 39

[16] Ibid