Conscientious Objectors

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS. Unlike draft resisters or evaders, conscientious objectors make no secret of their desire not to participate in military service. Their objections rest on publicly stated and defended principles. Never a large number, conscientious objectors have always been more important as a symbol, especially during unpopular wars like Vietnam.

Conscientious objection has traditionally been closely related to pacifist religious groups. As early as 1661, the colony of Massachusetts made provisions for exempting men from military service on religious grounds. In 1790 a measure to guarantee the right of conscientious objection in the Bill of Rights passed the House but failed to pass in the Senate despite the support of James Madison. The Quakers received a group exemption in Pennsylvania in 1701 from William Penn. Other groups such as the Mennonites and the Dunkards (who ironically had a church badly damaged at the 1862 Civil War Battle of Antietam) received similar exemptions. During the Civil War, both sides allowed for conscientious objection if the objector could provide a substitute or pay a fine. In this manner, conscientious objectors differed little from anyone else trying to evade service. Despite their legal protection, conscientious objectors inevitably became objects of scorn and targets of charges of treason.

The Selective Service Act of 1917 recognized conscientious objectors and did not require them to bear arms. Men who belonged to historically pacifistic religious groups had guaranteed access to conscientious objector status. Nevertheless, the act authorized President Woodrow Wilson to conscript conscientious objectors for noncombatant service. Many men refused even this service, and the federal government tried 450 men for refusal to serve. Some received prison terms as long as twenty-five years, though nearly all received amnesty in 1919. Almost 4,000 men accepted the government's offer of noncombatant service, often in labor camps whose arduous routines resembled those of prison work gangs. Despite the active opposition of some groups to American entry into World War I, conscientious objectors amounted to just .0023 percent of all men required to register.

The numbers were also quite small in World War II, with conscientious objectors comprising just .0029 percent of all men required to register. Recognition of conscientious objector status became a hallmark of liberal ideology. None of the Axis powers recognized conscientious objection, nor did the Soviet Union. The United States and Great Britain, on the other hand, widened their definitions to include, in the United States, men with "religious training and belief" that compelled them to avoid military service. A connection with religion thus remained, but was broadened to encompass men who were not members of traditionally pacifistic religious groups like the Quakers.

Two court cases attempted to broaden the justification of conscientious objection beyond solely religious grounds to social, political, and intellectual grounds. In both cases (United States v. Kauten, 1943, and Berman v. United States, 1946), the courts disallowed nonreligious grounds for conscientious objection. As in World War I, most conscientious objectors served in work camps that resembled the Department of Corrections more than the Department of the Army. Only 6 percent of the nation's 100,000 conscientious objectors served any time in prison.

New draft legislation passed in 1948 specifically allowed for conscientious objection. In the same year, the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors was founded, supplementing the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors, which had been founded in 1940. Between 1948 and 1965, the work camp model of alternate service disappeared in favor of service in hospitals or mental institutions. The number of conscientious objectors grew in proportion to those drafted but remained low. Fewer than 35,000 men declared conscientious objector status between 1948 and 1965.

In 1965 the Supreme Court heard the landmark conscientious objection case of United States v. Seeger. The two defendants claimed religious exemption but were not members of traditional pacifist religious groups and had no religious training as required under the 1948 legislation. One defendant professed that he believed in a "supreme reality" while the other asserted belief in "a universal reality." The court ruled that an individual's understanding of his own religious beliefs must be considered when determining conscientious objector status. The case greatly expanded the religious basis for conscientious objection to incorporate "people with general theistic belief systems" whether or not they had any formal religious training. The Court also included for the first time "nontraditional variances" of pacifist religious expression such as Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.

The unpopularity of the Vietnam War increased both the number and the visibility of conscientious objectors. Between 1965 and 1970 more than 170,000 registrants applied for conscientious objector status. The Seeger ruling did not have a wide impact on conscientious objection because local draft boards were free to interpret the ruling as they saw fit. The most celebrated case was that of boxer Muhammad Ali, who in 1966 claimed that military service was inconsistent with his conversion to Islam. Ali should have been covered under Seeger, but his local draft board found his beliefs to be insincere and sentenced him to five years in prison. He remained free on bond until his case was overturned in 1971, but hundreds of Muslims (especially black Muslims) went to jail because courts refused to accept their religion as the basis for conscientious objection.

Men seeking conscientious objection status during the Vietnam era were helped by lawyers who specialized in getting the exemptions. Many men saw conscientious objection in the Vietnam period less as a principled stand on religious grounds than as a legal way out of service. Good draft lawyers were well within the financial reach of most men from middle-class families, and they could at least tie up the conscription system with paperwork for months or even years. Most were successful in gaining conscientious objector status for their clients, who were normally ordered to perform an alternative service of two years of low-paying work in the public sector in a location beyond commuting distance from home. In reality, draft boards were so overwhelmed by their responsibilities that supervision of conscientious objectors was minimal.

Many men genuinely objected to the war in Vietnam on moral, but not religious, grounds. No law covered their beliefs until Welsh v. United States (1970). In that ruling, the Supreme Court held that a man could claim conscientious objector status based on the "depth and fervency" of his beliefs, even if they were not religious in character. Welsh himself had declared that his objection to Vietnam was based on historical and sociological grounds.

During the Gulf War of 1990–1991, a new problem arose as more than 2,000 men and women already in uniform claimed conscientious objection. Previously, the vast majority of cases revolved around the desire to avoid military service. These cases involved men and women already in the service who desired to avoid a combat theater. Since they had voluntarily enlisted (conscription having ended in 1973), they could not claim that military service was inconsistent with deeply held beliefs. The army chose to reassign or release most conscientious objectors, but the Marine Corps imprisoned fifty. As previously, the numbers remained small, but conscientious objectors maintained a visibility far beyond their size as America wrestled with the question of how to exempt those whose beliefs clash with their legal obligations to serve.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baskir, Lawrence M., and William A. Strauss. Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation. New York: Vintage, 1978.

Frazer, Heather, and John O'Sullivan. We Have Just Begun to Fight: An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in Civilian Public Service During World War II. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Goossen, Rachel Waltner. Women Against the Good War: Conscientious Objection and Gender on the American Home Front 1941–1947. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Moskos, Charles, and John Whiteclay Chambers II, eds. The New Conscientious Objection: From Sacred to Secular Resistance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Schlissel, Lillian, ed. Conscience in America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in America, 1757–1967. New York: Dutton, 1968.

Michael S. Neiberg

See also Pacifism .