H91 CO Paper-Justin Reyes

8/13/2019 H91 CO Paper-Justin Reyes

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Abstract:In order to conduct an American entry into World War I the United States Government would call

upon all citizens to either work or fight as part of the first modern war the nation had engaged in. ForAmericans with religious conscientious objections to any involvement at all in the war effort both of theseoptions were intolerable, prompting them to defy the draft and come into conflict with the militaryestablishment. This paper utilizes a wide variety of primary sources, including personal narratives ofconscientious objection, pamphlets supportive of the cause of the objectors, military records andmemorandums, among others in order to show that conflict to be the result of the militarys unnecessarilyconservative understanding of conscience and to provide context and insight into an often ignored but stillimportant battle for civil liberties in American history.

Absolutely Conscientious Support:Absolutist Conscientious Objectors and the Support Network

That Developed Around Them During World War I

By

Justin David Reyes

A Senior Research Comprehensive Paper

Submitted to Swarthmore College - Swarthmore, PA

In Fulfillment of

The Requirements for the Completion of

History Course Major

Swarthmore CollegeDepartment of History

Fall 2012


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Table of Contents:

Part I: Introduction -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3

Part II: Historical precedent for conscription and objection in the United States ---------10

Part III: The Consciences of Conscientious Objectors ----------------------------------------21

Part IV: Effects on the Military Administration -----------------------------------------------38

Part V: Conclusion ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------42

Bibliography ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------45

Appendices ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------49


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We are here, in our view, as a sort of trustee for a social principle more precious to us

than personal freedom. That principle is the ancient Anglo-Saxon right of men to follow

the dictates of their God and their conscience before the dictates of the state. Those who

hold that the state is the supreme authority in the lives of men make God and conscience

its mere henchmen.

~Roger Baldwin.1

Part I: Introduction

The liberty of every citizen to develop religious and personal ideals and to act

according to those ideals is one of the foundational characteristics of American

democracy. However, during World War I, the American Peoples will to uphold this

natural right was tested by conflict on a scale that the United States had never before

experienced. In the context of total war on a global scale, America faced the challenge of

determining if the right to hold unpopular beliefs extended to those whose consciences

compelled them to object to military service.

Starting in 1917 with the signing of the Selective Service Act the answer to that

question would be determined and reexamined in order to manage the wartime

experiences of those individuals with such convictions who were inducted into the United

States Army via the national draft.2The induction of Americans with such troublesome

convictions would compel the Army, the Wilson administration, and the American

public, to determine the primacy of either personal civil liberties or governmental

authority over citizens.

1Jailed War Objector Wants Amnesty for All, or None for Him, NY Times, (undated), Box 1-

CDGA William Kantor Collected Papers, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore,

Pennsylvania.2Stephen M. Kohn,Jailed for Peace: The History of American Draft Law Violators 1658-1985(New

York: Praeger, 1987), 25.


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The government and military would eventually conclude that the right to personal

conscience would extend to those it found to be sincere and who willingly cooperated

with the military to serve in another capacity, but not to those who would not accept the

authority of the military or who refused to participate at all in the war effort. Those

citizens whose conscientious objection to participation in the war was found to be sincere

by military administrators were given the option to engage in noncombatant service, or

eventually to accept a farm furlough. This the military felt would serve as an acceptable

alternative to combat service, which would not violate the dictates of religious pacifist

consciences.

3

However, to several hundred conscientious objectors even noncombat

service was incompatible with their beliefs, leading them to resist the militarys

conservative policies.4

Men whose consciences compelled them to object to any and all involvement in

the United States World War I effort, and in many cases to the idea of the militarys

authority to direct their actions in any capacity, faced court martial for their disobedience

and incarceration in military prisons.5Military courts would find these absolutist

conscientious objectors guilty of a variety of infractions and dealt severely with them.

Hundreds of absolutists were sentenced by courts martial to lengthy terms in military

prisons, many were given life sentences or even sentenced to death.6This harsh treatment

was not a military necessity, the objectors that found themselves interned in prisons

3General Orders No. 28, Box 6 - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection, Folder- DG 131: Eichel Family

Collection- Julius Eichel: Reference / Reading Material re: conscientious objection in WWI, March 23,

1918, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 1.4Kohn, 26.5Julius Eichel. The Judge Said "20 Years": The Story of a Conscientious Objector in World War I

(Yonkers, New York: AMP & R, 1981), 11.6Lillian Schlissel, ed., Conscience In America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in

America, 1757-1967 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968), 131.


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around the countries did not threaten the war effort abroad or at home in any meaningful

way.

Instead, as the Judge presiding over the 1918 trial of American Civil Liberties

Union leader Roger Nash Baldwin for violating the Selective Service Act by refusing to

register for the draft believed, respecting the personal beliefs of a small group of

dissenters whilst maintaining the legitimacy of government during the war was not

impossible. As Judge Mayer declared,

The Republic must cease to exist if disobedience to any law enacted by the

orderly process laid down by the constitution is in the slightest permitted...We

should not be able to maintain what we regard as a government of free people if

some individual, for good or bad motives, successfully violate a statute...I cannot

overemphasize that in my view if such an attitude as yours prevailed [it would

lead] inevitably to disorder and finally to the destruction of the true peoples

government.7

So long as the draft was a necessity during World War I, so too would be the expectation

of the service of every man capable of bearing arms or working in industry to support the

effort. This expectation was indeed held by not only the government but by the majority

of the American people and they would allow only the most prohibitive avenues of

exemption from it.

The real reasons for the incarceration of the conscientious objectors who defied

this expectation was the great incongruence between the governments official

understanding of the origins of the convictions that compelled Americans to claim

7The Individual and the State: The Problem as Presented by the Sentencing of Roger N. Baldwin,

(November 1918), Box - CDGA Collective Box: Baez, Joan through Bethune, Ade, Folder- Baldwin,

Roger Nash, Swarthmore Peace Collection. 11.


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conscientious objection and the true origins the decision to do so. America began its

grand effort to raise a national army through conscription with the expressed position that

the claiming of conscientious objection by a patriotic American could only be the result

of their membership within one of the historically pacifist religious orders that were

widely recognizable. Yet for the hundreds of Christian men imprisoned due to their

absolute objection to military conscription, most from those very sects granted

exemptions, conscience was much more personal and complex than a simple

consequence of a religious affiliation.

By demanding recognition as Americans with serious and legitimate objections to

either the war, conscription, violence, military authority, or a host of other offensive

aspects of the United States war effort, Christian absolutists, along with their non-

sectarian colleagues-in-arms would force the American governmental and military

establishments to reexamine the position they had taken on civil liberties in wartime and

to liberalize some of their policies. The trouble that these absolutists caused in military

prisons, and caused by accounts of their mistreatment in the press and in congress,

prompted the military to change the way it saw and dealt with conscientious objection.

This was the result of the very thing that caused these objectors to be imprisoned in the

first place, their unbreakable attachment to their beliefs.

In comparison to other military and political issues of interest from the World

War I era the dissent and imprisonment of absolutist conscientious objectors, and the

examination of the origins and development of the Christian absolutists consciences, is

an understandably underrepresented subject in academic studies of American military and

legal. As a small percentage of conscientious objectors in America during World War I,


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absolutist objectors are a seemingly minor group of historical figures that are often

overlooked or examined only cursorily in academic studies on the era. An example of this

tendency among American histories of the war can be found in Pulitzer Prize winning

historian David Kennedys Over Here: The First World War and American Society, itself

a Pulitzer Prize finalist. This extensive account of the domestic side of the American

experience of World War I included three pages on conscientious objection of which

merely one paragraph concerned the experience of absolutist objectors.8

Historians have produced a small selection of scholarly works that do focus

significantly on American conscientious objectors in World War I. Authors Stephen M.

Kohn and Norman Thomas each produced valuable histories of conscientious objection,

Kohn examining the experiences and impact of conscientious objectors over the whole

course of American history and Thomas presenting a detailed account of the experiences

of conscientious objectors in military prisons and camps during World War I. These are

valuable resources to historians seeking insight into the experience of conscientious

objection during World War I. Unfortunately these works suffer from the closeness of

their authors to their subjects.

Kohns personal opinions and glorification of conscientious objectors color his

work and lead him to make unsubstantiated claims about their legacy.9Thomas, while

deftly sequestering his personal opinions as the brother of one of the absolutist objectors

8David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society(Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2004), 163-166.9For example that draft resistance is one of the largest, longest, and most successful campaigns of civil

disobedience in American history.* A claim that is in no way substantiated in his book for a number ofreasons including that there was no sustained conscientious objection movement or campaign at any point

in American history and that no conscientious objector would consider such a movement a success while

their country continued to engage in any form of war or armed aggression. Both these points will be

covered in this paper.

* Kohn, 3.


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he writes of into self contained sections of the work, composed it in 1923, far too close to

the events to provide a sense of the historical perspective of the issue.At the time of

writing much of the military and governmental record of conscientious objection was

unavailable to researchers and the dearth of these documents leaves Kohns account one

dimensional. This lack of long-term perspective on the subject of conscientious objection

in World War I has not yet been filled by a scholarly history. While several memoirs,

dissertations, and articles have come forth, no serious histories of American

conscientious objection in World War I in particular have been published in the nearly 90

years since Thomas.

Other academics arrive at the subject of absolutist conscientious objectors through

their explorations of the organizations from which those objectors came from, or for

whom support of war objectors represented an important historical endeavor. Such works

concern themselves with the histories of progressive organizations and of important

American peace churches. Notable examples are Frances Earlys book,A World Without

War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I, andAlbert N. Keim and

Grant M. Stoltzfus The Politics of Conscience: The Historic Peace Churches and

America At War, 1917-1955. Despite extensive discussion of absolutist objectors and

their thoughts and actions in these works works, conscientious objection is a subject these

authors investigate in order to provide insight into their respective organizations of

interest.

Absolutist conscientious objectors, while numbering only in the hundreds during

World War I, are an important cadre of individuals whose experiences during the war are

an instance of one of the great historical struggles for the personal liberties that


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Americans nominally hold dear but are so often in practice denied. The World War I era

fight for the right to object to war on the basis of personal convictions is overshadowed as

a part of the history of American civil liberties movements by the contemporaneous

struggle for womens suffrage, but is no less a part of that long tradition.

This paper seeks to fill this void in the academic record of conscientious objection

and of notable American struggles for civil liberty. To do so it will call upon the wide

range of historical studies that find common ground in covering, from different

perspectives extents, the lives and beliefs of the absolutist objector to World War I. It will

also utilize the wealth of primary source documents from both the military and the

absolutists themselves to bring real perspective on and insight to their unique place in

American History. Memoirs such as Julius Eichels The Judge Said 20 Years,

documentary histories such as Lillian Schlissels Conscience in America, military reports

such as Enoch Crowders Second Report of the Provost Marshal General,prison journals

such as those presented by Melanie Joy Springer Mock in her dissertationJourneys of

God and Country, and the many documents found in the Swarthmore College Peace

Collection archives all provide valuable insight into the lives and minds of the several

hundred Christian men who gave up their freedom to maintain their conscientious beliefs.

To understand the actions undertaken by the Christian absolutist objector, and the

impact of the stand for personal and civil rights that they made against the militarys rigid

doctrine, this paper investigates several questions relating to their histories. Firstly, what

was the historical precedent for conscription and conscientious objection in America

prior to World War I and how did those events and decisions affect the construction of

the World War I draft system? Next, how did the religious absolutist objector develop his


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particular set of the beliefs, what are the historical precedents for those beliefs, and how

did the military come to misunderstand the origins of their pacifist consciences? In

answering these questions this paper will show that misunderstanding to be the root cause

of the governments coming into ideological conflict with the absolutists. Having

answered these difficult questions and in order to establish the historical significance of

the events described, this paper will highlight some of the changes to military and

governmental policy that the sectarian absolutists precipitated by their steadfast devotion

to the fight for their civil right to hold their personal pacifist convictions above the

demands of the state.

Part II: Historical precedent for conscription and objection in the United States

In 1940, as the United States slowly drifted towards participation in a second

World War, Edward A. Fitzpatrick, a Draft Administrator in Wisconsin between 1917

and 1919, wrote that: The slow torturous processes of democracy with its two house

legislatures, its presidential vetoes, its appeal to the courts, its rights of minorities, its

court decisions and its court appeals, its bill of rights and its regard for conscience,

religion and human liberty, can never organize and conduct modern warfare.10

Never the less, at various points in its history the United States has endeavored to conduct

just such an effort, both at home and abroad. In doing so it has repeatedly encountered the

perennially difficult necessities of the conducting of war is the raising of an army of

sufficient size.

10Edward A. Fitzpatrick, Conscription and America: A Study of Conscription in a Democracy,

(Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Richard Publishing Company, 1940), 10.


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It is this wartime endeavor that Fitzpatrick perceived to be the most difficult for

American democracy, given all the aspects of democracy that the forceful recruitment of

an army runs counter to. He poses the question is it possible to recruit and organize

armies in a democratic way?11American military history prior to World War I suggests

that while there is a precedent for the use of conscription to build an army, the practice

has had limited and often problematic history. While the preferred method of recruitment

instead has always been volunteerism, seen by all to be more in line with the tenets of

democracy, a volunteer military has not always been a sufficient to with which to wage

Americas wars. When conscription has been utilized there has always been some degree

of exemption for conscientious objectors developed in an attempt to reconcile American

ideals with wartime necessities.

World War I was Americas first rigorous attempt to organize a modern army

while maintaining egalitarian democratic ideals. But what aspects of Americas prior

military history informed the effort, and why was it ultimately, as Fitzpatrick laments,

unable to reconcile war with Americas founding principles in regard to the conscientious

objector? In this section the paper will review the historical roots and precedents for the

World War I Selective Service System of conscription and the provisions for

conscientious objection in the Selective Service Act of 1917 by examining conscription

and objection in both early and Civil War era America. It will then explain how those

experiences directly influenced the World War I draft laws. In doing so it will display the

long history of religious conscientious objection in America that informed the form

objection took in World War I and why it failed to contain adequate regard for the

personal nature of conscience.

11Fitzpatrick, 10.


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II.1 ~ Conscientious Objection in Early American History

The United States has been since its conception a nation wary of the development

of a strong central government and of a national standing army. As John Whiteclay

chambers makes note, unlike some fundamental charters in Europe, the basic documents

of the United States, from the Declaration of independence to the Bill of Rights, asserted

only the rights of the citizenry, and not its obligations.12Indeed the original draft of the

Bill of Rights written by James Madison, and passed by the House of Representatives,

contained in the Second Amendment a provision for religious conscientious objection

from any compulsory military service. The amendment as originally passed by the House

of Representatives read: A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the People,

being the best security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall

not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to

render military service in person.13

The version of the amendment passed by the Senate did not contain the provision

for religious exemption from service in militias. When the House proceeded to pass the

Senates amended version conscientious objection was ultimately excluded from the Bill

of Rights. Never the less, the example of the drafting of the Second Amendment shows

that the notion of compulsive military service to the nation, albeit not in the context of a

national army but of a local militia, was widely held to be troubling and that

conscientious objection was viewed early on as a necessary and acceptable compromise.

12John Whiteclay Chambers, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America(New York: The

Free Press, 1987), 5.13Neil H. Cogan, The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, and Origins(New York:

Oxford University Press, 1997), 173.


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The notion of conscientious objection in American government goes farther back,

in fact, to colonial times. Among the first wave of settlers to come to America were

members of pacifist religious sects such as the Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites the

groups that would come to be called the historic American peace churches. While they

initially found pacifism to be difficult to maintain in the face of persecution at the hands

of Puritan settlers, in many colonies liberty of conscience did eventually become an

established right for these men and women who refused to bear arms.14In Pennsylvania,

for example, William Penn granted in the colonys charter that,

No person or personswho shall confess and acknowledge an Almighty

Godand profess him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the civil

government, shall be in any case molested or prejudiced in his or their person or

estate because of his or their conscientious persuasion or practice.15

Other colonies, such as Rhode Island, provided conscientious objection regardless of

religious scruples based on the theory that if the inhabitants of this colony have a

conscience against requiring taking an oath; how much ought such men [to] forbear to

compel their equal neighbors against their consciences to trayne to fight and to kill.16

For the purposes of fighting the Revolutionary War against the British, the

Continental Congress originally depended on a volunteer army. However, a lack of

sufficient manpower developed as the war drew on, despite offers of monetary bounties

and land grants by both the Continental Congress and by individual states for individual

14Lillian Schlissel, ed., Conscience In America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in

America, 1757-1967 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968), 28.15Rufus M. Jones,The Quakers in the American Colonies (New York: Russel and Russel, 1962), 179.16Schlissel, 29.


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volunteer service.17Facing a chronic shortage of manpower, in 1777 the Continental

Congress called for the states to utilize conscription to fill both their state militias and to

fulfill their quotas for the Continental Army. In this way the employment of a type of

national draft dates back to the American Revolution.

During the revolution conscientious objection remained a local, rather than

federal, issue. However as the American Revolution went on it began to transform from a

right granted freely by the regional government into one that was secured by contribution

to the war effort in the form of fine, fee, service, or goods. The city of Philadelphia,

which as part of the colony of Pennsylvania had such liberal provisions for conscientious

objection. It established, after petitioned by citizens upset at the leniency granted to

religious conscientious objectors, that any objectors in Philadelphia must pay a

mandatory annual wartime contribution of two pounds and 10 shillings for their lack of

military service.18Now that exemption could be purchased it was no longer only the

province of the religiously inclined, any could pay the tithe to remove themselves from

duty to the militias of Philadelphia.

Some groups of pacifist Christians found this to be acceptable, and others did not.

The Schewnkfelders, a German Protestant breakaway sect living in Pennsylvania at the

time of the war, wished their acceptance of fines in return for exemption to be public so

that their fellow Americans would understand them to be true friends and patriots, rather

than yellow-backs and slackers as conscientious objectors have often been called in

17Jeffrey Rogers Hummel The American Militia and the Origins of Conscription: A ReassementJournalof Libertarian Studies15.4 (Fall 2001): 37.18Schlissel, 31.


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American history.19These would be the predecessors of those religious objectors who

accepted non-combatant service in World War I. In 1777, they issued a public declaration

stating of their decision to reject militia service,

we have hitherto been allowed by our lawmakers this liberty of

conscienceTherefore, the undersigned who adhere to the apostolic doctrines of

the sainted Casper Schwenkfeldwill mutually and with each other bear such

fines as may be imposed on account of the refusal for consciences sake to render

military service in the case deadly weapons are carried and used.20

This arrangement proved popularly acceptable and over the course of the next century

many of the states of America would similarly establish conscientious objection as a right

securable through payment of a fee or hiring of a substitute. This precedent would prove

to be hugely problematic when the national draft finally did come to America during the

Civil War.

Absolutist objection to militia service and the military establishment also

appeared during this early time in the nations history among the Christian pacifists.

According to the writings of John Woolman, a Quaker itinerant minister in mid-1700s,

during the French and Indian War a number of young men from the Quaker community

of Burlington, New Jersey were called upon to serve in the states militia. Some, he says,

went to fight as soldiers; some went abroad until the war was finished.21But others,

knowing that in the militia amongst the officers are men of understanding, who have

19Document 2. A Candid Declaration of Some So-called Schwenkfelders Concerning Present Militia

Affairs, May 1, 1777. Conscience In America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in

America, 1757-1967.Ed.Lillian Schlissel (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968), 39.20Document 2, Schlissel, 40.21John Woolman, Document 1. Considerations on the Payment of a Tax laid for Carrying on the War

against the Indians; The Drafting of the Militia in New Jersey,1757, 1758 Conscience In America: ADocumentary History of Conscientious Objection in America, 1757-1967.Ed.Lillian Schlissel (New York:

E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968), 37.


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some regard for sincerity where they see it, presented themselves to the captain of the

militia as citizens who could not bear arms for conscience sake; nor could they hire any

to go in their places in the hope that he might find a way not to put them into trouble on

account of scruples of conscience.22

The captain did indeed send them home with the warning that they would be

considered still by the militia as soldiers to be called upon if needed, but the second call

for these young Quakers did not come. The young Quaker men that Woolman wrote of

held their pacifistic convictions in higher regard than their physical freedom, being

willing to risk trial for refusing to join in the war instead of furnishing a replacement. As

such they show that, like the idea of religious conscientious objection, absolutist

objection to military draft dates back to the pre-revolutionary era. The men in question in

this incident were spared punishment for their position due to the understanding and

personal regard the military authorities had for those with true anti-war scruples. Such

civil treatment was likely the exception to the norm even at that early stage in the history

of conscientious objection in America, it certainly would not be expected by those drafted

into later wars. Only at this early stage would the military have such an understanding

outlook towards objectors.

II.2 ~ Conscription and Conscientious Objection in the Civil War

The Civil War conscription system was the result of the failure of the volunteer

system to provide soldiers in a time of desperate national need. Still, Fitzpatrick notes,

the Civil War draft was built with the hope that volunteering would produce the men

needed, with the draft only going into law if the call was not met.23Until Lincolns call

22Woolman, Document 1, 37.23Fitzpatrick, 19.


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for a national draft the national governments ability to muster a national army was based

on the precedent of the Militia Act of 1792. This act enrolled every free, able-bodied

white male citizen between the ages of eighteen and forty-five into their local militia, to

better allow the states to protect themselves absent a standing national military force, and

was amended in 1795 to grant the President the authority to call these state militias to

federal service in order to put down rebellions and fight off invasions.24

However the militia system was, by 1862, unable to meet Lincolns demand for

soldiers, prompting Congress to pass on March 3rd, 1863 the Enrollment Act that

instituted the first true national draft in United States History.

25

It was this act that first

made national policy the idea that all American men owe the government their military

service, a policy that would become the moral heart of the World War I Selective Service

Act. The Enrollment Act would create a massively ineffective, costly, and unpopular

system. This system caused riots in immigrant communities and violence against those

tasked with going door-to-door registering men for the new draft due to its apparent

unfairness towards the poor and immigrant communities. Under the draft laws no specific

exceptions were afforded for conscientious objection, specific exemptions were only

afforded to those whose absence from their homes would cause their families undue

hardship.26

The precedent for conscientious objectors to relieve themselves from military

service in a local militia by paying a commutation fee remained in place, and so by

paying a fee not exceeding $300 or by furnishing a replacement objectors did still have

24Fitzpatrick 19-20.25Timothy M. La Goy, Soldiers of Conscience: Conscription and Conscientious Objection in America and

Britain During World War I, Diss., University at Albany, State University of New York, 2010. Ann Arbor:

ProQuest LLC, 2010.ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Database(accessed Nov. 2012, 14). 63.26La Goy, 65.


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a way to legally avoid conscription.27This option was extended to all citizens under the

Enrollment Act of 1863. General Crowder notes in the summary of the Civil War draft

that he included in his study of the Selective Service System that this new draft system,

which paid bounties to those drafted and allowed wealthier individuals to purchase

exemptions, created a stigma of conscription while at the same time offering a large

monetary incentive to volunteer.28That mixture of incentives, Crowder continues,

guaranteed the draft would have poor results.

The Civil War draft was considered a failure nearly immediately, and certainly as

such by the end of the war. By compelling citizens to volunteer in order to receive

moneys from the government for their service, rather than to offer their military service

willingly as was now expected of all able-bodied men, Lincolns government had

increased the cost of its war by a massive amount. Crowder places the cost of state and

national government bounties for volunteer service at $586,164,528 over the course of

the war, a price orders of magnitude greater than that of the Word War I draft system

which supplied roughly the same number of men.29,30At the same time the draft only

produced less than two percent of the total Union Army.

Crowder makes clear in his report the great influence the shortcomings of the

Civil War draft had on the development of the draft laws employed in World War I. He

recalls that in the report of the Provost Marshal General of the United States for the Civil

27E.H. Crowder, Second Report of the Provost Marshal General to the Secretary of War on the Operations

of the Selective Service System to December 20, 1918. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919),

371.28Crowder, 372.29Crowder, 378.30During the Civil War period 2,690,401 men were secured to fight for the Union at a cost of $586,164,528

in bounties alone. During the first 14 months of the United States operation of the Selective Service

System in World War I 2,552,173 men were supplied to the army at a cost of only $20,175,000.

Crowder, 378.


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War Brig. Gen. James Oakes included comments on nearly a dozen features of the Civil

War draft in whichshortcomings had been developed and he had expressed the hope

that the great lessons of the war will not be lost upon the country if the United States

should find itself prosecuting another war.31

II.3 ~ The Development of the World War I Draft System

In light of these warnings many changes were made to the draft system before it

was implemented in World War I. Crowder states that every one of the previous Provost

Martials recommendations was followed, creating a much more efficient and egalitarian

system.

32

Among the most important of these changes Crowder lists are: that registration

by personal report of the citizen at a registration office, and not by a house-to-house

census substitutes be forbiddenbounties for volunteering be forbidden, that the draft

system be mainly placed in the hands of a civilian organization and be made to be more

state centric, and a vesting in district and local boards jurisdiction in determining the

dealing of the draft with those making claims to exemption.33This created a much more

popular and effective conscription act.

This new system was the first to be from the outset based on the basic concept

that every man owed their share of work to the war effort either as a soldier or in useful

industry, Work or fight; there was no alternative.34The concept of the universal duty

of American men to serve their country in wartime was the natural progression of its

original introduction to the American public during the Civil War. While the Civil War

conscription system was instituted as a back up in the case that volunteerism failed, and

31Crowder, 7.32Crowder, 8.33Crowder, 8-10.34Crowder, 75.


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with dismal results, the new war effort expressed a preference for conscription to fill the

armys boots. Selective Service was designed to select for service citizens that filled only

non-essential roles in domestic industry, the government did not want all the productive

members of society rushing to leave their jobs in order to enlist.35

Now that all men were expected to contribute their time to the war effort,

payment fines and furnishings could no longer be an acceptable method of conscientious

objection. The Selective Service Act, instead, would allow religious objectors found to be

sincere in their beliefs to engage in non-combatant service rather than allowing those

traditional American avenues for seeking exemption. While the Civil War draft law did

not contain specific exemptions for conscientious objection, the ability to avoid service

through payment was, while not acceptable to all objectors, a means by which they could

receive full exemption from induction into the military. While religious objectors were

given exemption from combat duty, many Christian objectors could not reconcile any

service to the army with their consciences; yet the egalitarian work or fight doctrine made

allowances for such people impossible to reconcile with the ideals of the draft. The days

of the militarys regard for personal beliefs were gone.

Because of its fundamental expectation of service and this new limited conception

of conscientious objection, the World War I draft law would, in comparison with all

previous conscription acts, impose the most rigid and inescapable set of policies yet by

which to compel those whose consciences objected to war to participate in an effort to

prosecute one. Americans with claims to absolutely pacifist consciences or other religious

reasons to object to military induction bristled under this seemingly inescapable system

35Crowder, 75.


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that doomed them to prison for their refusals to serve. Because of the Selective Service

Acts dependence on an ideal of mandatory service by all it could not maintain legitimacy

with a liberal set of exceptions or easily accessible means of exemption as had been

available in all previous American drafts.

Conscription and conscientious objection have, as described, been a part of

American military history, to varying degrees, since the colonial era. As such the

situation in which conscientious objectors found themselves when called to the draft in

1917 or 1918 was not without precedent. As shown, the exact opposite is true. It was the

result of hundreds of years of shifting and refining of military, government, and public

opinion which came together during World War I to create a system so intolerable to

many truly sincere Christian objectors that they had no choice but to resist and in doing

so force the government, military, and public to take notice of their unique and powerful

senses of conscience.

Part III: The Consciences of Conscientious Objectors

As explained in the preceding section on the history of conscription and

conscientious objection in America preceding World War I, conscientious objection has a

great deal of history in the nation. It is important however, to understand that despite its

presence in some form in all historical conflicts the United States has been involved in,

conscientious objection is not a simple declaration or act. Instead it is an ongoing

commitment to opposing war and military aggression that must be constantly evolving to

overcome the tests posed by the exigencies of an objectors wartime context. American

absolutist objectors during World War I had their dedication to conscience, and their


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resolve to live by the dictates of such, tested by some of the most intimidating, grave

circumstances, and unfriendly wartime polices and circumstances in United States

military history. This section answers the question of why the religious absolutist

objectors felt compelled to defy the draft system just described by examining the origins

of their consciences.

It is crucial at this point that no judgment be passed on the moral or legal validity

of the stand these absolutist objectors held against conscription, and to focus only on

understanding the reasons they had for making such a stand. The convictions of the

absolutist objectors who faced court martial and imprisonment are not to be taken lightly.

It would do them an injustice to attribute their decisions simply to their various religious

or political ideologies and affiliations. The choices these men made in expressing their

consciences were extremely personal. To hold such antagonistic personal views of the

United States military effort was extremely dangerous given the very conservative

exemptions afforded to objectors by World War I draft law policy. As socialist absolutist

objector Julius Eichel stated: during his process of conscription and induction into the

army, both conscientious objectors and the local draft boards in charge of determining

their sincerity found it to be clear that a persons personal views were not given any

consideration under the terms of the (Selective Service) Act (of 1917).36This disregard

of for personal views would be the cause of the greater part of the conflicts between

absolutist objectors, whose consciences this section will show were based primarily on

personally developed views and convictions, and the military which could no longer

36Eichel, Julius. The Judge Said "20 Years": The Story of a Conscientious Objector in World War I.

(Yonkers, New York: AMP & R, 1981,) 15.


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accommodate individual thought or convictions within the constrictive work or fight

doctrine.

Eichels observation is part of the remarkably detailed record of the experiences,

decision-making processes, and personal evolutions, created and preserved by those

absolutist conscientious objectors and their supporters. A great deal of that record is held

in the Swarthmore College Peace Collection in the forms of memoirs, letters, statements,

pamphlets, and other documents, written by objectors themselves, their supporters, and

by functionaries of the military. The documents organized by Lillian Schlissel in her

volume Conscience in Americaand by Melanie Springer Mock in her dissertation

Journeys of God and Country: The Narrative of the Great War Mennonite Conscientious

Objectorare also crucial and invaluable resources for those wishing to investigate the

consciences and circumstances of these men. The documents discovered within these

sources make clear the complexity of the consciences of those Christians imprisoned for

absolutist objection and the deep misunderstanding the military and government had of

the mind of the objector when it limited conscientious objection to only members of the

historic peace churches.

The consciences of absolutist objectors informed every aspect of their wartime

experience. In this section, the historical development of the beliefs and ideals that were

of such import to these individuals will be examined. Likewise, the circumstances and

methods of the expression of those consciences will be considered. First to be explored

will be the system of conscription that absolutists would find to be so hostile to their

expressions of conscience, then the formation of their consciences before their induction

via that system into the military. Using the absolutist objectors, and their allies and


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forbears, personal statements of conscience, this section will illuminate the complexities

of the Christian conscience in America.

Understanding these aspects of the absolutist conscientious objectors of World

War I is absolutely essential in the attempt to understand why they came so

unapologetically into conflict with such a popularly supported, and aggressively

enforced, narrow definition of conscientious objection. That battle would force the

government and military to reconsider conscience during and after the war, leading it to

eventually issue a number of changes to the interpretations and practical applications of

the draft laws themselves. This section will also reveal this battle to be the direct result of

the narrow-minded understanding of religious conscience that was developed in response

to the history of conscientious objection, especially that of the Civil War.

III.1 ~ The Draft System and the Over-simplification of CO Conscience

One of the enduring legacies of the Selective Service Act of 1917 on the historical

record of conscientious objection during World War I is the tendency to view objectors

and their beliefs primarily in the context of their religious, secular, and political

associations before and during the war. This is due to the wording of the legislation itself,

which as explained earlier provided exemption from combat duty to only those found to

have legitimate claim to exemption from combat service as a member of:

Any well recognized religious sect or organization at present organized and

existing and whose existing creed or principles forbid its members to participate

in war in any form and whose religious convictions are against war or


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participation therein in accordance with the creed or principles of said religious

organization.37

This provision, made with famous American pacifist groups such as the Quakers

(Friends), and Dunkers (Church of the Brethren) in mind, defined the origin of all

legitimate claims to conscientious objection as the doctrine of a religious entity of which

an individual may be a member.38This very slim conception of legitimate religious claim

to conscience was a reaction to the laissez fairesystem of furnishing and payments for

exemption that led to anti-draft riots during the Civil War. It was now understood that a

straightforward and simply defined set of rules and regulations for conscientious

objection, of the type Crowder describes in his account, was necessary for an effective

draft system held efficiency, equality, and universal duty over individual liberty.39

In light of the official position that acceptable objection to war was not a personal

conviction but a right granted only to members of certain groups it is natural that those

men whom history remembers as conscientious objectors would be primarily analyzed

and understood in the context of the organizations which conveyed to them that status.

This, and the narrow selection of groups associated with acceptable sincerity of objection,

is reflected in the American militarys official record of the Selective Service System

written by General Crowder. Crowder, Provost Marshal General of the United States

Army throughout World War I and overseer of the Selective Service System, included in

his post-war report to the Secretary of War regarding the operations of the Selective

37General Orders No. 28, Box 6 - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection, Folder- DG 131: Eichel Family

Collection- Julius Eichel: Reference / Reading Material re: conscientious objection in WWI, March 23,1918, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. 1.38E.H. Crowder, Second Report of the Provost Marshal General to the Secretary of War on the Operations

of the Selective Service System to December 20, 1918. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919),

57.39Crowder, 56.


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Service System a table (Appendix 1) that lists all the religious denominations recognized

by Census Bureau as traditionally professing opposition to war and the number of

members thereof. This table includes only thirteen religious bodies.40Unsurprisingly this

did not represent all pacifist religious sects that had a history of operation in America, but

only the largest. For example the Schwenkfelders, mentioned earlier, were not included.

Also included by Crowder is a table that lists the number of draft registrants that,

according to the Census Bureau numbers on anti-war religious denominations, would be

estimated to receive noncombatant privilege under the draft, the actual number of claims

made for noncombatant classification, and the total number of claims recognized during

the war. A credit to the efficiency of the Selective Service System, the number of

recognized claims to sincere exemption from combat based on conscience (56,830) is

only 2.64% greater than the estimated number of claimants (55,368).41Very clearly the

military gave very little consideration to the consciences of those not belonging to

recognized peace churches. Indeed, those with other motivations for refusing to fight

would have no legal claim at all to consideration for exemption for the nine months after

the first round of draft registration began in June 1917.

Legitimate claim to combat exemption under the draft law was, in March 1918

after the existence of troublesome men who refused to give up their convictions had been

felt by the military, expanded to apply also to those who object to participating in war

because ofother conscientious scruples by them in good faith entertained.42However

by the end of February of that year 623,299 American citizens had already been inducted

into the army among whom those conscientious objectors whose claims were illegitimate

40Crowder, 57.41Crowder, 57.42General Orders No. 28, SCPC. 2.


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under the original exemption clause faced the possibility of court martial for refusal to

fight.43

Even after the change in policy, the entities in charge of determining such good

faith, the local draft boards, and the Board of Inquiry in problematic cases, did so

primarily based on their understanding of the affiliations of those in question.44

Julius

Eichel posits in his unpublished manuscript,Personal History of a Conscientious

Objector, that the Board of Inquirys decisions, if not based upon the objectors

commitment to the teachings of an established organization, had to be arbitrary as the

results proved that anyone objecting to conscription for any reason was insincere and

inevitably went to jail as a result of his personal conviction.45

For Christian sectarians of

faiths not recognized widely, who never the less held pacifism and nonmilitarism to be

essential convictions, the narrow definition of religious sects eligible for noncombatant

service and lack of respect for personal scruples would create a pipeline to prison for the

sincere.

To the Christian absolutist conscientious objectors that this paper aims to

understand, the militarys judgment of the sincerity of their commitment to nonviolence

was largely irrelevant. These individuals would face court-martial and imprisonment

whether offered noncombatant exemption, farm furloughs, or not. The consciences of

absolutist objectors compelled them to reject entirely the power of the military over them,

the result of a long process of personal development informed by their Christian

43Crowder, 223.44Julius Eichel, Personal History of a Conscientious Objector. (Unpublished Manuscript). August 1,

1942, Box 1 - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection, Folder - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection Julius Eichel:

Biographical information- MSS, Personal History of a Conscientious Objector, Aug. 1942, Swarthmore

College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. 8.45Julius Eichel, Personal History of a Conscientious Objector, SCPC, 8.


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consciences, but not necessarily directly influenced by the doctrines of their churches as

was the view of the military.

III.2 ~ The Origin of Conscience, A Personal Journey

During World War I thousands of Americans refused combat service when

drafted into the United States Army through the Selective Service System. The majority

of these men did so by expressing a pacifistic conscience based on Christian scruples,

though a large number did so based on humanitarian or political beliefs most of whom

would also become absolutist objectors, as has been explained. In the cases of the

hundreds of men that went to prison as a result of that refusal the origin of conscientious

objection is often very complex. Among those religious objectors that objected absolutely

it is unlikely that the actions of any were conceived out of a blind faith to the laws of

their specific Christian sects.

Instead their actions were made based on what their personal consciences

allowed; some would consent to work in prison once sentenced, some would go on

hunger strikes to protest their conditions. Once farm furloughs began to be offered to

sincere objectors some accepted them and ceased to be absolutists. These intensely

personal decisions were made by the group of American men most dedicated to the

sanctity of their consciences, so much so that they would gladly accept sentences of

decades in military prison to act in accordance with their convictions. This will explore

the historical and religious origins of the beliefs that these objectors so fanatically held.

Religious Origins of CO Beliefs

In his 1919 book, The Conscientious Objector, Walter Guest Kellog, who was the

chairman of the Board of Inquiry during World War I, states that 75% of conscientious


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objectors during the war identified themselves as one of the following: Mennonite,

Quaker, Brethren, Dunkard, Russellite, or Israelite of the House of David.46(See

Appendix Table 2) These denominations were at the time the more widely known and

recognized pacifist religious groups, including the three historic peace churches: the

Qaukers, Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren. Kellog suggests that a further 15%

of conscientious objectors were religious in some way but not affiliated with pacifist

religious groups. The 90% of conscientious objectors Kellog has identified as religious

appear to be nearly uniformly Christians. There were in fact conscientious objectors who

were of other religious backgrounds but in many cases these objectors did not attribute

their objections to religious concerns but to political or humanistic convictions, For

example Julius Eichel, whose writings are explored in this paper, was raised Jewish yet in

his induction questionnaire he declined to list a religious affiliation and gave the reason

for his stance as socialist & humanitarian.47The consciences of such individuals are as

complex if not more so than those of the religious absolutists, as in each case the beliefs

of the individual and their origins are totally unique. The examination of such men is

another piece of historical analysis that must be done to fill in the holes in the record of

the absolutist objectors to World War I, but cannot be covered in this paper. Instead, we

focus on the Christian origins of pacifism and objection to war and military service.

Origins of Christian Conscience & Pacifism48

46Walter G. Kellog, The Conscientious Objector(New York: Boni & Liveright, 1919), 129.47Julius Eichel, The Judge Said 20 Years,12-16.48The history and development of Christian conscience is a complicated subject that has been simplified inthis paper almost past what can, in good conscience, be done. Timothy M. La Goy has made an excellent

examination of conscience as it relates to conscientious objection (paraphrased in this section) in Chapter 1

of his dissertation Soldiers of Conscience: Conscription and Conscientious Objection in America andBritain During World War I.His main source on the history of Christian conscience is an entry in the

Anchor Bible Dictionary, written by Robert W. Wall and entitled Conscience.These are both


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The Christian understanding of conscience was created within Saint Paul the

Apostles contributions to the New Testament, known as the Pauline epistles. Paul, in his

attempt to proselytize early Christianity in Greece in the middle of the first century A.D.,

combined similar traditional Greek and Hebrew concepts. Paul presented conscience as

part of an intricate, divinely created guidance system intended to help humans discern

and follow moral truths in order to achieve a positive homeostasis with God.49The

purpose of this system was to promote love and spiritual growth, but it also gave Paul a

tactful way to handle new converts to Christianity.

By allowing a personal Christian conscience to guide an individuals daily

decisions Paul disconnected Christian behavior from the guidance of strict Old

Testament laws and rituals, such as dietary restrictions.50A significant statement to this

effect appears in Pauls First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 8, which advises

Christians to not eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols out of spiritual concerns.51

Instead of mandating the abstinence, Paul allows Christians to call upon their own

consciences in the matter.52He calls upon Christians to make civil decisions based on

their own personal understandings of their religion rather than on doctrine. Pauls concept

of conscience is clearly the one understood by religious conscientious objectors during

World War I who, while the government acted out of adherence to the doctrines of their

sects, looked to their personal understandings of moral behavior in choosing

recommended for those interested in further reading. Bibliographical details on these works can be found in

the Works Citedsection of this paper on page 45.49Timothy M. La Goy, Soldiers of Conscience: Conscription and Conscientious Objection in America andBritain During World War I, Diss., University at Albany, State University of New York, 2010. Ann Arbor:

ProQuest LLC, 2010.ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Database(accessed Nov. 2012, 14). 14.50La Goy,15.511stCor. 8:1, 11:1 KJV52La Goy, 14.


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conscientious objection, and in making the decisions that expression of conscience would

require.

Such an influence is to be seen in Mennonite absolutist objector John Neufelds

account of the early days of his wartime experience. Inducted in 1918 and sent to a

military camp that held few other conscientious objectors, Neufeld was beaten for

disobeying orders, court-martialed by a judge biased against him with the aid of a

complacent counsel, and sentenced to a long term of hard labor imprisoned in Fort

Leavenworth.53Neufelds journal, reproduced by Melanie Mock, includes his description

of choosing to register with no exemption and attempting to give what service he could

within the boundaries of his conscience while in Camp Funston.54

This in an attempt to

convince the authorities to create some form of exception for him and his fellow

Mennonites. His transformation into an absolutist objector came only when he found that

the military would never make any exception for him based on his and his fellow

objectors convictions. He writes of this transformation:

We however found out that they did not listen to our appealsThen the lieut

spoke to me and told me that I could imagine that he was pretty disgusted with

me. Whenfor, I answered him that I had tried to avoid the incident (disobeying

orders to continue participating in military drill) and had made known my stand to

him and other officers. And I had gone as far in military work as my conscience

would permit me.55

53Lillian Schlissel, ed., Conscience In America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in

America, 1757-1967 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968), 233.54Melanie Joy Springer Mock,Journeys of God and Country: The Narrative of Great War Mennonite

Conscientious Objectors. Diss., Graduate College Oklahoma State University. (Ann Arbor: Proquest LLC,2000.)ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database(accessed December, 2012, 23) 245.55The Diary of John Neufeld, 1918 In: Mock, Melanie Joy SpringerJourneys of God and Country: The

Narrative of Great War Mennonite Conscientious Objectors. Diss., Graduate College Oklahoma State


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This shows clearly the personal understanding of a Christian conscience being

much more complex than dutifully following the specific doctrines of the particular

Christian sect that informed its growth. Incidents such as these in which objectors with

pacifist Christian upbringings and beliefs depended on their own personal moral

consciences to determine when and how to express their objections to military service or

other aspects of the war effort clearly refute the idea that the conscientious objectors

beliefs could only be the result of their acceptance of the pacifist doctrines of the major

peace churches.

Pacifism and objection to war also date back to the earliest days of Christianity.

Indeed it was a universally accepted aspect of the early Christian faith, as no Christian

ever thought of enlisting in an army after his conversion until the reign of Marcus

Aurelius (160 to 180 A.D.).56The pacifist attitude expressed by early Christians was

based on their interpretations of the teachings of Jesus. A prominent example of such

teachings is found in Jesus Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus asks his followers not

to resist evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other

also.57As with all behaviors, pacifism was understood by Christians to be a matter of

conscience. As Christianity enveloped the Roman Empire total pacifism as a widely

expressed aspect of Christian behavior eventually disappeared. War and violence became

activities Christians could, in good conscience, participate in as a result of Augustine of

Hippos (Saint Augustine) just war theory and the medieval concept of holy war.58

University. (Ann Arbor: Proquest LLC, 2000.)ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database(accessed

December, 2012, 23). 247.

56Albert N. Keim and Grant M. Stoltzfus, The Politics of Conscience: The Historic Peace Churches and

America at War, 1917-1955(Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 18.57Matthew 5:385:42 KJV.58Keim & Stoltzfus, 18-19.


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These of course depended on the Christian conscience to legitimize the use of violence in

light of the clear bias against it in the teachings of Jesus. Because of the spread of these

teachings war would become acceptable to Christians if it could be rationalized as

conscionable due to the justness of the cause.

Mennonite, Quaker, & Brethren Conscience & Pacifism

The majority of American conscientious objectors to World War I were members

of the three historic peace churches and many did indeed accept alternative service such a

acting as medics when it was found to be a conscionable undertaking. These Christian

denominations, the Mennonites, the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers

or Friends), and the Church of the Brethren (also known as Dunkards, Old German

Baptist Brethren, or Brethren) are Protestant sects whose founders and members

reestablished pacifism as part of the Christian way of life. Established in the Sixteenth,

Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries respectively these churches trace their lineage to

the Protestant Reformation and its rejection of the form Christianity had taken in the

Roman Catholic Church.

During the Reformation a breakaway Christian group arose that wished to return

Christianity to its early form, based only on the teachings of Christ and not the dictates of

a church they considered worldly.59This group, the Anabaptists, which originated in

Switzerland in 1525, rejected Augustines ideals adopted a doctrine of pacifism based on

New Testament injunctions against war.60Further, they rejected civil governments

authority to govern spiritual matters, to exert authority over a persons conscience, or to

59Keim & Stoltzfus, 18-19.60La Goy, 38.


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coerce one to participate in matters of the state. These refusals led to violent attempts to

crush the movement in Europe.

Anabaptists eventually took the name Mennonites after a Dutch Roman Catholic

priest named Menno Simons who converted to Anabaptism in 1536 and led their

resurgence after the massacres of Anabaptist groups such as the Melchiorites in the 1530s

had left the movement broken and leaderless.61Menno Simons stated that after years of

torment over his place in the Catholic Church those attacks brought him to his final

decision to convert and lead what would become the Mennonite church. He lamented:

the blood of the slaingrieved me so sorely that I could not endure it. I could find no

rest in my soul I saw that these zealous children willingly gave their livesfor their

doctrine and faith.62The Mennonites from their very foundation held pacifism, non-

resistance to violence, rejection of civil authority, and the supremacy of personal

conscience as inalienable facets of their faith. These values would travel with them

around the world and, beginning in 1683, to America - where they would eventually be

tested against the Selective Service Systems policies during World War I.63According to

the Swarthmore College Peace Collections online World War I Conscientious Objectors

61Cornelius J. Dyck and Cornelius Krahn, "Menno Simons (1496-1561)," (Global Anabaptist Mennonite

Encyclopedia Online, 1990). http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M4636ME.html.

(accessed November, 2012, 20).

62Menno Simons, "Menno Simon's Renunciation of the Church of Rome Written by Himself, and

Originally Published in the Dutch Language. A.D. 1554." (The Mennonite Ethereal Library), http://e-

menno.org/ren.htm. (accessed November 21, 2012).63Harold S. Bender, "United States of America," (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online,

1959), (accessed November 18, 2012). http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/U568.html.


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Database of the more than 800 Mennonites that were inducted into the army through the

draft, over 140 Mennonites were imprisoned as absolutist objectors.64

Like the Mennonites, the Society of Friends (Quakers) refused to compromise on

basic Christian principles such as objection to war and the sanctity of human life. The

Quaker movement was a reaction to the Protestant Church of England, ascendant during

the Puritan Revolution in the mid-seventeenth century, which Quakers believed had

forsaken many of those basic Christian principles.65Keim and Stoltzfus explain that the

Quaker objection to war and violence was based not as much on scriptural injunctions but

on personal feelings and intuition a Light Within which shines into conscience.

66

Unlike Mennonites, Quakers believe in actively combating evil with love and good

works. This has led them to serve as aid and relief workers during many wars since the

1600s, including the American Revolution and the American Civil War, and to cast the

church in the role of a healer of the wounds of war.67

The third pacifist group to rise to prominence in the United States is the Church of

the Brethren (Dunkers), founded in Germany in 1708 and brought to America in the early

1720s.68The Brethren combined the traditions of the Anabaptists of the Sixteenth

century, particularly pacifism, non-resistance, and a return to primitive Christianity, with

those of German Pietism which held that the only evidence of being a true Christian

was ones goodness of heart, disposition, and conduct.69This exclusively personal

64Anne M. Yoder. "World War I Conscientious Objectors." May 2002.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/conscientiousobjection/WWI.COs.coverpage.htm (accessed

December, 15, 2012).65Keim & Stoltzfus, 20-21.66Keim & Stoltzfus, 21.67Keim & Stoltzfus, 22.68Floyd E. Mallott, "Church of the Brethren," (Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, 1953),

(accessed November 18, 2012). http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/C489.html.69Floyd E. Mallott, "Church of the Brethren."


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understanding of conscience would be at odds with the Selective Service Systems

understanding of pacifist conscience as a result of denominational doctrine. The Dunker

conception of peace is notable also in the context of World War I conscription, holding

that peace was threefold: opposition to war, no coercion in religion, and no litigation in

court.70

Other Christian Sects

Many other Christian denominations produced young men who became

conscientious objectors. Two important sects that will be mentioned later, for the

purposes both of exploring the expressions of conscience of absolutist objectors and of

exploring the development of their support network, are the International Bible Students

(Russelite) and the Molokans. The International Bible Students originated in

Pennsylvania in the late 1800s and are a non-denominational Christian fellowship

comprised of independent and self-determining local congregations. They hold that every

Christian is responsible for studying and interpreting the meaning of Gods inspired

words found in the Bible for themselves.71This would lead a number of them to become

absolute conscientious objectors. The Molokans are Russian Christians who rejected the

authority of the Russian Orthodox Church. They hold similar pacifistic beliefs to those of

Quakers and Mennonites. Their staunch anti-militarism and anti-statism led to great

hardship as absolutist objectors.72

70Keim & Stoltzfus, 22.71"Who Are the Bible Students?" BibleStudents.com, (accessed November 2, 2012).

http://www.biblestudents.com/whoarewe.cfm.72James P. McGowan, Too Brave To Fight: American Conscientious Objectors and Military JusticeDuring the First World War. Diss., University Of California, Davis, 2010. (Ann Arbor: ProQuest LLC,

2011),ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Database . (accessed November 29, 2012), 146.


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Part IV: Effects on the Military Administration

Both during the war and after it ended the stand that the absolutist objectors took

against conscription would prove itself to be inconvenient and problematic for the

American government and its war department. Civil liberties organizations such as the

National Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB), later the American Civil Liberties Union, and

the New York Bureau of Legal Advice (NYBLA) publically and supported the objectors

and helped to publicize, along with a host of other supportive organizations, accounts of

the mistreatment of those imprisoned for their beliefs. By January 1919 these efforts had

prompted a Congressional inquiry, which heard testimony and saw evidence of the brutal

treatment, unjust court martial, torture, and deaths of what were now, after the war,

considered political prisoners.75This paper cannot determine with precision to what

extent these efforts and others directly precipitated the changes that the War Department

would make between 1917 and 1919 to its policies regarding conscientious objection and

the treatment of those who absolutely resisted participation in Americas war effort. Nor

can it point to specific examples of the militarys acknowledgement that the protestations

of the absolutists affected their reasoning in any way. These would be valuable avenues

for further research for those with access to military records.

However, the changing of the War Departments policy regarding treatment of

conscientious objectors can be accurately displayed using the formerly confidential

records of the department presented to Congress during hearings on the subject of

75Dillon, Charles H. Speech of Hon. Charles H. Dillon Introducing Examples of Brutalities, Torture, andDeaths to Political Prisoners Under Military Rgime (Washington: Government Printing Office, January,

1919). Box 6 - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection, Folder- DG 131: Eichel Family Collection- Julius

Eichel: Reference / Reading Material re: conscientious objection in WWI, March 23, 1918, Swarthmore

College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. 1.


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conscientious objectors in 1919. Using these documents, reproduced in Lillian Schlissels

book, it can accurately be stated that the unique problems that absolutists posed to the

military were recognized as such and that deliberate attempts were made in response to

those problems that arose due to the immovable devotion to their consciences of the

absolutists earlier described.

The selective service law passed by Congress on may 18th, 1917 contained only

one provision for conscientious objection, the exemption from combatant service of

individuals who had religious convictions against war that were in accordance with the

doctrines and creed of an established religious organization in which they were a

member.76

This remained the only consideration for conscientious objection in American

law throughout the war. Despite this the war department would, as the war drew on,

slowly depart from strict adherence to the law by expanding its practical understanding of

legitimate claim to conscientious objection. It would also adjust its treatment for

absolutist objectors in the military prisons of America, granting them special

considerations that were never legally established.

By the end of 1917, only four months after the first draftees of the American war

effort were called in July of that year, the military policy makers understood that the

Selective Service Acts understanding of conscience was not sufficiently inclusive. On

December 10th, 1917 Adjutant General H. G. Leanard issued a confidential memo

directing the National Army and National Guard camps involved to which draftees were

sent to consider personal scruples against war to be legitimate grounds for

76Document 27. From The Congressional Record:On Conscientious Objectors, 1919. In: Conscience In

America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in America, 1757-1967.Ed.Lillian Schlissel.

(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968). 163.


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conscientious objection in accordance with the order of Secretary of War Newton

Baker.77This order attempted to surreptitiously allow the military to relieve the pressure

of dealing with objectors, religious and otherwise, that could not be judged to be sincere

by the local draft boards that operated under the letter of the draft act and who, if

steadfast in their beliefs, the military would be forced to court martial for disobedience.

Many religious absolutists from sects such as the Mennonites held religious

objections to wearing the uniforms required by the military both in camps and in prisons.

The Swarthmore College Peace Collection Conscientious Objection in WWI database

lists over one hundred religious objectors who refused to wear the uniform of United

States military, dozens of whom would find their ways to military prisons as a result of

these, or related, instances of disobedience.78To make this situation more difficult for the

military the harsh punishments, including physical beatings, which the authorities in

military camps and prisons issued in response to refusal to wear the uniform began in

1918 to be publicized by groups supportive of conscientious objectors.79In response to

the pressure created by the objectors and their supporters the Secretary of War would in

1918 instruct the military to extend to objectors considerations for their personal

consciences that were neither established by the draft law nor in military doctrine.

A June 1918 letter from the Secretary of War displays the remarkable expansion

of the militarys willingness to regard the consciences of objectors with respect and

77Document 27, Schlissel, 165.78Anne M. Yoder. "World War I Conscientious Objectors." May 2002.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/conscientiousobjection/WWI.COs.coverpage.htm (accessed

December 20th, 2012).79Erling Lunde. Moans From The Military Machine (Chicago: American Industrial Company,

December, 1918). Box 6 - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection, Folder- DG 131: Eichel Family Collection-

Julius Eichel: Reference / Reading Material re: conscientious objection in WWI, March 23, 1918,

Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. 2.


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civility. In it Newton declares that should a drafted man upon arrival in an army camp

present a written statement declaring himself to be a conscientious objector, regardless of

the findings of the local draft boards as to his sincerity or the validity of the mans claim,

he shall not, against his will, be required to wear a uniform or to bear arms; nor ifhe

shall decline to perform, under military direction, duties which he states to be contrary to

the dictates of his conscience, shall he receive punitive treatment for such conduct. 80

Direct concessions such as these to the men whose convictions demanded special

treatment from a military initially indisposed to provide such clearly display that the

determined protests and refusals of the absolutist objectors did indeed influence the

militarys outlook on objectors and its policies in dealing with them.

While no admission of the influence that religious absolutists or their actions had

upon the Secretary of War, his staff, other functionaries of the military, or even upon the

President were made, as World War I came to a close the leaders of the military did note

the difficulties they posed to the administration of the war effort and the policy

adjustments that were made as a result. A December 1918 memo from the Secretary of

War to the General Staff admitted that the so-called conscientious objectors present a

novel problem in military administration and that because only certain varieties of

religious experience had been adequately provided for the President had found it

necessary to create a definite policy for the administration of the law, and the discipline

of those called to the service who were affected by any of these forms of conscientious

objection not specifically included within the limits of the statute.81The policy Secretary

80Document 27, Schlissel, 165.81Document 27, Schlissel, 166.


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Newton refers to was put into effect via the memos examined in this section, and others

throughout the war.

As has been described in this section, the challenges that dealing with

conscientious objection, specifically absolutist objection, to World War I, given the

restrictive and conservative policies established by Congress within the Selective Service

Act, were both troublesome and recognized by the leaders of the military. All the way up

to the supreme leader of the United States Armed Forces, the Commander In Chief

President Woodrow Wilson, the military leaders found it necessary to alter the policies of

the military in regard to conscientious objectors and to liberalize the treatment of such by

disregarding to some extent both traditional military policies and the draft law itself. The

urge to do so may only be attributed to the great pressure that absolutist objectors exerted

on the military machine from inside camps and prisons, and the pressure their allies

exerted from without.

Part V: Conclusion

Edward A. Fitzpatrick stated after the war that the foundational ideals of

American democracy were incompatible with the prosecution of a modern war such as

World War I. He appears to have been proven correct, by the war effort seen in World

War I and by the subsequent wars in which America has been engaged. Although the

United States no longer utilizes conscription in order to wage its wars there is adequate

evidence of sacrificing adherence to the ideals enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill

of Rights in war measures and laws such as the use of predator drones to assassinate

enemies around the world and the Patriot Act to confirm his claim.


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Although deeply unpopular, conscientious objection based on Christian faith on

the part of absolutists helped to coerce the military establishment, from the President

down, to abandon the strict adherence to the principle of universal obligation to work or

fight and in its place create a liberal American policy of according a measure of self-

determination to the few who in all sincerity have not been able to adjust their minds to

the needs of this sudden and desperate emergency.82In doing so they may have had

some small degree of negative effect on the war effort itself, but regardless of the positive

or detrimental consequences of their protest to the war effort itself the religious

absolutists objectors to conscription and service in during World War I made a great and

successful effort to protect the essential civil rights of all Americans to religious

freedoms and personal self-determination.

82Document 27. From The Congressional Record:On Conscientious Objectors, 1919. In: Conscience InAmerica: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection in America, 1757-1967.Ed.Lillian Schlissel.

(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968). 173.


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Works Cited

Primary Source: Personal Narrative

The Individual and the State: The Problem as Presented by the Sentencing of Roger N.Baldwin, (November 1918), Box CDGA Collective Box: Baez, Joan through Bethune,Ade, Folder- Baldwin, Roger Nash, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore,Pennsylvania.

Eichel, Julius. Personal History of a Conscientious Objector. (UnpublishedManuscript). August 1, 1942, Box 1 - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection, Folder - DG131: Eichel Family Collection Julius Eichel: Biographical information- MSS, Personal

History of a Conscientious Objector, Aug. 1942, Swarthmore College Peace Collection,Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.

Eichel, Julius. The Judge Said "20 Years": The Story of a Conscientious Objector inWorld War I.Yonkers, New York: AMP & R, 1981.

Jailed War Objector Wants Amnesty for All, or None for Him, NY Times, (undated),Box 1- CDGA William Kantor Collected Papers, Swarthmore College Peace Collection,Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

Lunde, Erling. Moans From The Military Machine Chicago: American IndustrialCompany, December, 1918. Box 6 - DG 131: Eichel Family Collection, Folder- DG 131:Eichel Family Collection- Julius Eichel: Reference / Reading Material re: conscientiousobjection in WWI, March 23, 1918, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, SwarthmoreCollege, Pennsylvania.

The Diary of John Neufeld, 1918 In: Mock, Melanie Joy SpringerJourneys of God andCountry: The Narrative of Great War Mennonite Conscientious Objectors, Diss.,Graduate College Oklahoma State University. Ann Arbor: Proquest LLC, 2000.ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database(accessed December, 2012, 23). 245-259.

Woolman, John. Document 1. Considerations on the Payment of a Tax laid for Carryingon the War against the Indians; The Drafting of the Militia in New Jersey, 1757, 1758In: Conscience In America: A Documentary History of Conscientious Objection inAmerica, 1757-1967.Ed.Lillian Schlissel. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968. 35-38.

Document 2. A Candid Declaration of Some So-called Schwenkfelders ConcerningPresent Militia Affairs, May 1,

H91 CO Paper-Justin Reyes

Documents