Conscientious Objection

Male identity and war making are often related in American life, but American culture has also encouraged conscientious objection—a refusal to participate in warfare on religious or political grounds—as a masculine standard. Because individual and societal determinations about manliness help dictate how power is distributed, consideration of how men have resisted and avoided conscription reveals important ties between gender norms and cultural values. Physical courage has historically been a key element of Western masculinity, and many Americans connect violence and aggression to their ideas of manliness. Furthermore, American male patriotism often equates commitment to country with a willingness to sacrifice one's life in war. These models of manliness dictate military service as a masculine duty and imply that refusal is unmanly. But at the same time, the individualism and freedom often associated with masculinity in America has justified resistance to military service.

The earliest conscientious objectors came from pacifist Christian sects, whose male adherents looked for their model of manliness to their interpretation of Jesus as an advocate of nonviolence, peace, and love. Their notion of masculinity was viewed with ambivalence by most colonists, whose definitions of manhood involved defense of community as well as adherence to Christian precepts. But whereas pacifist Christians prioritized religious doctrine, most colonists emphasized pragmatic need. Thus Maryland and North Carolina fined Quakers for refusing to fight against Native Americans, while several other colonies recognized conscientious objection as a right and excused from service those who paid a special tax.

During the era of the American Revolution, the tenets of republicanism and republican manhood—which focused on the belief that individual rights and religious freedom should be protected from perceived government tyranny—helped to build respect for conscientious objection into American political culture. George Washington exempted from his Revolutionary War draft order those with “conscientious scruples against war,”and the framers of the U.S. Constitution considered including a military exemption for conscientious objectors in the Second Amendment.

Still, conscientious objection continued to arouse ambivalent responses through much of the nineteenth century. The Mexican War of 1846–47 provoked transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau to refuse to pay taxes, suffer imprisonment, and codify a philosophy of civil disobedience, though his was a minority position. During the Civil War, Amish and Mennonite conscientious objectors challenged conscription with varying success, in some cases purchasing an exemption, hiring a substitute, or caring for soldiers wounded in battle. The nation's growth into a global military power during the twentieth century intensified Americans' tendency to identify masculinity and patriotism with militarism—and the view of conscientious objectors as unmanly also intensified. During World War II, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses were sentenced to federal prison for refusing military service.

Disagreement over the meaning of masculinity in wartime has been dramatically visible in the treatment of conscientious objectors. The belief that refusing military service violates normative manhood has led government authorities to impose severe penalties, while conscientious objectors, motivated by religious or moral principle, have often viewed these punishments as a form of martyrdom or [Page 105]self-sacrifice, and therefore as an important signifier of their manhood. They have therefore accepted even the most severe sentences—in many cases long prison terms, and in some cases death. Of the 450 conscientious objectors found guilty at military hearings during World War I, for example, 17 were sentenced to death, 142 received life sentences, and 73 received twenty-year prison terms. Only 15 were sentenced to three years or less. Many imprisoned conscientious objectors endured abuse, torture, and mistreatment. During World War I, conscientious objectors at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas were placed in solitary confinement, manacled to their cell walls for nine hours every day, fed a bread-and-water diet, and beaten by guards. During World War II, pacifists were either jailed or sent to labor camps.

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