America & the draft: a 200-year debate: the U.S. has gone back and forth between a volunteer military and conscription. Could the draft be brought back today?

• Author: Davey, Monica
• Position: TIMES PAST

America may be fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but 17-year-old Theo Seman isn't too worried about the prospect of a return to the draft--even though he'll soon have to register for one, like all 18-year-old men, just in case it's brought back.

"As far as I can tell, the voluntary army seems to be working out," says Theo, a senior at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago.

For teenagers like Theo, registering with the Selective Service, the federal agency that administers the draft, is not something they give much thought to when turning 18. But four decades ago, the military draft--and the Vietnam War in which 1.8 million conscripts were called to fight--consumed the nation.

On a May morning in 1969, across the city from Theo's high school, a group of protesters torched a Selective Service office, then stood outside watching the flames and singing "We Shall Overcome," until police arrived to arrest them. Similar protests--most peaceful, but some violent--took place in cities and on college campuses across the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in many cases with young men burning their draft cards in defiance.

CIVIL WAR RIOTS

In fact, the draft has proved controversial throughout America's history--even today, when some advocate its return to address what they see as the inequities of the volunteer military that the U.S. has relied on since Vietnam.

During the Revolutionary War (1775-83), some states drafted soldiers into their militias, and General George Washington wanted the Continental Congress to give his fledging national army the same power, rather than relying on volunteers to fight the British. But it refused--as did the U.S. Congress in dismissing similar calls from several Presidents in the early 1800s.

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Interestingly, the Constitution is neutral on the subject: It grants Congress the "power to raise and support armies," but says nothing about service being voluntary or mandatory.

The first real national draft occurred during the Civil War, as both the Union and the Confederacy turned to conscription to fill the ranks of their exhausted, depleted armies. After President Lincoln called for a draft early in 1863, Congress passed legislation that made single men up to age 45, and married men up to 35, eligible for the draft lottery.

There were, however, two big loopholes that aroused popular anger: Those who could afford it could pay the government $300 (equal to about $5,200 today) or hire a substitute to avoid service.

Draft protests broke out in several cities in the North and turned deadly in New York, where more than 100 people

Monica Davey is Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times. were killed and thousands more were injured in several days of rioting across the city.

In May 1917, a month after the U.S. &dared war on Germany and entered World War I, Congress passed the law creating the Selective Service. During America's involvement in World War I (1917-18) and World War II (1941-45), 13 million men were drafted, with relatively little opposition. Both wars were viewed as critical to the nation's interests, even its survival, and public service and personal sacrifice were seen as important to the war efforts.

The draft continued with little controversy through the Korean War (1950-53), and during the peaceful but tense Cold War years that followed. It was during the Vietnam War, and the general tumult of the 1960s, that the draft faced its greatest opposition.

DRAFT BOARDS & DEFERMENTS

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson sent the first U.S...