Antiwar Movements

Antiwar Movements. Organized opposition has accompanied most American wars. Sometimes dissent came from broader peace movements, which sought to supplant national wars with internationalism and nonviolent resolution of conflict, but peace advocates often supported particular wars. Sometimes war resistance derived from pacifism, understood as the repudiation of organized violence, but pacifists in that sense usually dissented as individual conscientious objectors (COs) or withdrew into sectarian communities. Sometimes opposition came from political, class, or sectional interests that were reinforced by broad principles.

In the nineteenth century, an organized and growing peace movement called for the arbitration of international disputes, but opposition to particular wars primarily reflected sectional and class interests. Thus New Englanders who belonged to the Federalist party motivated by economic and political interests, challenged the constitutional legitimacy of the War of 1812. Similarly, the Mexican War was challenged in the North, where interest in western expansion reinforced antislavery principles. Opposition to the Civil War in the border states and the Ohio River valley fused local economic and cultural interests with a principled defense of states' rights. Finally, the U.S. subjugation of the Philippines in 1899–1901 was opposed mainly by members of a cultural elite who believed that the war was eroding the anticolonial foundations of U.S. foreign policy. A few absolute pacifists resisted all those wars, but regional interests or class‐based opposition predominated.

This pattern changed during World War I. During the period of U.S. neutrality, 1914–1917, a principled opposition formed against any increase in military budgets and against any intervention in the European struggle. The strongest, most political antiwar group, the American Union against Militarism (1915), mobilized progressives to challenge both Woodrow Wilson's preparedness budget and his subsequent break with Germany. After U.S. entry into the war, opposition continued among many religious COs, progressive pacifists, and antiwar socialists like Eugene V. Debs, as well as within some ethnic communities, especially Irish Americans. The ostracizing and persecution of dissenters only strengthened their organizational ties, so that the principle of war resistance emerged from the war upheld by such groups as the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR, 1915) and the War Resisters League (WRL, 1921). Some, like the American Friends Service Committee (1917), had a progressive orientation, and all of them, especially the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (1919), were related to international networks. Thus the organizational base was created for a recurrent antiwar movement.

Given the prevailing antiwar mood of post–World War I society, these organizations found ready constituencies for political activism against military spending and military training in the schools, as well as for constructive internationalism. In the 1930s they spearheaded support for legislative measures calling for strict neutrality and, after 1939, lobbied against so‐called collective‐security programs. They were joined and eventually led by the socialist leader Norman Thomas in the Keep America Out of [the European] War Organization. From the political right came support from the isolationist America First movement, and from the far left (until Germany invaded Bolshevik Russia in June 1941), the Communist party. Organized opposition to war virtually dissolved after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The institutional framework of war resistance remained, however, and the WRL especially came to harbor a number of COs who objected to both war and conscription. Steeped in Gandhian principles, they experimented with nonviolent direct action in the prisons and Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps housing conscientious objectors. Nonviolence was also applied to race relations during and after World War II. Further developed in both the civil rights movement and the antinuclear protest movements of the 1950s, nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience were frequently employed tactics among opponents of the Vietnam War after 1965.

Opposition to the Vietnam War, scarcely visible during the period of initial involvement and escalation, eventually became widespread. Antiwar activism was often spontaneous and local. Nonetheless, shifting national coalitions also provided focal points for public antiwar information and agitation. The most visible forms of activism were mass demonstrations, large‐scale civil disobedience, and countercultural images; less public, but at least as important, was quiet, hard work in electoral and legislative politics. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization (1967) helped to legitimize antiwar activism. By 1970 antiwar sentiment pervaded national institutions, including Congress; by 1972 it was dominant.

Adopting similar strategies in the post–Vietnam War era, a Latin American Solidarity movement helped to check the Ronald Reagan administration's support of the “Contras” in Nicaragua and of military regimes elsewhere in Central America. An effective Washington lobby mobilized legislative opposition to the United States‐sponsored Contra war. Simultaneously, a decentralized, grassroots citizens' movement made contact with Nicaraguans and Salvadorans and publicized their causes. The Persian Gulf War of 1991 stirred considerable opposition, which was ultimately ineffectual and aborted, given the brevity of the campaign.

In summary, recurrent antiwar activism—grounded in a continuous peace movement; marked by ever shifting organizational bases, tactics, and philosophies; and growing or waning in relation to prevailing issues—has frequently been a factor influencing foreign and military policy‐making, especially in twentieth‐century America.
See also Anti‐imperialist League; Conscientious Objection; Isolationism; Preparedness Movement Controversy (1914–1917).

Bibliography

Samuel Eliot Morison,, Frederick Merk,, and and Frank Freidel , Dissent in Three American Wars, 1970.
Charles DeBenedetti , The Peace Reform in American History, 1980.
Lawrence Wittner , Rebels against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933–1983, 1984.
Charles DeBenedetti and and Charles Chatfield , An American Ordeal, 1990.
Charles Howlett , The American Peace Movement: References and Resources, 1991.
Charles Chatfield , The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism, 1992.
Frances Early , A World without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I, 1997.

E. Charles Chatfield