Random Destiny

How the Vietnam War Draft Lottery Shaped a Generation

Wesley Abney

• Publisher: Vernon Art and Science Inc.
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781622737505
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

This book provides a concise but thorough summary of how the selective service system worked from 1965 through 1973, and also demonstrates how this selective process, during a highly unpopular war, steered major life choices of millions of young men seeking deferrals based on education, occupation, marital and family status, sexual orientation, and more. This book explains each category of deferral and its resulting “ripple effect” across society. Putting a human face on these sociological trends, the book also includes a number of brief personal anecdotes from men in each category, told from a remove of 40 years or more, when the lifelong effects of youthful decisions prompted by the draft have become evident.

There are few books which address the military draft of the Vietnam years, most notably CHANCE AND CIRCUMSTANCE: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation, by Baskir and Strauss (1978). This early study of draft-age men discusses how they were socially channeled by the selective service system. RANDOM DESTINY follows up on this premise and draws from numerous later studies of men in the lottery pool, to create the definitive portrait of the draft and its long-term personal and social effects.

RANDOM DESTINY presents an in-depth explanation of the selective service system in its final years. It also provides a comprehensive yet personal portrait of how the draft and the lottery steered a generation of young lives into many different paths, from combat to conscientious objection, from teaching to prison, from the pulpit to the Canadian border, from public health to gay liberation. It is the only recent book which demonstrates how American military conscription, in the time of an unpopular war, profoundly influenced a generation and a society over the decades that followed.

The draft: a brief history

Societies large and small have been warring with one another since the advent of mankind. Often the combatants in these struggles have been procured by compulsory service laws. Early historical records of conscription date back to the reign of Hammurabi, who conquered much of Mesopotamia during his rule as King of the Babylon city-state from 1792 B.C. until 1750 B.C. The Babylonian empire employed a system of conscription known as Ilkum, by which eligible men served in the army in time of war and provided other labor in time of peace.¹⁹ Hammurabi’s well-known legal code, developed by about 1754 B.C., refers to conscripts as “men of the levy,” who could be granted land in exchange for their service.²⁰

Modern mass conscription in the West arose during the French revolution with the enactment of the Jourdan-Delbrel law in 1798, making military conscription mandatory for single French men aged 20 to 25 years. This “levée en masse,” based on a Constitutional principle of patriotic duty to the state, generated the Grand Army of citizen-soldiers which powered the ongoing conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte.²¹

In the United States, the federal government did not establish a draft until 1862. President James Madison proposed a national draft to procure 40,000 troops during the War of 1812 but was stymied by Congress, where Rep. Daniel Webster made an impassioned speech opposing the plan.

Is this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No sir, indeed it is not…[t]he people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Charta to be slaves. Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of the government may engage it?²²

During the American Civil War, both sides in the conflict passed conscription laws to raise troops: the South in April 1862; the North in 1862 with a state-administered system, and then with the national Enrollment Act of 1863. Both programs were plagued by inequities, including a loophole in the federal system allowing draftees to hire substitutes or simply pay a commutation fee,²³ and favoritism in the Confederate system which exempted the planter class and “huge categories of minor officials, clerks, teachers, lawyers, newspapermen, druggists, officers of militia, and literally dozens of other callings.”²⁴ The draft authorized by the Enrollment Act took place in New York City in July, 1863, triggering four days of widespread rioting, mostly by working-class whites angered by the draft and resentful of more affluent men who could afford to hire substitutes or buy exemptions. By the second day, the disturbance morphed into a racial rampage, arising from tensions fostered by the ineligibility of most blacks for the draft, and potential job competition from freed slaves following the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863. The uprising was only brought under control after the state militia and federal troops were recalled from war duty, by which time an estimated 120 people had been killed and at least 2,000 wounded. Property damage, including the destruction of the draft headquarters and other public buildings, churches, the mayor’s home and an orphanage for black children, totaled in the millions.²⁵ The porous nature of the Enrollment Act is illustrated by the fact that of the 255,373 men drafted, 86,724 avoided military service by payment of commutation, and another 117,986 furnished substitutes, such that only 50,663 original draftees actually served.²⁶

In May, 1917, six weeks after the U.S. had entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Selective Service Act of 1917, which authorized a draft including a national lottery, allowed certain deferments, prohibited substitutions or purchase of exemptions, and established community boards to administer the program.²⁷ Numerous court challenges to the law ensued, and by the end of the year were consolidated for hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued its decision known as the Selective Draft Law Cases on January 7, 1918. Although the U.S. Constitution does not specifically grant to the government the power to impose compulsory military service (as scornfully noted by Daniel Webster), the Court found such authority implicit in the language of Article I, Section 8 which grants Congress the power “To declare War” and “To raise and support Armies.” The Court thus upheld the constitutional basis for conscription, also rejecting the plaintiffs’ several other legal arguments, including a contention that the law violated the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude.²⁸ The draft system inducted 2.8 million men during the war,²⁹ comprising 59.4% of the total participants.³⁰

The World War I draft law expired in 1918 as the war ended. However, a joint Army and Navy Selective Service Committee appointed a group of officers to devise a comprehensive plan for a future draft, and their work eventually resulted in the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.³¹ This Act was the first to establish a draft while the U.S. was still at peace, coming over a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, although by the time it was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on September 16, 1940, numerous conflicts had already developed around the world, including Germany’s invasion of France.

Although the constitutional validity of conscription in wartime had been resolved by the Supreme Court in 1918, the new proposal for a peacetime draft generated further controversy. During the debate over the law, some in Congress argued that a draft “...in peacetime is abhorrent to the ideals of patriotic Americans and is utterly repugnant to American democracy and Am...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The draft: a brief history
• Chapter 2 Lottery night: the General’s last stand
• Chapter 3 Taking the test
• Chapter 4 Failing the test I-Y; IV-F
• Chapter 5 Conscientious objection I-A-O; I-O; I-W; IV-W
• Chapter 6 Staying in school I-S; II-A; II-D; II-S; IV-D
• Chapter 7 Working through the war II-A; II-C; IV-B; IV-D
• Chapter 8 Family matters I-A; III-A; IV-A; IV-G
• Chapter 9 Drafted I-A; I-A-O
• Chapter 10 Volunteers I-C; I-D
• Chapter 11 Opposition
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Index
• Appendix: Methodology