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Conscientious Objection

Throughout U.S. history, there have been those who, on principle, refused to bear arms when faced with compulsory military training or service. This entry discusses conscientious objectors (COs) in the United States, from the 1600s to the present.

The Colonial Era to the Civil War: Religious Objectors

The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, who came to America in the late 1600s and established the colony of Pennsylvania, was the first group to practice conscientious objection in the New World. These religious sectarians, firmly dedicated to traditional Christian beliefs and characterized by the desire to remain apart from governmental authority, established in the British colonies a social commitment to the importance of organized peace and nonviolence. During the Revolutionary War, conscientious objection was widely practiced by Quakers and other religious pacifist sects, such as the Mennonites and Brethren, who also settled in the Middle Colonies in the early 18th century. When, for the first time, Pennsylvania enacted a compulsory draft in March 1777, there was no region under the new government’s rule where conscription was not enforced. Quakers were unqualified in their opposition to compulsory service, and even if they had the money to pay for their exemption, they refused to do so. The authorities seized property from resisters who chose not to pay. By the conclusion of the war, the core of conscientious nonresistance centered in what came to be called the Historic Peace Churches—the Pennsylvania Anabaptist remnants (Mennonites and Church of the Brethren) and the 50,000 Quakers who were scattered in nearly 80 meetinghouses throughout the colonies. In 1790, James Madison proposed protection for religious objectors in the Bill of Rights, but the Senate rejected the measure.

The Civil War presented the next serious challenge to COs. Both the Union and the Confederacy provided limited exemption from military service for religious objectors from traditionally pacifist sects. Union congressional action permitted exemption to Quakers and other Peace Church members for a $300 fee. Yet most northern war objectors considered these concessions insufficient. Consequently, some were jailed for refusing to serve or to obey military orders when forcibly inducted into the army. In February 1864, however, the Lincoln administration permitted religious pacifists to do hospital work as an acceptable alternative to bearing arms. In the South, because of lobbying by Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren, the government eventually agreed to exempt religious objectors on the condition that they pay $500 for this privilege. A small number refused to take this way out and, after induction into the army, suffered hardships, including the application of torture that was more brutal than that meted out to northern COs. The Confederacy’s urgency for more soldiers resulted in stiffer measures.

World Wars I and II: Noncombatant Roles

In World War I, the Selective Draft Act of 1917 officially recognized only members of the Historic Peace Churches as COs. However, they were required to serve in noncombatant military roles. Apart from the 4,000 classified as COs, and eventually furloughed into agricultural work, approximately 20,873 were granted noncombatant classification by their local draft boards. Some 450 “absolutists,” however, refused to cooperate with the government and were convicted and sent to military prisons, where they endured various forms of brutal punishment. When COs arrived at an army camp, the general practice was to get as many of them as possible to accept combatant duty. Labeling them as cowards and shirkers, military officials used all kinds of pressures to break the convictions of the objectors. After receiving a scathing report regarding the treatment of many of the absolutists, President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order banning all forms of physical punishment.

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