All Volunteer Force

The Draft in America

The first federal conscription legislation was passed in 1863 in an effort to alleviate the Union Army's increasing manpower shortages during the Civil War. Resentment at the government's interference with traditional liberties and perceived inequities in the draft sparked violence against the provost marshals charged with enforcing compliance and also led to antidraft riots, most notably the July 1863 melee in New York City that left more than 100 people dead and many more severely injured.

By 1916, amid growing American concern over World War I, memories of earlier anticonscription violence faded. Moreover, groups like the National Security League and the Military Training Camps Association pushed energetically for greater military preparedness and urged creation of a conscription system that would provide the United States with a larger, better trained Army. A draft was also more cost-effective because it eliminated the need for enlistment bounties. Congress passed the National Defense Act of 1916 despite some initial resistance. By setting quotas for skill and race, and by placing selection responsibility in the hands of local selective service boards, the administration gained Americans’ acquiescence to conscription. Furthermore, the new Selective Service System (SSS) provided the model for managing military manpower throughout the remainder of the draft era. Although SSS provoked little organized resistance during the global crises of World War I and World War II or during the Korean War, by the 1960s—with the nation's large-scale commitment of combat troops to Vietnam—popular assent was eroding.

Unprecedented economic prosperity, along with the civil rights and women's movements, rekindled Americans’ traditional ideological resistance to forced military service and brought social inequities to the fore. At the same time, popular support for the controversial war in Southeast Asia began to decline precipitously. This combination of dissatisfactions proved volatile, provoking widespread, largescale antiwar and antidraft protests. Many activists opposed forcing young men into military service through conscription, contending that because the Selective Service boards were dominated by socially prominent white community members, the selection process singled out disadvantaged, nonwhite young men as prime draft material. Although protesters were largely middle-class university students, opponents of the draft also included members of the cultural and political elite, including Dr. Benjamin Spock, Coretta Scott King, economist Milton Friedman, and Sen. George McGovern. Ultimately, the increasing unpopularity of the Vietnam War forced the government to reconsider its draft policies.

Transition to the All Volunteer Force

In 1967, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, hoped small modifications in draft legislation would stop the protests, but the lack of substantive change only increased popular dissatisfaction. During the 1968 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon declared that modern war made a large conscript force obsolete. Instead, he asserted, new technology required a professional, volunteer force. Countering worries that an all volunteer military would prove too expensive, Nixon argued that America could not only afford an AVF, but that patriotism would ensure sufficient volunteers. He also warned, however, that it was unwise to stop the draft until after the Vietnam War ended.

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