The Vietnam War is remembered for many reasons: the military and civilian casualties; the turmoil and bitter division of American society; the ignominious outcome. From 1965 through 1972, the military draft profoundly affected the lives of millions of young men, inducting nearly two million and pressuring many more into volunteering for service. Often overlooked in the legacy of the war is the long-term impact of the draft system on the young men who escaped military duty, often by changing their lives to deliberately manipulate the Selective Service System.
Here, Wesley Abney tells us how the draft lottery worked and the wider impact on society and millions of young American men.
You can also read Wesley’s book on the Vietnam War Draft Lottery, available here: Amazon US | Amazon UK
Congressman Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) drawing the first capsule as part of Selective Service System draft, Dec 1, 1969. Available here.
NIGHT OF THE LOTTERY
December 1, 1969. Nearly two million young American men were asking the same question: what will my number be? That evening the Selective Service System held the first draft lottery of the Vietnam era, to determine who would be next to fight in the distant and unpopular war. Overnight, arbitrary chance forced the "winners" to make a choice that helped shape the future of a generation, from combat to conscientious objection, from teaching to prison, from the pulpit to the Canadian border, from public health to gay liberation.
Despite the potentially life-changing drama of the drawing, the ceremony at Selective Service System (SSS) headquarters employed only a drab stage with a large tote board, some folding chairs and a cylindrical glass bowl to hold the lottery dates. Each of the 366 days of the year (including the extra leap year date of February 29) had been printed on a small rectangle of paper, tucked inside a blue plastic capsule, and placed in a box to await the lottery. The SSS had chosen “youth advisory” delegates from across the country and brought them to Washington, D.C. to draw out the capsules, to show that men of draft age were involved in the process.
The 1969 lottery was the first to be nationally televised, as CBS pre-empted the regular broadcast of Mayberry RFD to join news correspondent Roger Mudd for live coverage. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, long-time director of the SSS, introduced the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee (which had oversight responsibility for the SSS), Rep. Alexander Pirnie, R-New York. After the capsules were dumped from the box into the glass container, Congressman Pirnie drew the first capsule which contained the date of September 14. That date was stuck to a tote board beside the numerals 001. Thus every man in the lottery born on that date would be in the first group called for duty in 1970. Then the youth delegates took over the task of drawing the capsules, until all 366 random sequence numbers (“RSN”) were affixed to the board. According to Roger Mudd, four or five of the youth delegates refused to pick numbers on the grounds they were being used by the Nixon administration to give a false appearance of approval by American youth.
Later probability studies of the 1969 lottery results indicated that the selection process was not as entirely random as intended, in that birth dates occurring late in the year were disproportionately likely to be chosen early. This was due most likely to insufficient mixing of the capsules. A court challenge ensued but the lottery results were upheld. The SSS procured the expertise of statisticians for the subsequent lotteries of 1970, 1971 and 1972, which were fully randomized.
DRAFT LAW CHANGES
President Nixon signed changes to the draft law on November 26, 1969, just days before the drawing. In the year since his election, the war effort remained bogged down, while the public had grown increasingly doubtful of its outcome and skeptical of its worth. His presidency was as troubled by protest and dissension as Lyndon Johnson’s before him. He wanted to eliminate the draft as soon as possible and transition to an all-volunteer force, but had no immediate means to scale back troop strength in an amount sufficient to permit that change. In the meantime, he took several steps to ameliorate widespread criticism of the draft.
In May, 1969, in a message to Congress, he proposed to adopt two long-debated changes to the draft system: reversing the age-order of call such that 19-year-olds would be inducted first; and implementing a process of random selection by lottery. Congress approved both changes in draft law amendments passed in late November 1969.
Nixon viewed the lottery as a means to return at least a perception of fairness to the draft as well as deflate campus-based peace demonstrations. At first glance, an impartial method to set the order of call, such that every man of draft age, rich or poor, black or white, would be assigned a priority number based on a random drawing of birthdates, appeared fair and unbiased. Yet the lottery itself did nothing to change the draft law’s existing system of deferments and exemptions, and so did nothing to equalize the draft vulnerability between a man with a deferment and a man without. By this time, deferments for most graduate students had been eliminated, as well as deferments for married men, but many protected categories remained. A deferred undergraduate student, farmer, father or trained scientist could draw a low number and still avoid the draft, at least as long as the deferment continued, while someone with no deferment who drew the same low number was bound for service. Thus the new random selection process mainly affected those men without a deferment or whose deferment was ending, deciding among only them who would be drafted and who was safe.
A perhaps more significant change in the draft law was reversing age priority and limiting the period of time during which a man would be vulnerable to the draft. Instead of taking the oldest men first from the 19-to-26-year-old eligible range, the revised draft would take the youngest men first. Most men’s uncertainty over draft status would be considerably shortened. Instead of waiting up to six years to learn his draft fate, every man would get a lottery number by age 19, and would be primarily vulnerable only during the year to which the lottery applied. Anyone whose number was not reached in the course of that year would be clear of the draft and free to move ahead with normal plans for work and family without the lingering cloud of possible induction. Likewise, those with a deferment would be vulnerable only for the year after the deferment expired.
For the transition-year lottery of 1969, which set the order of call for 1970, everyone aged 19 to 26 (born from 1944 through 1950) who were already classified as available for induction (I-A and I-A-O), or were emerging from deferred status, or were not yet classified, participated in the lottery, a total of 1,893,651 men. The next lottery in 1970 applied only to men born in 1951; in 1971 only to men born in 1952; in 1972 only to men born in 1953. Because the draft was abolished in 1973 without any draft calls that year, no one subject to the 1972 lottery was drafted.
MAKING A CHOICE
Men whose lottery number fell into the definite-to-probable range for call-up had to immediately choose among the few available options: 1. Get drafted for two years’ active duty, often in the combat zone; 2. Volunteer for service in the military or National Guard (and probably avoid combat duty); 3. Try to qualify for a deferment; or 4. Defy the law and hope to avoid a felony draft evasion charge by going “underground” or leaving the country.
At the time of the first lottery, deferments were still available for those who flunked the fitness test, or worked in various jobs deemed to be essential (including agriculture, teaching, the ministry, and defense industries), as well as for students (undergraduate and certain graduate schools), fathers with a child at home, and conscientious objectors.
GENERATIONAL IMPACT
The hard choices forced on young men by the draft and the lottery steered the major life decisions of millions, helping shape the future of a generation.
Work. Jobs with a likely deferment, such as engineering and teaching, exerted a magnetic pull on draft-age men, such that those fields became glutted with recent college graduates by the late 1960s. In 1969, 85% of New York City teaching trainees were draft-age men. A survey in the 1970s found that the career choices of 10% of draft-age men were influenced by the availability or lack of a deferment.
Education. The U.S. Census Bureau in 1984 observed that men who came of age during the Vietnam War accumulated more college education than those maturing before. A detailed study in 2001 concluded that the rate of college attendance in the late 1960s rose by 4% to 6% due to draft avoidance alone, affecting about 300,000 young men. A separate study of enrollment in Protestant seminaries showed an increase of 31% from 1966 to 1971, compared to a rise of only 3% from 1960 to 1966.
Paternity. Before the war in Vietnam, the U.S. birth rate declined steadily each year after the peak baby boom year of 1957. However, with the draft system back in effect, including the paternity deferment, the pace of decline slowed between 1966 and 1968, and the birth rate actually rose again in 1969 and 1970 before resuming its decline in 1971.
Conscientious objectors (COs). During World War II, when the military inducted 10.1 million men, only 37,000 (or .36%) were classified as COs, and were required to serve either in a non-combat military role, or perform alternative service. During the Vietnam War, when 1.86 million men were inducted, 171,700 (or 9.23%) were classified as COs, a rate 25 times higher than during WWII. Only about one-third of all COs performed alternative service rather than active military duty during WWII. During the Vietnam War, 80% of COs chose alternative work, usually in a hospital or forestry project at least 50 miles away from their home town, performing menial, low paid tasks for the required two years.
Draft evasion. During the course of the war, 209,517 young men were referred by the SSS to the Department of Justice for prosecution in the federal courts, due to violation of the draft laws. However, the DOJ had to dismiss over half of those cases due to procedural errors by the SSS, and another 76,000 men agreed to accept induction in lieu of criminal prosecution, such that only 25,279 were actually indicted. Even so, draft evasion offenses were the fourth largest category on the federal criminal docket by late 1969, and made up 21% of all pending federal prosecutions nationally by June 1972. A total of 10,055 draft offenders went to trial, where 8,750 were convicted by verdict or guilty plea. Of those, 3,250 served time in prison, for an average of twenty-two months. As convicted felons, those men lost the right to vote and were often disqualified for desirable job opportunities.
Immigration. Some men made the momentous decision to flee the country, leaving behind their homes, friends and family. The best government estimates show that about 40,000 young men left the U.S. during the war, with the majority crossing the border into Canada, at an average of 5,000 to 8,000 per year. After the war, an estimated one-fourth to one-half of the exiles chose to remain in their adopted country, even after they were granted amnesty by President Carter in January, 1977.
What do you think of the Vietnam War draft lottery? Let us know below.
You can also read about the stories of men who were subject to the draft at Wesley’s site: vietnamwardraftlottery.com.
References
“Amnesty: Repatriation for Draft Evaders, Deserters,” CQ Almanac 1972, 1.
Baskir, Lawrence M. and Strauss, William A., Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War and the Vietnam Generation(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978).
Card, David and Lemieux, Thomas, “Going to College to Avoid the Draft: The Unintended Legacy of the Vietnam War,” The American Economic Review 91, no. 2 (2001), 101.
“CBS News Special Report: The Draft Lottery 1969,” YouTube video, 9:41
“College Enrollment Linked to Vietnam War,” New York Times, September 2, 1984.
Dennis, Lloyd B., “Draft Law Revision.” Editorial Research Reports 1966, vol.1, 431-69.
Fletcher, John C., “Avoidance and the Draft,” Washington Post, February 25, 1992.
Hagan, John, Northern Passage: American Vietnam War Resisters in Canada (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Kamarck, Kristy N., The Selective Service System and Draft Registration: Issues for Congress (CRS Report No. R44452), 2016.
“Living in Peace in a Time of War: The Civilian Public Service Story,” Mennonite Central Committee, March 28, 2017.
Mansavage, Jean A., “Obvious Inequities: Lessons Learned from Vietnam War Conscientious Objection,” (Ph.D. diss., Texas A&M, 2000).
“President’s Draft Lottery Approved by Congress,” CQ Almanac 1969, 350-55.
Selective Service Act of 1948 (Elston Act), Pub. L. 80-759.
Selective Service Amendment Act of 1969, Pub. L. 91-124.
Selective Service System, “Induction Statistics.”
Selective Service System, Semi-Annual Report of the Director of Selective Service for the Period July 1 to December 31, 1969; July 1 to December 31, 1972.
Starr, Norton., “Nonrandom Risk: The 1970 Draft Lottery,” Journal of Statistics Education, vol. 5, no. 2 (1997).
32 C.F.R. 1622 (1967).
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1968, Table 194; 1969, Table 188; 1971, Table 198; 1973,Table 211, 1974, Tables 67, 68.
Van Sant, Rick, “Paying Price Every Election Day,” Cincinnati Post, September 21, 1993.
Zeidler, Maryse, “40 Years Later, Remembering Jimmy Carter’s Pardon for Draft Dodgers,” CBC News, January 21, 2017.
